silvervett

In the past 12 plus months I have driven tens of thousands of miles between my house in NY, TX, and SC. In all this time I have never had all the battery charge lights come on in the NAV screen nor the screen below the speedometer . I have had them change from blue to green but there is one more bar than never comes on. I haven’t spent time enough in one place to get it checked out. But I sold the TX house last April and found a house in Anderson SC that I like and bought it last Aug 23rd. I finally got the NY house sold and took the car into the dealer for a NY inspection before driving to SC. I told the dealer about the lights but he said nothing is wrong and there were no computer trouble codes. There are some very long down hill grades and I tried coasting down but it never charged the battery all the way. What really annoyed me was the dealer told me that it does not charge going down hill and it only charges if your foot is on the brake. He also said that if your foot is on the brake the tail lights are using battery power so it can’t charge up to 100%. This guy was just plain too stupid to argue with and he was clueless as to how the hybrid system worked. I am sure it will charge while coasting with your foot off the brake. I didn’t have the time to argue with him so I just finished packing and drove down to SC. I want to take the car to the nearest dealer in Greenville to have it checked. In took it to a Toyota dealer 2 ½ miles from my house but they said they couldn’t do warrantee work on the car. So before I drive 60 miles round trip to Greenville I want to be prepared with information. Do all the bars turn on in the NAV display? I also checked the dash gauge with the picture of the engine and battery and that never shows a full charge either. Do other owners have all the bars come on?

Bear60

Good question. I will not be getting my RX 400h until the end of the month but I do know that Toyota limits the battery charge to about 80% to help increase battery life. It also does not allow the state-of-charge (SOC) to go below about 40% again to help with battery life. I think this is indicating correctly.

silvervett

I know that but I was under the impression that when you get to 80% all the bars would be lit. I don't understand why they would have a bunch of bars but not intend the top one to ever come on.

oldcajun

They will all light up (and turn green) but that is pretty rare. In 30,000 miles, I have only seen it twice, both after long downhill runs. The display turns green just before the next to last bar lights up and stays green until you have used up enough electricty to have the top two bars blank.
Steve

herbvdh

I have seen the all green bars come on once when I first had the vehicle in July and just this week I noticed they were all green. It really surprised me both times the second time was a gently rolling back road. I remember reading in the owners manual or somewhere that all bars do not turn green as frequently as my 2004 Prius did. Reading the owners manual you may be able to get the + and - terminals green that is level 8 (refer to page 6 of owners manual) for the levels. My battery typically stays between 1/2 and 3/4 lit up.

silvervett

Thanks for the info. There are some real long down hill rins between NY an SC and a few times I let the car coast for a few miles with every thing turned off to see if I could get every bar lit but it never happened. I am driving back up north for Thanksgiving and I am going to see if I can get the car to coast for a few miles on a long hill and see if I can get all the bars lit. I would like to hear if other people had the sam experience as herbvdh

riwyle

I guess I am putting myself in the category of being stupid and clueless, but I believe the system would be designed to not engage the regenerative breaking, which charges the battery, until you tell it you want to slow down. You do this by depressing the brake pedal. Otherwise it would cost you in efficiency by slowing you down when driving conditions only require you to lift your foot off the accelerator to coast. I don't know if shifting to "B" puts a load on the regenerative generator, or if it aids deceleration by engine compression. Wish the car had an engine tach to tell.
Have only seen all bars lit once in 25000 miles driving. This was while driving down from Glacier Point to Yosemite Valley. Fairly steep downgrade with many sharp curves requiring much light braking. What I found interesting at this time was that with a fully charged battery, there was no regenerative breaking. This is obviously because there is no place to store this energy when the battery is fully charged.

silvervett

OK this is the way that I understand the system to work and it seems to be verified by the energy monitor in the NAV screen

When you are driving along with your foot on the gas the computer decides what to do with the battery. It may feed all the engine output into the transmission to move the car or it may use some of the engine power to move the car and some to recharge the battery . Or you can be standing still and not need the engine at all but the engine may just decide to turn itself on when it isn't needed to run the car and just use the engine to heat up the cat.

As soon as you take you foot off the gas the electric motors charge the battery. But the charge rate is set to low because if the rate of charge was set too high the car would slow down very quickly and it would be unpleasant to drive the car. Every time you took your foot on and off the gas your head would bounce forward and back like one of those dolls with the head on a spring. So the car always charges the batter when you glide but it does it at a low rate so the ride isn't unpleasant.

But when you put your foot on the brake the computer has the motor feed more power to the battery which slows down the car faster. You can verify this by looking at the gauge they have that takes the place of a tac. Foot off the gas and no break the dial goes just a bit into the blue, but add brake and it dips further into the blue the more you push the more it travels into blue and the more juice goes back to the battery.

