A 9-hour drive in Toyota's new electric SUV showed me how brutal EV road trips can be with the wrong

This sad story reminds me of our hideous 2011 Nissan Leaf which advertised a100 Mi range - yet typically you were lucky to get 70 Mi max. God forbid you'd need the heater AND have to pull a 3, 800 ft toll ROAD incline to get home. But Nissan finally got their act together and it's likely Toyota will as well. It's too bad when manufacturers deliver a product whose buyer experience ends up souring a potential repeat customer.

 

Interesting read It seems that Some EV's are purpose built. A Leaf could be a horrible choice when I lived in Cold Colorado with a 81 mile commute to work. Now that I live in Hot (and cold) Kansas my wife works from home and her commute to my child's school is 3.5 miles one way. So unless she goes to the grocery store. 2 miles or shopping 4 miles or the super long trip to a far away friends house lol 21 miles...a Leaf would actually work for us. But we need an all around flexible EV. For her its something with space and cargo for trips and friends.
People are used to the old ICE cars which require less planning for trips. And RANGE ANXIETY is based on this older way of travel. I mean remember when people were scared to go so fast (35 mph) in a train? The norm was walking or riding horse or horse drawn wagon. Time has changed. On road trips I wouldn't mind stopping for 30 min at a time to charge....but an hour can make the trip drag on for sure. I sense a software update in the 4X future.

 

If only the environmental activists would stop protesting mining here we could have cheaper batteries and more plentiful raw materials.

 

Well Toyota is trying to fix the bZ4X AWD (CATL cells) charging and usability issues. It was first discussed in the Bjørn Nyland video (

) in his meeting with Toyota Europe and Toyota Norway, He had said Toyota will be addressing the issues he brought up in his 1000 km challenge (

).


And now the update is confirmed via the mag-x.jp website:
https://mag-x.jp/2023/04/22/22236/

Partial translation:
"Toyota will improve the bZ4X to improve usability.



In this improvement, the number of full charges (SOC 10% to 80%) that can be done within a day (24 hours) will be changed from 2 times to 4 times. In addition, the time required to go from SOC 80% to 100% has been reduced from 60 minutes to 30-40 minutes.

In the meter display, even after the cruising range reached 0%, the distance that could be traveled was long (0% was displayed early), so this has been optimized.
In addition, the bar graph-only battery level gauge will be changed so that it can be grasped concretely by adding a specific percentage display. At the same time, the amount of power consumption when the air conditioner is on is calculated to be a little large, and the cruising range is greatly reduced, so this is also optimized.

It can be said that the setting so far was a Toyota-like setting that hits the stone bridge to protect the battery from deterioration and to prevent running out of electricity. However, users, mainly in Europe, complained that it was too far from the actual situation, so this improvement was made.
Some updates do not support OTA (over-the-air communication), so it is necessary to bring the vehicle to the dealer and rewrite the program. It will be implemented from May. The Subaru version of Solterra will also receive the same update."

Apparently Bjørn found a workaround, sort of, in his 1,000 km challenge in the bZ4X to the limit of 2 DCFC sessions within a 24 hour period by charging it via L2 after the first 2 DCFC sessions. Now Toyota will allow 4 full DCFC sessions per 24 hour period. Also, note they are fixing a setting in the bZ4X which I know showed up in the 2nd Gen Prius Prime (2017 to 2022). When the climate controls are activated the car would lose about a 3rd of its range, regardless of outside temp. Toyota over calculated the loss to protect the battery, so they'll update this. It should be noted this will not be an OTA update, it'll have to go to the dealer because part of the updates are not accessible via OTA. Maybe Toyota should fix this too.

 

I mentioned in the hybrid news subform that the local Volkswagen dealership took one in on trade. Driving by again today (1st saw it two weeks ago) it's still there ... NOT a happy buyer if they sell it so quickly.


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