My 1-year free trial of the Toyota app expired a few days ago, and part of me is actually relieved, because the app was extremely frustrating and a lot of the data that it included was nearly worthless. For anyone else who bought a Toyota after June 1st, 2023, and who's Toyota App has recently expired or is about too, here's what you lose, and what the app still does, assuming you don't want to cough up $15/month for a service that, in my opinion, is barely even worth bothering with while it's still in the free trial period:
What you lose:
1. Your EV charging history. This was of only limited value, and was extremely frustrating to use, because the kilowatt hours reported by the App were not even remotely accurate. A "Full Charge" would be reported as 9.66 kW-hr, when anyone who has monitored a Rav4 Prime charging session with an OBD-II scan tool or Toyota Techstream diagnostic computer can see that a "full charge" is actually about 14.5 kw-hr. I've never seen any plausible explanation of what the heck the app is actually measuring, but the numbers it reports for battery charge energy are always grossly under the actual amounts. Worse, the App wasn't even very reliable. About 10% of all my charging sessions were never recorded by the app at all, especially when I was out of town, camping (charging off of camground RV powered pedestals) or on a road trip to somewhere away from major urban centers.
2. Your "Trips". This feature was almost worthless. The app only recorded the most recent 10 trips, and since there was no way to download the track log to permanent storage, you couldn't use the "Trips" data for any kind of analysis of fuel economy, or anything else that might be useful.
3. Remote Lock/Unlock. I didn't use it much, but it was handy to check if you had left the car somewhere with a door unlocked or a window not closed all the way.
4. Driving Range: up at the top of the main screen of the App is a statement of the car's estimated HV and EV range. After the free trial expires, this gets stuck at whatever the last reported value was (mine is stuck at 13 miles, the gas tank was almost empty).
What still works:
1. The displays of the car's VIN number, Odometer reading, and tire pressure are still there. But the tire pressure only seems to be updated once per day, and there's no way to force an update manually. You could pick up a nail in a tire and have a slow leak, and not know about it for as much as a day or two.
2. Call for Roadside Assistance, but I assume that's only if you have purchased this service from Toyota. I have AAA so don't need Roadside Assistance from Toyota.
3. Make Service Appointments. You can do this from the website of any Toyota dealership, so it's not anything critically useful to have on this app.
4. Under the "Health" tab, the status of Recalls, Service Campaigns, Vehicle Alerts, and Maintenance Status is still there, as is the condition of the keyfob battery (a green checkmark that I assume turns red when the battery is on it's last gasp).
5. All of the tabs that would generate revenue for Toyota are still there, of course: Renew your Sirius XM Radio, buy Parts and Accessories, Manage (pay for) Subscriptions, Find a Dealership, Rent a Toyota, etc.
6. The functionality for finding public EV charging stations is still there, but there's no way to filter the data to exclude Level 3 DC fast charge stations, or limit it to Free public stations. The app only searches within about 2 miles radius of your current location, and to make it search anywhere else, you have to define an address or input a ZIP code - you can't just scroll the map and have it search automatically, like any other mapping app can do, so once again, the Toyota app is including a "feature" that is so difficult to use that it's practically worthless. The PlugShare App is way, way easier to use, and you can define filters to exclude stations you can't use anyway, like the aforementioned Level 3 DC fast chargers.
And that's about all. My rating on the Toyota App, if this was something being sold on Amazon, is barely 1 star, maybe 2 if it was still free. If you have a smart phone in the first place, upon which you have installed the Toyota App, you already have Google Maps if it's an Android phone, or Apple Maps if it's an I-phone. Install PlugShare to locate EV charging stations. I just don't see that this kludgy, wonky, unreliable mess of an app is worth $15/month just to have the ability to lock the doors remotely. The EV Charging History and Trips data is just about useless, since you can't download the actual raw data. If you want Trips data, install MapFactor Navigator on your phone. It records a once-per-second GPS tracklog that's accurate to within about 10 feet unless you are in a long tunnel, that you can download as a gpx tracklog to display in almost any Mapping program. If you want EV Charging data, install CarScanner Pro for $4.99, and it records almost every piece of data that your car puts onto the OBD-II data bus, including very accurate EV charge energy levels. Export these data recordings as Type 2 CSV files and then pull them into a spreadsheet, and you can really see what makes a Rav4 Prime "tick".
