Online Forum for the 2012 Rav4 EV

My battery died with the usual message. I am less than a month from lease return. They took almost 2 weeks to replace the old battery which I had babied for 33k miles. Last battery test was 141 on a cold day a few months back. New battery last night 129????? WTF? They claim it is a new battery but 129 is well below 144. Starting to think I may have to do a lease return....any comments? This one is #2716

March 19th and a battery magically arrived. Dealer did the install same day. 3 weeks later and all seems OK except remaining mileage which shows 78-85 after a full charge. Used to be 95-108.

I think we are getting screwed with badly refurbished batteries and we should not accept this AT ALL! Hope Tony is listening and has some advise.

BTW, you should run the Tony test on your battery and repost. Toyota doesn't give a squat about EVs now that they have their magic Fool Cell Mirai....POS

Well, we don't care what the GOM says, except for the default setting.

If you get 129 using the "Tony-Test", I would charge the vehicle to extended every night for a week.

You want that BMS to learn what is normal, and balance those cells.

Then, after a week of doing this, do the Tony-Test again. Make sure you have at least 6 hours from 12 volt battery disconnect to reconnect.

If it's still 129-ish, ya, you got an older recycled battery.

Thanks Tony, well the plot thickens....I actually had problems with charging at all when I got the RAV4 home after battery surgery. My Juice Box kept failing to operate then failed to even boot properly. My Clipper Creek had a charge fault. (blinking light). So I called the dealer and after an hour had passed he suggested I try the 120V charger which then worked.....as did the Clipper Creek. This ALL preceded the 129 mile reading I posted earlier. As I thought my charging woes were caused by intermittent problems on the pilot lines (that zapped my Juicebox) I wanted to check range further so I tried adding charge after it had "finished" extended charging. I was able to get it to 134! all this w/o actually driving. So, I took it out to drive and after only 17 miles the first segment went out which would seem to indicate the charger had not done extended charging after all.
When I got home, neither the 120V nor the Clipper Creek charger would work. I got everything from charge fault to relay firing and unfiring. Now it is back at the dealer..... I provided them with videos of the charge failures. I am hoping they get this resolved before May 9 when lease ends. I am interested in the car but not with a bad battery. My last battery test before failure was 2 mos ago and got 141 on a cold day.Thanks Tony, well the plot thickens....I actually had problems with charging at all when I got the RAV4 home after battery surgery. My Juice Box kept failing to operate then failed to even boot properly. My Clipper Creek had a charge fault. (blinking light). So I called the dealer and after an hour had passed he suggested I try the 120V charger which then worked.....as did the Clipper Creek. This ALL preceded the 129 mile reading I posted earlier. As I thought my charging woes were caused by intermittent problems on the pilot lines (that zapped my Juicebox) I wanted to check range further so I tried adding charge after it had "finished" extended charging. I was able to get it to 134! all this w/o actually driving. So, I took it out to drive and after only 17 miles the first segment went out which would seem to indicate the charger had not done extended charging after all.
When I got home, neither the 120V nor the Clipper Creek charger would work. I got everything from charge fault to relay firing and unfiring. Now it is back at the dealer..... I provided them with videos of the charge failures. I am hoping they get this resolved before May 9 when lease ends. I am interested in the car but not with a bad battery. My last battery test before failure was 2 mos ago and got 141 on a cold day.

One more thing....I seem to recall that the work order listed contactor failure when I first picked it up. I just noticed that in another thread so I guess it is a common problem. They ABSOLUTELY claimed it was a NEW battery they put in....once the charger issue is resolved, we shall see.

I'm not sure what 17 miles driven in Extended has to do with charging.

If you got more Mike's with the old battery, all this indicates is that the battery is likely more degraded than your previous battery (as you suspect). That's how Toyota has programmed their fuel gauge to mask degradation... it ears into the Extended portion.

This is very normal degradation for the car and all of these batteries are going to go through this.

My comment on RAV4 regarding the 17 miles for first segment was that if the vehicle had only charged regular charge level, that would be the behavior I would expect. If it had gone to extended charge then I would expect ~30 miles to first segment loss.

So, more on the story. The vehicle killed my Juicebox charger and caused my other chargers to periodically connect and disconnect.....apparent signal cross over to pilot lines.
After another week in the shop they replaced the internal charger. Now I want them to pay to repair/replace my Juicebox.

Further, the vehicle STILL only charges up to 129! Next experiment will be to turn OFF extended and see if that number stays the same. Perhaps they have disabled extended charging. I will do a FULL charge then see if it increases with EXTENDED.

I am NOT happy. Fortunately I can return the vehicle May 9th end of lease....but what then?

Today I determined that Toyota has disabled the Extended Charge functionality on the battery. They either put in a diminished battery that always gets charged to Extended at ~129 miles, or set it up that you can never charge those last 4KWHrs as the Extended Charge button does not actually cause additional charging.

I found this out by charging FULL on normal charge, then switching to Extended Charge and the car did not take additional charge.

So I gave Toyota a 141 mile battery and they replaced it with a 129 mile battery. Between the BS Mirai crap and this I am becoming increasingly anti-Toyota!

The Tony Test ONLY works on extended charge. Nobody "disabled" the extended charge, as it is programmed to diminish automatically with degradation.

My battery is at about 127-129 miles at 85,000 miles, or about 15% degradation. Very normal.

I have little to no "Extended" range.

So I have a battery that has the equivalent capacity of one ~85k miles. My point about the Tony test is that I charged on regular mode, then switched it to extended to see if it would charge further and it did not. This seems to match what you said earlier that Toyota effectively uses up the extended capacity to maintain the perception that the regular charge is OK. I have my eye on another RAV4 coming off lease almost the same day and trying to negotiate a price with the lease holder. The Tony Test yielded 143 on his vehicle. In the meantime I am trying to get Toyota to compensate me for destroying my range (and charger!)