Declining EV every day after full charge??

I find it hard to believe that Toyota would design a car that you need to pull off of the charger right before you use it, lest you damage the battery. I think this part in the manual is generic "cover our nice person" language. I also believe that when they talk about not leaving the car fully charged, they mean that you shouldn't leave it fully charged while unplugged for weeks or months at a time. I also would find it hard to believe that you can't leave it plugged in indefinitely and not have the charger go into some sort of maintenance mode to preserve the battery.

In the case of the OP, the car is just adjusting to your particular driving habits and estimating what it thinks you can do in EV mode. My estimate is 10.4 miles (fan on, 11.8 with fan off). It's gone down since I bought the car, but I also have some significant elevation changes on my commute which I'm sure is affecting the range. An important thing to look at is what sort of MPG you are getting on a particular trip, or for the tank. I went from getting 42 to 45 MPG in a Gen II 2005 to 56 to 63 in the PiP. I'll take that huge increase in MPG, thank you very much...

To check what sort of actual EV range you have been getting, I would suggest that you go to the EV/HV screen, reset one of the screens (there are 2, you can toggle between them by hitting the Trip button, and reset it by holding Trip), do your normal commute, and see what it says that you actually did in terms of EV and HV usage. And check what your MPG is. I'd be more worried about extremely low MPG than I would be about the EV range lowering itself. Remember, the car will blend EV and HV usage to get you the best MPG it can. I'll be on the highway at 70 MPH with a fully charged battery, and the instant MPG indicator will show 75 to 100 MPG. If I hit the HV button (to force HV mode), the MPG indicator drops to 45 or 50. While that usage of the battery won't get counted as EV miles, and thus drop the estimated range, it does help with overall MPG.

 

13.1 when first driven back in mid-March

11.2 was the low it dropped to, from lots of no-plug driving

13.1 returned a few weeks later, from plugging in often

13.2 this morning

13.3 this afternoon

It's not intuative, but the pattern of estimate values have been easy enough to confirm.

 

I had 14.1 EV miles this AM. That's a new high for the Blue PiP. This was significantly higher than the typical 13.4 I've been getting for a few weeks now. I didn't do anything differently yesterday than any other day.

 

Leaving a Li-ion battery fully charged stresses the battery and shortens its life. Li-ion batteries actually will have a longer service life if only charged to about 70-80% of capacity, but this of course reduces the energy available and thus shortens the miles that can be driven. So, it is a compromise between capacity and service life. By fully charging the battery just before the battery is used, capacity can be maximized and service life is less affected because the battery is only fully charged for a short time.

 

True a 100% is bad but the Plug in Prius does not actually charge to 100%, even when you see 100%. The underlying pack is 4.4kw, but it is using only a part of that (probably 65% or 70% depth of discharge). "Empty" to "full charge" is only 3 or 3.1kw.. its probably 20% to 85% charge. (Volt range is 22 to 85 soc)

The roadster and leaf will allow true 100% charge, and its not recommended to do it often or to leave it sit with that. The PiP at 100% charge (85% SOC) is still overcharged for sitting in high heat which will degrade the battery.. The Volt's thermal management will actually cool the battery and drain the battery a bit to protect it.

 

I doubt that a 'fully charged' PHV battery is anywhere near it's full capacity.

Does anyone know what % of full capacity a fully charged PHV battery is?

 

Are these with climate control ON or OFF ?

 

off

 

My terrain is flat. Metro Detroit area. I usually go all electric till I pull into the Charge Point station. ICE runs for about 1/4 mile. Trip odo says 10.6 miles EV range also says 10.6. I charge till Charge Point completes. Climate control off all the time. windows open.

 

Dr.I is correct. Its about 85% SOC "fully" charged (actually 85.1% as shown in the Torque app). I've seen it go as low as 18% though. But at 18%* (2 bars on the "HV battery" display) the PiP will do what it needs to get the SOC back up to around 20%.


* Disclaimer: based on what the Nissan Leaf engineers said about being able to measure a battery's state of charge only when there is no load or something, this may or may not be accurate. But that is what I've seen displayed in the Torque app.

 

Mine is still going up every day. I'm now at 15.7 EV miles.

Today was the hottest day ever (for me) charging my car. It was 91F outside when I left work today to go home (that's pretty darn warm for May in Minnesota).

Also, I've been improving my mpg by accelerating to cruising speed using gas (not EV) and then switching over to EV. This gives me a larger EV range estimate since I'm making the gas do the 'heavy lifting' when I must use gas (trips > 15 miles). I don't like the way it's biased, but if I use less gas (higher mpg, usually > 200 mpg for my 22 mile, 1 charge trip) that is my end goal.

 

I think this photo answers Suzy's question: Here I've travelled 10 miles using the battery only, the battery is half full, yet the car reports only 5 miles of remaining range. Yet I got another 10 miles out of it, at an average speed of 15 MPH
This makes sense to me. The car's saying, "You got ten miles using half the battery, but of you drive the way you usually do, you'll only go another 5 miles.

 

I got 17.8 EV miles today. There was plenty of battery left when I hit the HV threshold and the ICE started up. I got 20 miles all told, but since the engine started, the additional 2.2 miles don't count

 

plenty of battery left meaning the regular prius barred battery?

 

btw, has anyone heard from (anti)socialsuzie since her first 2 posts?

 

I have had my PIP since mid March. The EV range right after charging has been declining slowly each day or two starting at 16 miles the first day I got it March 16th to now where it's at 10.2.
The dealer has said essentially that "your mileage may vary" but that is related to driving conditions. Having a smaller ( and shrinking) EV range right after charging is like having your gas tank shrink by 35% which in a normal car should have nothing to do with how you drive it. 

In looking at this thread people are saying that the EV range is being dynamically calculated based on driving patterns. I had a 2006 prius before so I am light footed and drive to optimize MPG.
I will do an experiment to see if I can stop the range decline.

 

ev range in batteries is similar to mileage range in gas. it's not a function of how much energy is available, it's an estimate of how far you can drive based on the energy available. how far you drive affects range, not vise versa. why is everybody so confused and hung up on this?

 

I think it must be pretty stressful for people to spend $32k on their car and constantly see their EV range shrink (I know that's not what happening but that's what it probably feels like).

I've pretty much ignored mine. What is more useful to me is to drive in pure EV mode and compare my miles driven to the number of mile I've used of the EV miles estimate that I started off with.

It does amaze me, though, how people expect to drive 15 miles on EV driving with a lead foot. Getting 15 miles of EV per charge is not unreasonable if you drive less aggressively. At least that is my opinion.

 

agreed. i suppose if you purchased thinking that you would get 13-15 no matter what, it could be disappointing if you drive up pikes peak everyday with a lead foot. but then, they didn't do they're due dilegence.