Although I have been driving the Prius for over a decade now, we just got the 2021 Prime and are very excited about it. As I recall from the manual, when the car is over half way to being fully charged, there should be two solid blue lights and one blinking blue light. I depended upon that to know without entering the car that I could stop charging without going up to 100%. What I am noticing however is that even up to the full charge I have only one solid blue light and one blinking blue light, the signal that the car is still less that 50% charged. Something about the calibration seems to be off. Not a major problem but curious whether any else has noticed this with their Prime. Thanks! kukui ?
Why are you trying to stop charging at 50%? I have never checked the blinking lights and level of SOC while the car is being charged, but I don't think blinking lights can be adjusted. If you want to stop[ the SOC level less than 100%, the better way is to just stop at certain time after the start. About 2.5hours after start charging, the SOC should be approximately 50%.
I’ve only seen 2 solid, 1 blinking above 80 or 90%. The majority of the time, the car will show 1 solid, 1 blinking. (Something like 20-80% SOC is represented by 1 solid, 1 blinking. It’s not a hard threshold as there seems to be some variability).
Thanks for these responses. Even in the 90% range, I still only get one solid and one blinking. I don't want to charge up to 100% because I am not planning on going anywhere immediately and have read consistently not to charge to 100% and leave the car sitting fully charged for hours. kukui ?
Why not look at the time to full charge prior to leaving the car, then head back at the fraction of time that you think you want it to stop at. Do that a couple of times to judge the actual charge level versus the time to get to that point. Or do the reverse if you do schedule charging end times.
I have been doing what folks have been suggesting - checking the car before the time to full charge by going out and opening the door. Probably because the car is new things haven't settled down. The other night, for example, the car said 4 hours and 50 minutes to full charge. I went out after 3 hours and 50 minutes and it was at 92% so I stopped charging. The next day I was going to Philadelphia so I decided to go top it off to 100 before leaving, and it wouldn't take a charge because it now said 100%! As I said, this is a minor issue but if the 3 blinking lights were working properly I would look out the window and as soon as I saw 2 blue lights and a blinker I would go out and stop charging somewhere above 50%. Maybe I will check out the app. kukui ?
I would use charging time as I find it more accurate. If you're using a 110V outlet and the car is in HV mode (i.e. EV portion is empty) so the timer says 5hr 30 mins, I'd go out after 4 hours and you'll be close to 90%. By the time 4.5 hours rolls around, you're at 98% and at 5 hours, you're at 100% with the last 20-30 mins used to trick charge and balance the cells.
I believe that the blue lights visible from outside the car are intended to inform other people waiting to use a public charger as to the status of your Prime's charging process. For example, all three blue lights means it's OK to unplug your car and make use of the charging station. This would make more sense if the blue indicators were standard across manufacturers, but apparently they are not. Along this same line is the feature that you can set your Prime to lock the charging cable in place until the vehicle is fully charges and then allow it to be automatically unlocked so that someone else can use it. Of course, this probably make more sense in Japan where respectful social behavior is more integral with the culture. Meanwhile, please see my earlier post about becoming overly obsessive about the process of charging your Prime.
My 3 blue lights have been accurate on my 2021 Prime. I’ve found the easiest way to charge is to set the timer to charge on off-peak times so I have a full charge in the morning just before I head out the door. You could also set it to just after you would be scheduled to leave if you are avoiding a full charge.
Wow. So I misread the manual and the car is doing just what it is supposed to do. My bad (as we say in New Jersey}. SM-T813 ?
I’ll bet that you saw this page when you looked in the 800 page manual. It would be clearer if they changed “charging” to “charge” in the table heading.
Still experimenting with this but stopping the charge one hour before the time the display says will be fully charged puts me in the 90% range. SM-T813 ?
