I'm the original owner of a 2017 Prius Prime. I have started noticing that the charge management blue indicator has been getting very low. This is most noticeable when the EV mode is depleted and the gas engine takes over but the blue indicator continues to go lower as seen in the image. I took my Prius into my local Toyota dealership service department and showed them a video I took of the blue indicator dropping lower and they charged me $150 only to let me know they tested the batteries and everything checked out and told me to come back if the problem continues. My comment was "I guarantee this will continue since they did nothing to fix the issue". Can someone remind me why this could be happening? And also, if it does happen what is the best thing to do? TIA
I just got my 2018 and noticed it'll deplete about half that blue section when doing EV in hybrid mode around town before forcing the engine on to charge it back up to "full" for the blue section.
There is nothing wrong with that. The blue indicator will show you the charge level of the traction battery that is allocated for full hybrid operation. You can drive your vehicle on all electric at low speeds even in fully hybrid mode (HV) and when this happens the blue level will obviously go down. In a while the engine will eventually kick in to charge it. Don't worry, even when that blue indicator goes down to almost zero "which I don't think will be possible", you have some %15-20 charge left in your traction battery. You will never be able to deplete it down to zero.
That's normal, you simply lost some battery capacity. That battery icon can be completely empty and you'll still have enough in the traction pack to fire-up the engine. Your simply traveling slow in city traffic, so it's burning down the battery beyond it's normal ICE fire-up triggers. Next time that happens - goose the gas peddle, I'd bet the ICE will kick on. Hope this helps.... PS; check your engine coolant level on occasions, left passenger side near strut tower. There's a TSB out for leaking heat exchanger in your model year.
