Turtle Mode w Full Charge on Cold Day

My car had been soaking for 24 hours and plugged in for the first 12 hours or so. I went to drive it and it was in turtle mode for the first 5 minutes or so of the drive. I didn't pre-heat the car and it was 10 degrees outside.

It wasn't a big deal as it takes me 10 minutes on residential streets before I hit the freeway.

Interesting . . . and your GoM was only at "69" with a full set of 16 bars!

Dsinned said:

Interesting . . . and your GoM was only at "69" with a full set of 16 bars!

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It has been cold an snowy in Denver. I had to do an "emergency" charge on the road for the first time at a Walgreens to make it home. I was running errands with heavy traffic while running the heater. My GOM said 45 when I started on my 25 mile trek. Luckily, I only need a 30 minute bump to make it the 5 miles home.

69 miles on a full 80% charge is accurate in this weather presuming heavy traffic and heater being on.

I got hit with that once a few weeks back during the last Colorado cold spell... Just waited in my parking spot for 5 minutes for everything to warm up and I was fine.

I try to use scheduled preclimate in the morning and then turn on preclimate on from the phone in the afternoon to warm up the battery.

I would not have thought about just starting the rav4 and not driving...in the old car world you start driving if you want to warm up quickly.

We should be sub zero tomorrow...it'll be a good test.

Mike

I got hit with the same message today after cold soaked for 8 hours. Under -1 F condition I tried to test the max acceleration under turtle mode. It will allow me to go up to 2 bars above the notch in acceleration meter where it turns from green to white. On a slightly uphill highway, my RAV4 would go up to about ~72mph in the battery temp turtle mode. My trip efficiency is really bad though, 1.4 miles per kW...

quartzav said:

I got hit with the same message today after cold soaked for 8 hours. Under -1 F condition... go up to about ~72mph in the battery temp turtle mode. My trip efficiency is really bad though, 1.4 miles per kW...

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Both the 6kW Denso cabin heater and the separate battery heater were cranking at full blast !!!

You need to precondition that battery in the cold. The RavCharge website should help.

I'm a LEAF owner but always find myself recommending electrics to others. The RAV4 has much more battery capacity than the LEAF. So the LEAF is my benchmark. I can barely squeeze 50 miles range from the LEAF on a -10°F Minnesota day, and only by using minimal defroster, a 61°F cabin temperature setting, and my average speed on this route is only 37 mph. I haven't figured out why the RAV4 doesn't seem to go significantly farther, but if owners believe it would under these conditions I'd love to recommend it to potential buyers.

gschettl said:

I haven't figured out why the RAV4 doesn't seem to go significantly farther, but if owners believe it would under these conditions I'd love to recommend it to potential buyers.

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The Rav4 EV does go considerably farther.

I had an odd thing happen last week.

I went to lunch and the RAV4 EV was outside for about an hour.

When I started up the GOM read 0 miles with near full charge (down maybe 2 bars) but no turtle mode. I was able to drive just fine. I did not have a ton of room but hit the pedal a couple of times and acceleration seemed fine. As the a battery warmed up the GOM climbed back to normal over the next 10 minutes. It was about 20 degrees outside.

I've had the same conditions before at least a dozen times but never saw that behavior with the GOM. Just another reason to ignore the GOM.

Mike