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Regen cutting out early

Discussion in 'Gen 3 Prius Care, Maintenance & Troubleshooting' started by Mdv55, Mar 17, 2021.

  1. Mdv55

    Mdv55 Active Member

    Joined:
    Dec 25, 2018
    246
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    Location:
    Boston
    Vehicle:
    2011 Prius
    Model:
    Three
    Recently noticed I'm losing regen braking at 16-20mph instead of the transition to friction braking at 8 mph. This isn't the hit a bump, the wheels unload and the ABS freaks out. That feels different and I'm accustomed to that at this point.

    I figured out this new problem happens when I'm braking steadily on just regen pulling 30ish amps and then suddenly regen goes away just under 20mph. The car then resumes coasting because I wasn't braking hard enough to use friction brakes yet and I'm going faster then when they normally start to ramp up during a full stop. This happens no matter what SOC the battery is at. It can be45%, 55% or in the 60% range, it's not the same as regen lessening as SOC nears 60%. It's a hard cut that seems dependent on speed and has no correlation to SOC. Battery temps stay in the 90s and occassionally get just over 100 before the fan kicks up a few notches and brings them back down, so it's not a battery temp thing.

    Car is used for a few hundred miles at a time and the behavior is all the time now. It's particularly annoying since I spend a ton of time in city and my average speed can be 15mph. This means I lose a large percentage of my regen braking at this point since I go from 20-25 to stopped quite frequently. It makes it tough to drive smoothly not having the regen response I'm used to in the city and traffic, not to mention increased wear on the friction brakes and reduced mpg due to less energy recovery.

    Regen braking is still strong and consistent at 75-90ish amps when braking from higher speeds if the battery is low. Car is a 2011 that has 127k on it at this point. I've owned it since 42k for reference and like to think I'm pretty in tune with how it behaves at this point.

    Is there any place I can start looking to figure out why this is happening all of a sudden? All the other threads I've found with braking issues reference the accumulator problems that is under recall and nothing about this. I suppose I could learn to live with the new behavior but a sudden change in behavior usually means something is failing. I'd like to figure out and get the car back to "normal".

    Thanks in advance.
     
  2. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

    Joined:
    May 11, 2005
    108,038
    49,114
    0
    Location:
    boston
    Vehicle:
    2012 Prius Plug-in
    Model:
    Plug-in Base
    don't recall ever hearing of it, i'm surprised there are no dash lights.

    i guess i would start with the service manual
     
  3. Mdv55

    Mdv55 Active Member

    Joined:
    Dec 25, 2018
    246
    181
    0
    Location:
    Boston
    Vehicle:
    2011 Prius
    Model:
    Three
    I don't have a service manual for it. Dash lights that did come on where the VSC, ABS and yellow brake warning light.

    I didn't put much stock in those because I discovered a year ago that if I left Torque running and then booted the car up I would get them every single time. If I closed out Torque, booted the car, and then opened Torque this would not happen.

    I also pulled the entire adapter off the OBD2 port when this new problem started cropping up to eliminate that as a variable. It's been several days without the adapter and have not run Torque since. The regen problem is still there and the lights went out on their own and have not come back at all since. I'm not so sure the lights and the problem are related given my prior experience with Torque and them.