Not sure if this is right category for topic Within the last month or so I have noticed the battery icon shows the battery where the blue is below the charge line, almost zero. As we drive the blue slowly climbs up to where the charge line is. Also we are no longer getting the driving range of a full battery, even on a good day of no heater or any accessories that rely on big battery. Used to be 22+ miles, now lucky if get 14 miles before ICE kicks in. Wondering if Toyota can do a big battery load test, or is it time to think about a new big battery?
how many miles? can you post a pic of the charge icon? are you aware of winter effects on range? tech stream can certainly do a load/capacity test on the battery, but without any dash lights, they are just gonna call it normal degradation. a new battery might cost more than a new car, better to live with it imo.
If it is an old battery, 3rd gen. You could have a person who knows how to get into the hybrid battery and test each cell. I had mine checked and found a few cells that were bad and had them replaced/balanced. Fixed the range of the battery.
I checked with my Toyota dealer and they said not to worry that if something is wrong with battery or charging you will see error light(s) and/or message. Does not give me alot of confidence.
Car has 70.5K miles on it. I know winter decreases range, but this is first time I have ever seen the big battery icon drop below the charge line which I assume is a certain percentage of battery charge needed to spin the ICE as needed.
i'm not familiar with the prime battery icon. the manual may tell you what the line means, but toyota has never had an icon to tell you the battery doesn't have enough charge to spin the engine in the past, just the whole dash lighting up. the battery will degrade some over 8 years, but we're not seeing anything neat that posted here.
Here is what I called the big battery charge icon, the owner manual probably has an official name.. The blue area is what I call the reserve needed to spin the ICE engine, while the green is what is used to propel the car. What I saw was the blue almost at the very bottom segment of 4 blue segments.
in previous models, the green area is the ev charge, whether from wall charging or regen. the blue area is the hybrid charge, meaning the amount of charge the non plug in uses to operate as a hybrid. when you run out of green, the engine should fire up. is there a screen that shows estimated ev range in miles? if so, when it reaches zero, that should coincide with reaching blue on this screen, and the engine firing.
are your mpg's about the same as in the past? i'm wondering if it could be anything besides the battery. also, at some public chargers, it tells you how many kwh's it took to fill the battery. that will inform you of capacity loss from new.