What you lose:
1. Your EV charging history. This was of only limited value, and was extremely frustrating to use, because the kilowatt hours reported by the App were not even remotely accurate. A "Full Charge" would be reported as 9.66 kW-hr, when anyone who has monitored a Rav4 Prime charging session with an OBD-II scan tool or Toyota Techstream diagnostic computer can see that a "full charge" is actually about 14.5 kw-hr. I've never seen any plausible explanation of what the heck the app is actually measuring, but the numbers it reports for battery charge energy are always grossly under the actual amounts. Worse, the App wasn't even very reliable. About 10% of all my charging sessions were never recorded by the app at all, especially when I was out of town, camping (charging off of camground RV powered pedestals) or on a road trip to somewhere away from major urban centers.
2. Your "Trips". This feature was almost worthless. The app only recorded the most recent 10 trips, and since there was no way to download the track log to permanent storage, you couldn't use the "Trips" data for any kind of analysis of fuel economy, or anything else that might be useful.
3. Remote Lock/Unlock. I didn't use it much, but it was handy to check if you had left the car somewhere with a door unlocked or a window not closed all the way.
4. Driving Range: up at the top of the main screen of the App is a statement of the car's estimated HV and EV range. After the free trial expires, this gets stuck at whatever the last reported value was (mine is stuck at 13 miles, the gas tank was almost empty).
What still works:
1. The displays of the car's VIN number, Odometer reading, and tire pressure are still there. But the tire pressure only seems to be updated once per day, and there's no way to force an update manually. You could pick up a nail in a tire and have a slow leak, and not know about it for as much as a day or two.
2. Call for Roadside Assistance, but I assume that's only if you have purchased this service from Toyota. I have AAA so don't need Roadside Assistance from Toyota.
3. Make Service Appointments. You can do this from the website of any Toyota dealership, so it's not anything critically useful to have on this app.
4. Under the "Health" tab, the status of Recalls, Service Campaigns, Vehicle Alerts, and Maintenance Status is still there, as is the condition of the keyfob battery (a green checkmark that I assume turns red when the battery is on it's last gasp).
5. All of the tabs that would generate revenue for Toyota are still there, of course: Renew your Sirius XM Radio, buy Parts and Accessories, Manage (pay for) Subscriptions, Find a Dealership, Rent a Toyota, etc.
6. The functionality for finding public EV charging stations is still there, but there's no way to filter the data to exclude Level 3 DC fast charge stations, or limit it to Free public stations. The app only searches within about 2 miles radius of your current location, and to make it search anywhere else, you have to define an address or input a ZIP code - you can't just scroll the map and have it search automatically, like any other mapping app can do, so once again, the Toyota app is including a "feature" that is so difficult to use that it's practically worthless. The PlugShare App is way, way easier to use, and you can define filters to exclude stations you can't use anyway, like the aforementioned Level 3 DC fast chargers.
And that's about all. My rating on the Toyota App, if this was something being sold on Amazon, is barely 1 star, maybe 2 if it was still free. If you have a smart phone in the first place, upon which you have installed the Toyota App, you already have Google Maps if it's an Android phone, or Apple Maps if it's an I-phone. Install PlugShare to locate EV charging stations. I just don't see that this kludgy, wonky, unreliable mess of an app is worth $15/month just to have the ability to lock the doors remotely. The EV Charging History and Trips data is just about useless, since you can't download the actual raw data. If you want Trips data, install MapFactor Navigator on your phone. It records a once-per-second GPS tracklog that's accurate to within about 10 feet unless you are in a long tunnel, that you can download as a gpx tracklog to display in almost any Mapping program. If you want EV Charging data, install CarScanner Pro for $4.99, and it records almost every piece of data that your car puts onto the OBD-II data bus, including very accurate EV charge energy levels. Export these data recordings as Type 2 CSV files and then pull them into a spreadsheet, and you can really see what makes a Rav4 Prime "tick".
