I have had my RAV 4 Prime for a few days now and perhaps some of you can answer some basic questions. (1) I live atop an 800 ft hill (at 9500 ft elevation in Colorado). So when the battery is fully charged and I drive down the 2 miles, it would appear that there is no place to put the electricity generated. Is that true, or might it be storing some? My other car is a 2017 Bolt, and GM thoughtfully set things up so that one can charge to 90%. So heading down the hill, the 0.7 kWh I generate in the Bolt gets happily stored in the battery. The Prime is much heavier, so generates more (right?). But it might well all be lost. (2) there really seems no good way (at least in winter) to tell the rate of mi/kWh. The number on the central display might well be biased upward if the gas engine is used on uphills and EV on downhills. Today I drove a very hilly 96 mile route. The "total average" indicated jumped from 2.5 for my first few days on shorter drives to over 3....well, sure, since EV was used on downhills, but not on some of the climbs up the 4 mountain passes. And also in winter here in Colorado at under 20 degs F. it appears that the gas engine starts up a bit from time to time: I can only think that it is doing so to warm the battery. (The Bolt uses the battery to warm the battery.) Any comments welcome.
1) I think you're correct, when you're going downhill on a full battery, you're not getting any regen. Is there no way to charge to 90%? Is there a display that show battery state of charge? One possibility is that when it's plugged in it doesn't really go to 100%, and there is still some room for regen charging.
Thanks for comment. I now have comments from Toyota, and from the folks at the RAV4 World forum. Toyota answered me just today: "there cannot be any charging when the battery is full". There is no automatic way to charge to less than full (there is on the Bolt). So where does the extra energy go? The ICE turns on and somehow absorbs that energy. I hope, but am not certain, that no gas is used in that process, but it is not ideal. I found yesterday that turning on some heat will suppress the ICE in this situation. I can also say that the amount that would be generated is 1.3 kWh, which is a significant %age of the battery capacity. In any case, the car is really great even if the various meters and info windows leave a lot to be desired. I am having no trouble doing a quite hilly 42 miles on a full charge, and it is now cold up here at 10000 feet in Colo. In summer it should be even better.
