Is My 2025 Solar Charger Malfunctioning?

You might want to reread the earlier post, check your units and do the maths again. You computed tor a car with under 3 miles of EV range.

 

they can't charge toyota if they find nothing wrong. you can't expect them to look at customers cars for free just because the customer thinks there is a problem. without a trouble light, it is really difficult to diagnose and can be time consuming.
it sounds like there may be a software reporting issue, but idk. if that is the case, they won't do anything, and neither will toyota unless there is already a patch available. that would be covered under warranty.
the usual procedure is to tell the customer they will look at it for a couple hundred bucks, and if it is covered under warranty, there won't be a charge.

 

You are being given two reports. And so far it sounds like the solar report is the one worth believing.

I can see where that's a drag, I hope they can somehow do an improvement on that.

 

Good catch, got my units mixed up. Just looked at my dash, it's suppose to be 4.5 miles/Kwh. It's too late for me to edit my thread, but the math is sound. In my 10 hour example 1.8Kwh*4.5 = 8.1 miles gain. His MID is showing 2-3 mile gain from the solar array, which suggest that it is working - but we don't know if all the power is going into the traction battery plus loses due to charging (darn physics!!).
Then again my drive stats shows that I get 25 miles/KwH on occasions too; so I don't put too much stock in outliers.

 

A couple of percent of the HV battery really isn't much charge.

Maybe if you've been faffing around looking at screens in the car to see how your solar panel's doing, that well could have consumed enough power to dent your numbers.

To consider the scale of the power for displays and stuff, the 12V battery total nominal capacity is 45Ah = 0.54kWh = 5% of the usable HV capacity, and the car will time out of POWER ON mode in about 20 minutes to protect it.

I think that general miscellaneous electronics draw and topping up the 12V battery could well be part of the effect.

But it could also be that they didn't account for some other losses in the way they report the panel power.

I think you'd need to look over a longer period to see.

You're not going to be getting much feedback here because the Prius is a pretty rare car, and the Plug-In is even rarer, and then the solar panel is extremely rare. You're going to have to do your own research.

(I think they might not have sold a single top-end trim with the solar panel in Finland - still haven't seen one come up on used car sites, although I've only scanned occasionally.)

 

NO typo, it's stated that on at least two occasions coming back down the hill from south lake Tahoe. The funny thing is that I drove up the hill earlier that day - others has stated that this was correct since it was mostly downhill. The problem is that the table clearly states daily average. I know for a fact that I would be lucky to get 1-2 miles/Kwh going up the mountain earlier that day. So anything outside my normal averages, I chalk up to software glitch. The software seems to be correct, most of the time, though optimistic in it's calculations.
I'll try to take a picture of it, next time it happens - it doesn't happen all the time nor is it repeatable on a regular basis, so I can't whine about a fix. That's the reality of it and it doesn't effect the operations of the car itself, just bad data, if your keeping your own records.

 

Perhaps you're looking in the wrong place at the wrong time ...

There are actually two places to see the solar miles gained info:

- The large multimedia display under Vehicle > Solar > Distance.
- The multi-information display (MID) under the "Leaf" symbol you can find a solar power generated screen.

The MID display provides a different take than the daily/all-time mileage values you can find on the multimedia display in that it only reports solar power generated since the vehicle was turned off. So, that's the place you should look at when first powering up the vehicle after being parked in the sun to get "perhaps" a better representation of the miles that went back into the hybrid battery, given that solar charging only happens when the vehicle is off, not already at 100%, and so on.

For instance, I drove my vehicle today and arrived at my destination, where both displays showed 0.3 miles gained. Parked my car (off) in the sun at my destination for an hour or so and when I was ready to leave I checked the MID display and it showed 0.4 miles gained while the multimedia display showed 0.7 miles.

So, it's that 0.4 miles and not 0.7 miles which would be more representative of the energy directed to the hybrid battery. And let's not forget about Toyota's own warnings which states "These values are calculated by converting the power generated into driving distance and may differ from the actual driving distance."

 

Yes and it can't project the use of the AC unit, which is a big draw on the traction battery.

 

Like I said earlier, I don't focus at all on percentage so can't go down that road. It's going to be different for each of our vehicles anyway given the abstraction of basing the calculations on miles to begin with.

I think you just need more time to think it through and look at your data (perhaps the watt-hours and not the mileage) and let your own math tell you what is happening and perhaps not believing some of the vehicle displays which can be highly averaged data over a long period of time.

An example why I offer that suggestion - on delivery my MID display (set to showing my anticipated EV range) was 33 miles (geez, that's not the 39 on the window sticker). I didn't panic or question because I tracked my actual EV range with each charge and was getting way more than 33. And it took many weeks for the MID display estimate to slowly catch up to reality. So now, with a full charge it estimates 52 miles of range. Well, that was true many weeks ago during milder weather with no AC running. But it's blazing hot now and the AC is on and it's more like 46 miles of range. However, the vehicle still shows 52 when I start out fully charged. And here's the thing, I can drive 200 yards away from the charger and do a double-take and see that 52 change to 48. What? Welcome to Toyota software. Welcome to averaging. Welcome to whatever you call that precipitous drop. But, there's nothing wrong with my vehicle and I just have to wait it out for the 52 to average back down to something lower this season just like how slow it was to rise.

That's all I can offer ... after all, I got the solar roof for the extra headroom, nicer headliner (perhaps insulated) and because it does a better job of blocking solar heat from entering what feels like a more private, clean cabin in my mostly hot climate. Solar generation was far down the list. It's great and I like the look and appreciate that it contributes in some small way to me always exceeding the all-electric EPA range rating.

Enjoy the ride.

 

Pages 161-177 of the owners manual has it all. You do have to use the < or > buttons to cycle through all the leaf screens and you'll see one called "Power Generated" with a helpful little image of a sun beaming above a solar panel on top of an outline of a GEN 1 Prius.