ICE comes on anyway

15 seconds does not sound right, i would have it looked at. toyota has a pollution protocol that covers 5 stages and takes at least a couple minutes in warm weather.

 

Yeah, I've been kinda hoping it's been a fluke/glitch, but if it keeps up I'll have to take it in. It's not triggering any codes that I've been able to find.

Oh yeah, should have mentioned for last one, it was about 52F outside, and front defroster was off. Don't recall whether climate control was on.

 

frustrating. can't imagine what might have changed after 7 months.

 

My ICE has stayed steadily asleep unless I ran out of EV. I've never had a problem of any kind, caused by a flaw in the car. I have had 2 punctures in my tires, something completely unheard of for me.
I suppose the very mild weather out here, aside from the ridiculous heat, has something to do with the lack of problems.

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oh sure, rub it in. but hey, i'm in orlando for one more week. no worries until 3/19, when i start shoveling my way to spring.

 

I really can't take any credit for my wonderful immigrant parents' decision to settle in California. I am very lucky, and very happy for their sacrifice, and plan on enjoying this beautiful and diverse land til I croak!

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Could you rig up a dash cam to record the instrument panel? A video of these intermittent problems could help.

This is pretty close to 50F (10C) that experiments have shown to be a threshold for a lot of unplanned, engine ON events. But there is no hard data that the threshold is exactly 50F.

I'm more curious about the short engine run time. The trigger event is curious too. A video recording makes it easier to try to replicate.

Bob Wilson

 

Still not clear why and when would ICE turn on. But I can tell in almost all the cases when ICE was on, I was driving down hills, the temperature was between 40-65F, the battery was charged between 75-100%.

And it is even on (the car icon was empty) while the car status won't even show ICE was on, it does not show ICE was on and charging the battery but I can clearly hear the engine noise.

I tried to stop at the end of down hill and restart. But yesterday I had a trip to Lake Tahoe. It was mostly down hills and ICE was on 3 times. So it is not to warm up the engine. I can only say it may related to fully charged battery while driving down hill as most of the time I was driving down hill and battery was (nearly) full.

It is very annoying and definitely a system bug to me. Hope Toyota could fix it. Most of the times I just use EV mode and don't want to turn on ICE at all.

 

Doing things for battery-longevity and emissions-handling will always be a source of frustration.

The fix is setting expectations better.

 

You are hearing fan noise for the heat exchanger. Mistaked for ice noise.

 

100% sure I was not. I seldom turn on fan so far since I bought it one month ago.

 

My car is 100% charged when i start my daily commute with 4.5 to 5 miles of down hill driving. Till now i was using EV mode, and "B" gear going downhill, and it was starting ICE. Today first time i tried with EV mode and "D" gear, and ICE did not start. I got 100% EV mode for my 25.5 mile commute to work. On MID, it displays the information.

 

Another ICE incident today. Car came from 51F garage, ambient about 42F, got on highway doing 75mph. On downhill stretch, about 6 miles into the drive, traffic slowed to 65, then car in front slowed further, so I put it in B to bleed some more speed. SOC was about 80% at the time, cruise control was not on. ICE immediately came on, and stayed on for a full warmup cycle. Then it returned to normal EV driving.

(Just documenting these as they occur, to help determine if there is a pattern to them)

 

80% is the charging threshold. With you having engaged the engine to spin anyway and being at that point, starting makes sense.

 

I think fneil might have been referring to the SOC on his MID displaying 80%, and not 100%. If it had displayed at 100%, then that is 80% of what the traction battery is capable of, which Toyota doesn't allow.

If mine says 100% on the MID, even the predictive regen won't work.

 

On-Board charging is halted at 80% of the usable capacity... the value displayed, which is different from overall capacity.

Plugging in is the only ordinary way of exceeding that 80% threshold, to get to 100% displayed.

 

@fneil , what did the MID display as a percent of full charge when your car went into HV mode?

 

B mode will almost always result in ICE coming on when battery is anywhere near 80% and above in my car. I live up around 2400 feet and always have to drive down hill to get anywhere. I just learned never use B till its near half by my home. Going to my daughters, always results in ICE coming on unless its near 70% because the regen is so strong even in normal mode it can spin the engine to drain the excess charge.

 

It was in 'miles remaining' display mode. I normally start out with 31 miles predicted, and in this case I was down to about 24 miles remaining, ~80%.

I know running in charge mode won't go above that percentage, but I use B in EV mode all the time on short downhills to regen, and it normally works fine without starting ICE as long as SOC is below 100%. I'm surprised to hear john1701a say his won't regen above 80% SOC.

 

I didn't. The reference was to charging. Regen is different.