[pnartg]

We are in the middle of a house move so at the moment I don't have access to our level two charger. So I'm trying to keep my 2024 RAV4 Prime charged up using its own internal charging system. But I've noticed that it won't let me put it into charge mode with any range estimate on it of more than 32 mi. It says "Charge Mode Unavailable Battery Full". Why does it think it's "full" at 33 miles, when it's perfectly happy to charge off of a level two charger in that state?

Thank you in advance!

 

[Jay55]

Charge mode will only charge the battery to 80%. It's in the user guide.

 

[multiplier]

There is also the issue of it being much slower to charge the higher the existing charge is.
Trying to charge it any higher than you're going would be horribly inefficient and use a ridiculous amount of gasoline to do so. I would never want to use charge mode to get it any higher than about 50%.

 

[gregeusa]

The other reason to not charge to ""100%" is leaving room for regeneration right off the bat... if you charged fully, then any regeneration available would be wasted.

Greg

 

[pnartg]

How to I see how much charge is on it at any point? I normally get 48 or 49 mi on a full charge from a level two charger. Is that considered 100%? On some cars, eg my wife's Ioniq5, a full charge is 85% to manage battery lifespan. Also why does it allow me to charge past that 32 mi limit on my level 2 charger but not when it charges itself?

 

[wscan]

How to I see how much charge is on it at any point? I normally get 48 or 49 mi on a full charge from a level two charger. Is that considered 100%? On some cars, eg my wife's Ioniq5, a full charge is 85% to manage battery lifespan. Also why does it allow me to charge past that 32 mi limit on my level 2 charger but not when it charges itself?

You can only see the actual SOC of the battery using an OBD data reader. A full battery is 90% by the ODB, but shows as 100% on the dash and in the Toyota app. Note that the number of EV miles is an estimate based on the last few weeks of driving experience. Slower driving (45 mph or less) will make it read more miles for any particular SOC. Highway driving will reduce the mile reading. Per the manual, the Charge mode will only charge to 80%, which probably means 80% of the 90% SOC at full charge (i.e. 72% OBD SOC). The reasons are not stated in the manual so we can only guess why that is. It could be to leave room for regeneration. It also could be because the charge rate needs to taper off toward the end of charge and the charging gets a bit less efficient when that happens. The level 2 (or level 1) EVSE allows the in-car charger to set the rate at which the car charges. When using the EVSE, the charge rate does start to taper off toward the end of the charge.