If you shift into "B" position which is to slow down on long hills. The regenerative
breaking is supplemented with the engine compression breaking. So the "B" position recovers less energy because some of the speed is being reduced by the engines compression and that energy can not be recovered. I believe that it should almost never be used in the "B" mode because you are less energy efficient in "B". The only time it comes in handy is if you are driving down a very long steep grade and will be in danger of over heating the brakes. . All drivers should know the fact that if you over heat the break pads they will get to the point where they can not slow down the car. Once you have gotten the brakes so hot that they are no longer effective it is too late to shift to "B" so it is important to plan ahead. I have done a lot of driving all over the USA and the only place where I can think you would be in danger of overheating the brakes are the roads going through the Rocky mountains. The little hills I have driven on between NY and SC aren't that long or that steep and I never had the need to use "B".

I am sure I will be corrected it I am wrong but I am very sure the battery is charged every time you coast.

BobBass

SliverVett (I could be named BlackVett),

You always have thought-provoking messages,

I am chomping at the bit for my '08 400h (hopefully delivered before Thanksgiving), and wondered the same thing about charging during coasting.

I did a fairly extensive test drive of an '07 with 2K+ miles on it and was surprised to notice that when highway cruising, if I lifted my foot off the accelerator, the vehicle did not slow down at all. Either these tires have ZERO rolling resistance and the CV allows NO "engine coastdown drag," or something is really strange. You would think that even if that were the case, if the batteries are being charged during coasring, there would be at least what would be perceived as "normal" or some kind of drag.

I can vividly recall liftng my foot and the RX just kept going as if the cruise was on (it was NOT.)

I think this "effect" has been discussed previously, but I don't recall the bottom line.

Nextourer

The 8th bar is rarely reached unless you've just finished driving down a long hill (or a short steep hill).

The computer likes to keep the battery at 6 bars (blue) which is ~65% true SOC. The battery range (as mentioned above) is 40-80%.

Each bar is NOT represented equally. This is to avoid the battery meter fluctuating too often. The 6th and 7th bar represent more charge than the 1st-5th and 8th bar.

I can't find the picture I wanna post so here's a general idea of what it is (See Attachment)

herbvdh

riwyle:
Wish the car had an engine tach to tell.
I have a Scangauge hooked up http://www.scangauge.com/ to tell me what is going on especially the tachometer. This plugs into the OBD II connector.

silvervett

When you get your car I suggest you see if you can find a long hill. I have coasted down some long hills till I slowed down so much I was impeading traffic and had to speed up. On my trips between NY and SC. I have gotten the car up a few MPH over the speed limit at the top of the hill and took my foot off the gas pedal and coasted as long as I could. I noticed the number of lit bars increase as I coasted down hill. This is without touching the brake and keeping the use of any electric devices to a minimum. So that pretty much confirms my theroy or opinion the battery charges without touching the break while coastin. Keep im mind that the power steering and AC do not work like a normal car. So you have to not use the steering or AC why you do this experiment. Both the AC and power steering are run off the hybrid battery. They had to do it this way because the ICE (internal combustion engine) turns itself off when it isn't needed. If they didn't run them off the hybrid battery you would loose power steering when the engine turned itself off at 60 MPH. One big advantage with an electric car AC is that it makes it unlikley for the car to overheat if you are stuck in a traffic jam in 100 degree temps or higher. A regular engine is running to drive the compressor and generating heat and it is getting little air flow through the cooling system. But in the same situation with a hybrid the engine is off and not generating heat and the AC is getting it's power from the hybrid battery.

BY the way I use silvervette in all almost all the forums I visit. I took the name when I got my 1996 silver Corvette colctor edition. But a few years ago I wound up buying my dream car a 1962 black Corvette. This picture was taken in the garage of the house in NY I just sold

silvervett

PS I suggest that you don't even think about MPGs for the first few thousand miles or you may be dissapointed. It takes a few thousand miles for the car to get broken in. My milage wasn't that good in the beginning but I was thrilled because I doubled what I was getting with the Jeep V8 grand Chrokee. I started off in the low 20s and now I get close to 30 MPG around town. Highway miles aren't as good as around town MPG. On my last trip from NY I got in the low 20's but I had the back loaded up with hundreds of pounds of stuff (maybe even over a thousand pounds) and I had the speed at 70 MPH which is legal in some of the states I went through. Maybe if I drove slower I could have saved on gas but then I would have added and extra day to the drive and the cost of motels and food would have wiped out and gas savings by driving slower.

LEXveryG8

I did get all bars charged up once. I was going downhill from the top of a mountain in "B" gear till the bottom of the mountain. I applied the brakes pretty often during the course going downhill. If I'm not wrong, it actually charges much more if you applied the brakes. Everytime you apply the brakes, the meter on your odometer will show regeneration (blue area). Sorry if this sounds vague, it's kind of hard to describe. But, I did get it all charged up.

LEXveryG8

That's a nice '62 Corvette you have there! Stunning! Was it bought already restored or did u restore it yourself?