Three months ago, when our Prime Advanced was new, we set the timer to charge each night at 11:00 PM, to take advantage of reduced power rates. The vehicle was always fully charged the next morning. A week ago we noticed that the charging was no longer working, We always make sure that the green light on the charging port was on and flashing when we plugged it in mostly in the afternoon. In addition, we pushed the locking button beside the flashing green light. Before we take the Prime into our dealer, Is there anyone on PriusChat who can tell us why this charging is not working any more? As far as we know we have not made any setting changes to cause this problem,
run through the settings and read through the manual before going to the trouble of a dealer visit have you tried charge now to see if the else is working?
I have not tried "Charge Now" yet but will do so tonight. The strange thing is that it was set every day for 11;00PM and worked perfectly for 4 months, but just stopped recently. One night recently it went from 0 to 30% by morning and another night it charged only to 70%. There doesn't seem to be anything in the manual that would explain this.
Could it have had something to do with the Daylight Savings Time transition 1 week ago? I realize that correlation doesn't mean causation, but it is an interesting coincidence. Is your home charger on some kind of Off-Peak Time-Of-Use (TOU) timer, such that it won't start charging before 10 pm (11 pm Daylight Savings Time)?
I went over my charge settings last night and may have discovered the problem. On the charge timing screen near the bottom there are two lines to set charging type and time. I had BOTH lines set to start at 11:00 PM. I deleted one of the settings. My guess is that the software was confused by this duplication. I set to "charge now" lat night so tonight will be the first night to check the timed setting. The "charge now" worked 100% this morning.
Latest results. Charger now works fine, but timed charge is NOT working even though the afternoon before the display says "next charge 11:00 PM" Only charged to 11% this time. Other times were 30% and 70%. A real mystery. Any Ideas?
Charger still not working properly. Reset the charging table to zero, then called for charging to start at 12:00 AM midnight every night. "Charge Now" is working properly. At 11:00 next morning noticed on the parked car that the blue charging lights on the windshield showed one light solid and the middle light flashing, indicating approximately 1/2 charge and still charging.. I have spoken to the dealer and they seem to have nobody that understands the technology. Time for Toyota to step up.
See the PriusChat discussion thread here. I always use immediate charging and never the scheduling feature. But I have now seen this odd behavior several times -- and except for the first time it occurred -- it has always corrected itself with the car starting its normal charge behavior after a 20-minute or more delay. Because when the problem happens, it seems to fix itself, I have not pursued this further with my dealer. I will do so if it becomes more frequent. I don't know enough about the internals of the Prime's charging circuits. I know there is a contactor (relay) which engages when the car is being charged. (Thanks to the videos by John Kelly at Weber State University) and that the battery temperature is monitored by the Prime's computer. The problem could be the contactor -- or the temperature sensor giving a bogus reading. Those are just some wild guesses. As was suggested to me, you may want to keep a log of when the problem occurs and ask your dealer's technician to compare those dates and times with anything odd in the car's memory. This is a complicated piece of hardware and your dealer's tech should be able to get additional support from Toyota as he/she goes through the diagnostic process.
Bisco, Good idea. I will try rebooting that way. Old Bear, Thanks for your info. There may be a software bug or sensor or contractor as you suggest. One thing I remember doing just before this charging problem, occurred is adjusting the clock for daylight saving time. There was a MFD screen that had a '"button" which said "daylight saving" which I pressed, but after resetting the clock. I have tried to recreate this screen with no joy, and also searched the pdf manual for "daylight saving" ....again no joy. Anybody know how to find this screen?
Bisco Thanks for your suggestion to disconnect the battery to reboot the computers. It worked. After the reset the dash time came as 1:01 AM and had to be reset. The nav system time was OK when I selected the GPS option. Charging seems normal. I set mine to start at 12:05 AM to assure charging at low rate time. Problem solved.
