A/C while Charging? Prime 2017

I never tried it. I know you can’t start the car with it plugged in. I figured it was to prevent driving off while still attached and causing damage to the car and charger.

 

Only with your fob using remote A/C. Or, if your PP is Advanced trim and Toyota APP is working, then you may be able to start A/C from your phone app. Close all doors and windows and lock them. Push the A/C button on your fob and hold for a few seconds. The remote A/C should start HVAC at the last setting. But for this feature to work, you have to have a charge left in the traction battery. So, if you reach a charge station with an empty traction battery, the remote A/C will not start at the beginning when the traction battery is low. I am not sure how much charge you have to have, but I think I have read 50%. Also, the remote A/C will stay on for only 10min and automatically shut it off. If you want a longer period, you will have to push the fob button again to start the session again. Remote A/C will use traction battery charge, so doing this will delay the completion of charging.

See this thread.
A/C while Prime charging?

 

I just checked. The App goes through the motions but the A/C HVAC does nothing. At least the App doesn't indicate it started when it didn't.
2018 PP Advanced. J

 

Yeah, there are a lot of complaints about the buggy Toyota App. You are in the discussion for many of those threads. I did not have the remote APP in my 2017 PP Premium but for my 2020 LE, used it only for a few months and uninstalled it (along with opting out of the Safety Connect). And for my current 2021 Ltd, I never installed the Toyota App and opted out of Connected Services immediately after the purchase. For me, it is not worth being "bugged" by a "feature" I don't need. You know the SE joke "It's not a bug, it's a feature."

 

I'm afraid this is the big show stopper. Rather than use power from the wall to run the HVAC, it not only uses battery power for HVAC, but it pauses the charging process. I use L2 charging at home and have a meter to track the energy I put into the car. When I use the A/C while charging, the amps drop from about 15A on my meter to exactly and always 0.58A.

One of the dumbest things I've ever seen.

 

Didn't @john1701a say that for L2 charging, it may not delay the completion of the charge? I only have an L1 charging. For L1 charging, it delays the completion substantially and/or uses up the traction battery SOC before the departure time. It will depend on the ambient temp and A/C setting, so in milder conditions, it may not be as big of a hit.

But, the fact that it will not start working when the traction battery is empty may be the worst thing. The scenario is most likely that the PP reaches the charging station with an empty traction battery. The remote A/C will not work at least until the charge session replenishes the empty battery up to the level that allows the Remote A/C. So, what are you going to do for that first 30min or 1 hour? Sweat in the car with all windows closed?

 

I don't remember him mentioning that. Perhaps he'll come along now that you've tagged him and refresh our memories. He's made a study of this stuff.

But for me, even with L2, the HVAC delays charge completion by the amount of time the A/C is on plus the time it takes to replace the battery charge used by the HVAC. Once I discovered that, I only use it on the extremely rare times when it's extra hot in the garage and I have enough time to run the AC several times to get the cabin cool enough that it won't be hot again before the charge is complete. Which is almost never. The problem is that once the interior mass (seats, dash, et.) get hot, they continue to radiate heat until you get the cabin air cool long enough to absorb all that radiant heat. So it seems like it's most effective if the cabin has been cooled and now it's in the sun heating back up while charging. Hopefully, you can get it charged and re-cooled before the interior masses get all hotted up.

The best I can hope for down here is to add another mile to my EV range at the expense of adding about another half hour to my L2 charging.

 

Agreed. In my use case, both fob (or App) Remote A/C or climate pre-conditioning tied to the scheduled charging, my need to warm up the cabin prior to starting the car occurs only when the temp is very low, (well below 20F). If the temp is above 20F, I really don't need to preheat the cabin. But as all of us know, the heat pump does not work well in cold temp below 20F (non-functional below 14F). So, the "feature" was deemed useless in my book very early when I tried it on my 2017 PP. Have not used or even tried using the "feature" ever since. In fact, on my current 2021 PP Ltd, the key fob Remote A/C is not even working. Not sure if it is broken, or if it was disabled because I opted out of the Connected Services. But either way, I really don't care.

 

Yesterday my '22 Prime asked if it could use the A/C while charging, first time I've seen that. It was the status message after turning the car off.

 

I guess it's warming up in New England. I get that message more often than not when I shut off my car down here.

 

As @jerrymildred pointed out, it is a Traction Battery Cooler function. I actually have seen that pop up only once in my enter 4+ years of PP usage during the heatwave of summer (temp above 90F) and I had driven 18 miles without A/C. That condition just does not happen often enough for my climate. But since I was doing nightly charging that day when the message popped up, I never used the A/C. It only turns A/C if you try to charge the still hot battery immediately after shutting off the car.

 

I think that is the reason why the gen1 Volt didn't allow cabin preconditioning when charging at Level 1.

In the OP's situation, it might be best to stretch their legs in a local store.

 

Next time I go to work, I can try using the preconditioning with a schedule to see how much longer it takes to complete the charge on L2. With L1 in winter (morning temp in 10s to 20s) when I tried it, I believe it did not complete the charge at the departure time, but if I use it now (morning temp around 32F), it may work. I may experiment with it. Not that I need any pre-conditioning in the morning when the temp is 32F.