Online Forum for the 2012 Rav4 EV

If you have a JdeMo unit, then the place to go is Toyota of Berkeley. At Palo Alto (Magnessen's Toyota, Palo Alto) I've had the experience of being offered initially 2 hours labor ($395) then after Tony Williams emailed them, they dropped the price to $160 (one hour labor), and when I told them that Toyota of Berkeley would do it for FREE, they dropped the price to $80 (half an hour labor. In the end I caved in because the DU was already at Palo Alto, and they (Toyota/Tesla corporate) wouldn't ship it over to Berkeley.)

Rant over ... it's not the $80 ... just the feeling of being fleeced for warranty work that they're getting paid very well for by either Toyota or Tesla.

A person with a rav4ev experienced "reboot" of tesla unit while driving, one moment it said 76 miles range, CHECK EV came on. After reboot it was 4 miles (turtle came on) , after stopping and 4 power cycles he continued without problems and range was 70+ again.
I advised him to go to dealer to have the error checked (he has toyota extended platinum warranty)
His nearest dealer is DCH Toyota of Oxnard.
He made an appointment, some robot system called him 3 times to not make him forget his appointment.
He arrives, then is told that the only EV mechanic didn't show up that day, so they can't help him.
They call their other branch (DCH Toyota of Simi Valley) which also is Toyota rav4ev certified.
Their only EV certified mechanic no longer works there!
Then they said they had a rav4ev that wouldn't charge on their premises.
Tesla came in, installed a curtain around the rav4ev couldn't see what they were doing and also wasn't able to get the unit to charge again.
Then came the final message " We don't like anything Tesla related"

I think it is an important warning for someone who expects service from the "DCH Toyota of ...." group.

If you have a JdeMO, I do not recommend Tustin Toyota in Orange County. I have a check EV message and took it there for diagnosis (flatbed). After getting to the battery, they decided they no longer wanted to troubleshoot it due to the wiring that the JdeMO adds. They forced me to move it another dealer, which has at least agreed to work on it with the JdeMO. This of course was a major pain in the neck to recoordinate, so I will not be going there again.

Follow up - With Tony's assistance, I received confirmation from Carson Toyota that they would service the vehicle with the JDeMO. I had it towed there on 5/22/17. After confirming on arrival what was to be done, they diagnosed the issue after a couple of days to be a traction battery failure. My rep let me know that they were waiting for the battery and that he would update me when it arrived. He let me know after a couple more days that he did not have an update on ETA. I didn't hear anything for about 10 days after that, so I called them on 6/9. It turns out my rep had quit, and no one had picked up the case yet . Coincidentally, the battery had come in and they had just replaced it the day before. I checked the Entune app, and noticed that the battery had charged successfully. They called me Saturday the 10th to let me know it was tested and ready to go. I had my wife give me a ride up there (48 miles away from my house) and I picked it up. Final price - free. It was completely covered under warranty (Platinum VSA, but the battery is covered anyway to 100,000 miles, and I am at about 75k). Tony's test put the replacement battery at 135, so 92.4% of original capacity. I can live with that.

So a big thank you to Carson Toyota for fixing the RAV and not whining about the JDeMO, and a raised middle finger to Tustin Toyota for doing the opposite.

Carson? You must have had an OEM 12v battery because they would not even talk to me until my Bosch was replaced.
Then they still failed. Can't even imagine having JDeMO.
Absolute morons IMO.

Hi

I'm moving to the Sacramento / El Dorado Hills area. Is there a good place for repairs / Service anywhere close by?

thanks

Sadly, no (I've tried). I receommned Berkeley Toyota.

I did have an OEM battery. The last time I had an issue, Tustin blamed it on that and I let them replace it. It worked fine for 3 weeks until the traction battery failed, which was likely the real original problem.

It may have helped having Tony "grease the skids" with the service manager. When the car came in, he had already given his blessing to his team to work on it. Sorry you had a such a bad experience, and of course, YMMV with Carson. I may have gotten lucky.

I still take my car to Magnussen Toyota of Palo Alto (which used to be an easy walk from where I worked) even though i live 120 miles away. I did manage to get a large dose of FUD from them this time, but they were doing *two* motor replacements the same day so they get a lot of work on these cars (and have multiple EV-trained techs).

Its a pain in the butt to drive down there just to do this but i still need to go to the bay area occasionally so i try to cluster things around service appointments

Did you contact Hanlees in Davis? They replaced my motor back in April and didn't have a problem with the JdeMO. Service rep just asked me what it was and what it did. Didn't mentioned it again.