Possible battery degradation?

congrats and welcome!

how many miles on her?

are you using the supplied oem L1 evse cable?

i can't help with the battery test, but 2 hours seems too fast, and it is possible the battery is not taking a full charge.
the range estimate is based on past performance. try disconnecting the 12v for a minute, and that will set it back to factory default, and may possibly fix your problem, idk.

driving as you say you are doing, i get about 12 miles before the engine comes on. it fluctuates with temperature, about 9 miles in winter and 14 in summer.

is the battery icon going down with the range, that converting to a slightly different image when the engine comes on?
the bars should change from one look to another as the amount of charge left in the battery at zero range is used to drive in hybrid mode like a regular prius.

charging and discharging too quickly is a potential sign of a weak battery, but i'm hoping it is something else. we really haven't seen any problems with that.

try getting her up to 30mph or so on a quiet road, and throw her in neutral to mke sure the brakes aren't dragging. she should actually pick up speed when in neutral because regenerative brakes are disabled.

what tire brand and model on her? i pump my tyres to 40f/38r, but even the factory spec should give good range. non rolling resistant tyres will degrade range a bit.

 

Hey Larry, congrats on the purchase and welcome to PriusChat.

I have a similar vehicle with slightly less mileage (2014 PIP Technology with 193K KM / ~120K miles), and I am getting about 15-16km to a charge these days, or about 9-10 miles.

I have a level 2 charger (since we have EV as well), and the ChargePoint tells me it draws about 2.4kWh per charge, whereas it used to draw about 2.7kWh when I got it at years old and 40K KM. So that seems to be roughly a 12% decrease or so, and probably a few more percentage points since it was new. I have never really done a measurement against the odometer, but it seems pretty realistic in my passive perception.

12-15 miles sounds optimistic, as the car was spec’ed at 11 miles when new. As bisco mentions, the estimated range is based on driving history, which can be cleared by unplugging the battery. I suspect whoever sold you the car probably did that shortly before selling it to you, and only did short/low speed trips which inflated the range estimation. It will surely correct itself within a few weeks.

That said, what you describe certainly doesn’t sound normal, and could be signs of a failing battery, even if that is extremely rare with the PIP. It sounds like you have the tools with the DrPrius app (I have been meaning to pick up a dongle and the app sometime myself), but you may want to seek out a hybrid specialist ASAP to have it tested, hopefully you can go back to the seller if it is a failing battery…

 

check the 12 volt voltage at the front jump point with the car off. a weak 12v can make the computers do funny things.
you can also get a free load test at most auto parts stores.

if you lift the car, keep in mind the front wheels don't freewheel.

 

Absolutely Normal ...
Plus the temps you posted are ideal for the PiP and just about every other battery powered car currently available.
There are many things that reduce EV Range and you can learn which ones reduce your range the most if you pay close enough attention while driving and reading what others have already done to get more EV range.

I learned a lot here Top 20 MPGe | PriusChat
maybe you will too.

 

3-4 miles of actual range is well below 'normal'

 

I must have read the 2 posts by @Larrytat different
a nice pic of his coms screen would help us all get a better idea what's actually going on with his PiP and his driving style.

 

Gonna guess your speedometer is set to km instead of miles. My PiP never showed more than 13 EV miles and most of the time showed 11.

11 miles = 17 km

Edit: My PiP also charges in about 2.5 hrs since new on included blue handle EVSE. Don't recall it ever taking 3.

 

This is difficult to follow. Didn’t you say you were only getting 3-4 miles of EV range before depletion, but now you are saying got 7-8 miles and it still shows a similar distance remaining? (Which would be incredible range for a PIP if so… anything above 11 miles would be above spec).

I think you need to ignore the projected range for now and just fully charge and drive out the EV battery and see how far you get by the odometer (without any heating/cooling). If you are between 9ish and 12ish, everything should be ‘normal’.

Also, mmmodem raises an interesting point - is it possible you somehow have a metric vehicle (imported from Canada or elsewhere, etc), where it is showing the range in KM, but comparing to a speedometer (?) in MPH? That would certainly explain the “high” range which depletes rapidly; though doubtful since the odometer or fuel efficiency to do not switch in the same way, but an interesting possibility…

 

ya, this is completely different from your first post. if you drove 7.4 miles on ev, and still have 7.4 left out of 17, you're probably normal.
why don't you drive the whole battery so we know how far it can go, instead of making us guess?

in your first post, you stated 3-4 miles. sounds like you just need to get familiar with the readouts.

 

Could the estimate of 3-4 miles of EV range been miscalculated? The next sentence reads

which is quite common - like driving uphill amd or several other conditions could cause that to happen too. There have also been a few unexplained reports of the EV estimate dropping unusually fast from PiP owners in the distant past and even one report of that happening with a Prime recently.
The 3-4 miles of EV range, does appear to be out of place, but when considering the other parts of the post that look completely normal to me, my guess it that the OP just didn't explain that very well. And maybe we'll get more info on what actually happened or was observed as to why there's a question of early pack degradation if we give the newbie half a chance to explain...
blah blah blah

 

i'm all ears