Charging Speed, Battery Capacity and Prime itis

The vehicle will keep the engine on longer, the colder it gets.

Hello from Endwell!

I've also noticed that as it gets colder, regen downhill will kick the gas engine on. Learning to just ignore it - in the summer it wouldn't do it at all. I can't be frustrated all Winter

 

We are talking about one hill near the owners home. If the engine does not come on, the owner will not have to stop, turn off the car and turn it back on. MPG is relevant when the engine comes on going down the hill. If the engine never comes on, MPG is infinity, isn't it?

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

If, as we suspect, the engine is being run without gas as an air pump, because the HV Battery is 'full', then all this fussing about is not saving gas either. But it is losing range when in N.

 

I've owned my Prius Prime since 2017 been through a lot of winters. During the winter months you will use the ice while driving. It's a fact that in cold weather the ice helps when your heating the compartment. Normally I drive back and forth to work with the the heat pump on in the EV mode but it does knock down miles I get with traction battery. In the wintertime your EV miles will decrease. This is a fact due to the winter temperatures and the ability of the lithium-ion battery to take a complete charged. One thing I guess you guys have to know that the heat pump is inefficient at any temperatures 13 degrees Fahrenheit below. Which mskes the I.C.E. turn on. That stands for internal combustion engine. This car is very efficient in hybrid mode. I drive to Rochester from Syracuse and I'm getting at least 62 miles to the gallon. From May to October I never fill up my car with fuel because I'm always driving EV mode. It's only when the weather gets cold when the ICE is used. Love this car. When it is below 13 degrees Fahrenheit I use the defroster which turns on the engine heat to warm up the car and defrost the windows. After that leave for work I drive the car on the EV mode and used the heated steering wheel and seat warmer works well. When the windows begins to fog I turn on the the auto AC heat defogger and feet. When it warms up a little window is defog I turn it off. That works well I have either 26 EV miles or 25 to start with. My commute to work it's only 14 miles and when I arrive at work I have about either 13 or 10 miles left. Sometimes more when the engines on charging the traction battery won't heat in the car.

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What’s a “tumbleweed 2”???

 

the name of his prime

 

Successor to “Tumbleweed”?

 

If the engine comes on on a downhill, it will use a tiny amount of gas to get started. For example I might see the MPG indicator go from 999 to around 600 on a 10 mile trip (a tiny amount of gas). It will then stop using gas while you are going down the hill, and then it will complete the warm-up cycle at the bottom of the hill.

I'd rather let it fully warm up when it needs to, than try to outsmart it and shut it off. Leaving condensation in the engine and exhaust from running while cold can't be good for it. Even better is not to let the engine come on in the first place.

It's also probably not great for it to run the engine for engine braking when it's cold. The engine was designed to run with hot oil, not cold. If I know I'll need engine braking to go down a hill, I'll usually try to let the engine warm up first.

 

I thought ice was used to cool things down.

(That's what I get for skimming a post too fast).

 

Still looking to see who calls their car tumbleweed 2 LOL

I agree, that shutting the Primes ICE off before it shuts itself off, seems to me to be counter intuitive, mostly because of the very perceptible clunking sound it makes for me when I've done it. The PiP never made that noise if I recall correct likely .

You are right about it hurting mileage and using only friction braking.
Although in the circumstances it may be the lesser of two evils?

 

I am new to this forum and also to Prius so excuse any errors. I am using a ChargePoint Flex charger on a 40 amp circuit breaker with the charger set for such. I am seeing a charge rate of 3.57 kW going into my battery. You stated the Prime is rated at 3.3kW so am I ok charging at 3.57 and will this harm the battery over time.

 

The ChargePoint cannot over charge the Car. They negotiate the highest common Amperage they both can handle, but ultimately the Car is in charge of the maximum current flow.

SAE J1772 - Wikipedia

 

There's a guy on this forum whose Prius tag (in the Entune App) is AChoiredTaste. From what I can tell, he does that ALL the time. He is consistantly in the top 10 of EV miles (I say EV, technically its the 999.9mpg club).

I used EV exclusively for a while and was in the Top 12 at 900mi one month, he was at 1500mi. Hopefully he'll chime in here and say how his battery has been over time. At that time my range was 37mi (predicted)

 

i have a prime with 36k miles. Used battery about 70% of that distance. Now, the battery takes about 5.8-6.2 kwh of juice (according to openevse charger) from 0% to 100% (in the available ev range, for those that are going to ask) Nothing strange here. The stange bit is that it now charges it in 2h instead of 2h30 on a level 2 charger 16 amp 240v ac. I have been systematically observing this for a few months now. Prime is 27 month old. Any others having similar behaviour of shortened charge time? Does not make sense to me why it does it as the voltage/ amp have not changed. It is winter and range guess-o-meter still guesses 26 mi ish. But it really does 23 miles before reaching 0% at 32-40 F outside temp. My best guess is the battery is acting funny...

I should add that i use the 8amp charge limit pretty much often and only use the 16 amp 240v power when needed more urgently. So i charge slow most of the time.

Cheers
Max

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

It would seem from your description that your battery capacity has dropped a little. My Prime is the same year as yours and it's at just over 38,000 miles. I checked a week or so ago and it took a little over 6.4 kWh to charge from 0.1 mile of range to 100% SOC.

 

Like @Tideland Prius mentioned above, the car will take car of the traction pack charging. It's a computer thing. Sometimes, the charger will not charge the pack at it's normal / optimal rate.

 

I think not.
A tesla consumes twice as much energy as a prime, at the same speed.
A Kona is 1.5 times as much.
In energy efficiency, prime is best after the electric bike.
Ioniq ev is good in this regard, quite close.


There are those who matter and some who do not. (environmental protection, future of our planet, etc)