Tricks to Prolong Battery Lifespan

no idea, but they say not to leave it fully charged, so i charge half way in the morning in case i need to go somewhere unexpectedly, and finish the charge just before i leave for work. when i go away, i discharge the ev portion completely.

 

Use the timer to complete the charge as close to your departure time as possible.
Toyota has already done a great job of protecting the battery by limiting how much we can charge/discharge it.

 

Heat kills. Keep it cool. If you are warm, the battery is warm. Running the AC will hurt your mileage, but will help cool the pack. Don't park in the sun for 8 hours at work at let the inside get to 40C or something crazy. When you charge the pack, it gets hotter the faster it charges, the longer it charges, and it gets even hotter the closer it is to full. Those last couple of percents produce more heat than the tens of percents before them combined. The good news is that Toyota limits the charge and discharge already so that 100% full on your screen, is still only about 80% full. Just like 0% is really not 0%. It is 40% in the NiMH non-PiP. I believe it is 20%-ish for the PiP but I am not sure.

So driving after charging is a way to get some air over it with the fan and discharge it so it spends less time fully charged. That helps too.

The best longevity of the battery is to maintain it about half-way charged and never use it. This completely wastes the abilities and purpose of the plug-in aspect of the car.

So if your goal is to maximize the life of the traction battery, don't use it. If your goal is to maximize the life of the traction battery as best you can while abusing it with charge/recharge cycles, then follow the above advice.

This also means that if you are driving full to empty charge every day, your battery will fail earlier than someone who drove next to you in the same conditions, temperature, style, and everything else that had a fictional Prius with twice the capacity in the traction pack. I always try to spec batteries at 40% usable.

If you need 4KWh for your commute, then you should get a 10KWh pack. Charge to 8KWh (80% capacity), and discharge to 4KWh remaining (40% capacity). The non-PiP's follow this. The PiP's break this rule of thumb to get more range at the expense of battery health. The Leaf just ignores it completely and allows the user to go full to empty which is crazy for people that don't understand battery chemistries. 20% on a lithium pack is still great for longevity, orders of magnitude better than 10% which is saying a lot. But going up to 40% improves on that even more, even with lithium chemistries like in your PiP.

 

Two sided question. The engineer side says yes. The marketing side says no. Remember that Toyota already babysits the car for you to take away all the thinking required. Most people will just get in and drive, and so the polish is how well it hides these details from you until you look.

So when you charge it to "dashboard full", you are really only charging it to 80%! The car lies to you because you should never and can never use the upper 20% of capacity for longevity reasons. Just like when the car says that it is at 0%, it is really around 20% because you should never and can never use the lower 20% of capacity for longevity reasons.

The only reason to not charge it all the way is heat as explained above.

 

+1

 

That would be one case, but even in a cold garage, the battery will heat up way above ambient during charging, and to an extent during discharging (sitting in READY in idle with the AC on, the defrost on, radio blaring, and maybe running an inverter to power your house).

 

A lot of do's and don'ts. On average. I charge my PIP twice a day. I have the timer set to finish charging 15-30 minutes before I leave for work in the AM. Once I get to work, I set the timer to start charging one hour after arrival. I feel comfortable my PIP rechargeable battery will work flawlessly for the next 3-5 years I plan to own my Prius. Sorry, but if I'm doing something wrong regarding charging, the second owner will have to deal with it.

 

... and if you have some kind of a TOU electric utility scheme, then that pretty much dictates the overnight charging time...

 

Regarding parking it in the sun... if it must be parked outside for a long period of time in the sun, I'd try to park it somewhere (if possible) where it gets less exposure to sun (e.g. gets shaded by a building, trees, etc.) for more hours than the "typical" spot. Also, I'd use a windshield sunshade.

If it's in a safe area to do this, I'd also leave the windows open a crack in the summer, so that the interior of the car doesn't get so hot.

I eventually started doing this w/my Gen 2 Prius when I worked at a place where I had PLENTY of flexibility in a mostly empty parking lot.

 

Many things has been covered already. All I can add is, to accelerate as slowly as possible in EV mode.

Lowering the discharge rate is better for longevity.

If you must accelerate faster, let the gas engine blend in. PiP was designed to do this already so manually entering HV mode to "force blend" may have some benefit if you think you know better than the computer with familiar route.

 

I think the car behind you will limit how low you can go on the HSI.

 

I guess stay at certain acceleration and hold it there. The goal is to minimize peak power draw (toward PWR region).

 

Good point because don't forget, there's another motor that is being used to distribute power based on acceleration since the CVT doesn't operate for free. And if it has to power up the ICE that's an additional draw. Then there's the addition draw for EV boost if the ICE is cold. So hard acceleration will be just as hard on the PIP as on a regular car.


iPad ? HD

 

Toyota has suggested ways to prolong battery life. See pages 47 and 93 of the Owners Manual for the Plug-In-Hybrid.