I want my Prius Prime to charge whenever it is plugged in to a working charger. I see the "charge now" button on the screen under Charging Schedule, but it's grayed out and I can't choose it. How do I set the car to charge any time?
If it's greyed out, that means you don't have a charge schedule active so it should start charging immediately whenever you plug in.
While I don't know how to use the charge scheduler for Gen5 Prius, If I had a plug in car I'd want to charge it as often as possible too... And while the system is specifically designed to protect the batteries from over charging, it's not a perfect system and the owner who charges based on how much driving they have scheduled that day will likely have a longer battery lifespan than the person who wants it to be charged up to 100% as often as possible. Back in the day I saw wealthy Tesla Model S owners that lost significant battery capacity from trying to charge too often and deciding to buy a new Model S because it wouldn't charge up as much as it use to.
I have the 2024 prius prime and have a similar ongoing issue. Seems on /off. Scheduled charging conflicts with charge now. I have set to charge 10am -3pm when my solar works directly to charge the car as needed. However then the charge now button does not show up on the connect app. If I remove the scheduled charging the button shows up. Kind of irritating on an otherwise wonderful experience No response from Toyota
Whenever you want to 'charge now' and you've missed the option when you shut-off the car - you can just watch the plug-in status LED. Once your plugged-in and it lights up, unplug it, then plug it back in immediately. This will force a charge-now, bypasses the schedule. Hope this helps... FWIW; Depending on your electricity cost in Fremont, it may be more cost effective to drive in HV mode. You'll need to crunch the numbers based on what your car's ECU is telling you. I think my gas vs electricity break even was around $0.38 cents per Kwh. The cost will move up or down depending on gas price swings, but it would be a good idea to setup an excel cross reference sheet.
