Looking for solutions from experienced owners

Well, 5.5 hours helping Mom get her RAV4 setup and we accomplished very little (phone, NAV Home and Homelink). I hope the experienced owners can resolve since NO ONE and I mean NO ONE at the various Toyota numbers we called could solve a single issue we had today. Safety Connect even pulled the old "kick the cord" to end the call with us when they couldn't resolve. Here is the list:

1. Cannot set change time. All we want to do is tell it to charge from Midnight to 6 AM to take advantage of TOU rates. No one knew how at the 800 #. Mom is retired, she doesn't have a set departure time.

2. Maybe problem #1 is firmware related. What firmware do I have? No one knew how to do this either.

3. How to locate charge stations, Maybe it's an App based function. Downloaded Entunes App for iPhone, establish account, set up three years of service. Need Contract ID # to download the EV specific functions. Must go in the house to enroll online versus iPhone. Contract ID not accepted. We call, the three "I" we have in the code are: 1's. i's,l's,L's? No idea, try all the combos. No luck, try a dash, then try without a dash. No luck. That burned 2.5 hours and at least six phone calls. Still no Entune EV App access, no way to delay a charge and no way to confirm what firmware we are using.

I know many of you have been down this path before so I'd sure love to hear some solutions. Talking to the various Toyota departments today was like dealing with Washington DC bureaucrats. Lots of talk, can kicking, butt kissing, call transferring but no one really knew what they were doing.

1. You can't set when your RAV4 EV will start charging. Only when it will finish charging. You'll need to go the the EV menu on the nav screen and set the schedule from there. If you want it to finish by 6AM, set all the dates to 6AM. The onboard charger will initiate the start time accordingly (on 240V 40Amp EVSE, it will usually kick on around 1AM to finish no later than 6AM).

If you absolutely need to set the start time, consider a subscription to RAVCHARGE over at www.ravcharge.com

Of course, RAVCHARGE doesn't work if you haven't solved #3.

2. Every single firmware new or old that has been released should support the basic scheduled charging of your vehicle. I don't think there's a way to tell the firmware version short of a service trip.

3. In order to get your Entune to work properly, you needed to have set up the contract ID at your dealer. Actually, your dealer should have done that for you. One of your receipt documents should have a Safety Connect ID . If not, your dealer should be able to email it to you. That gets entered and linked into your entune account and enables the remote EV functions like remote charging, climate control, and the EV leaderboards.

The charge station maps on the entune nav screen all suck. Stick with using Plugshare instead. if you absolutely must use the nav screen, you need to download Entune to your smartphone and plug it in via USB while you press the Apps button. The RAV4 will connect to the smartphone and download the EVSE location data and enable internet radio, etc.

Hope this helps. Sorry you have to deal with all that!

SLO EV said:

Well, 5.5 hours helping Mom get her RAV4 setup and we accomplished very little (phone, NAV Home and Homelink). I hope the experienced owners can resolve since NO ONE and I mean NO ONE at the various Toyota numbers we called could solve a single issue we had today. Safety Connect even pulled the old "kick the cord" to end the call with us when they couldn't resolve. Here is the list:

1. Cannot set change time. All we want to do is tell it to charge from Midnight to 6 AM to take advantage of TOU rates. No one knew how at the 800 #. Mom is retired, she doesn't have a set departure time.

2. Maybe problem #1 is firmware related. What firmware do I have? No one knew how to do this either.

3. How to locate charge stations, Maybe it's an App based function. Downloaded Entunes App for iPhone, establish account, set up three years of service. Need Contract ID # to download the EV specific functions. Must go in the house to enroll online versus iPhone. Contract ID not accepted. We call, the three "I" we have in the code are: 1's. i's,l's,L's? No idea, try all the combos. No luck, try a dash, then try without a dash. No luck. That burned 2.5 hours and at least six phone calls. Still no Entune EV App access, no way to delay a charge and no way to confirm what firmware we are using.

I know many of you have been down this path before so I'd sure love to hear some solutions. Talking to the various Toyota departments today was like dealing with Washington DC bureaucrats. Lots of talk, can kicking, butt kissing, call transferring but no one really knew what they were doing.

Click to expand...

My dealer did not set up SafetyConnect, I just called them and set up the account. Then they e-mailed me the contract in PDF format. The Contract ID is at the top right of the contract. Mine starts with one-dash-one and the rest are letters. Make sure everything looks correctly set up at www.myentune.com You must have your contract ID entered in the PLUG-IN/EV APPS section of that site in order for the EV Apps to work in the Entune App on your phone.

You don't need your phone to be plugged in by USB to get the in-dash apps to work, but if not, it has to be paired with Bluetooth and the Entune App has to be open on your phone.

Thank you Khaihon!
sigh......your information is very helpful and I'm sure accurate but so disappointing. I used to live in Tokyo so I had to put on my "how does a To-Dai Toyota engineer think?" and I regretfully concluded that there was no way to start a charge, just a way to fulfill the objective "being fully charged and warm/cool by 8 AM" mind set. Ugh...

Since our Level 2 hasn't been installed and we are using the 110V EVSE, it wants to charge the second we plug it in since it knows a full charge is many hours away. I think for the next week or so Mom will just need to charge manually during off peak hours.

Our dealer did not include the paperwork when the car was delivered so we are waiting on that via UPS. I called and had it set up over the phone today. That now sounds like a mistake since it's not recognizing my contract for the EV apps (which I care a little less about since it sounds like they stink).

Plugshare is an easy fix and I'll download that for Mom tomorrow.

Thanks again and I welcome any other pre-emptive solutions otherwise, I'll be back tomorrow night with the newest concerns...

Hello Miimura,
Thank you for your comments. I've enjoyed reading your threads fyi...
Yes, we did exactly as you did. The woman that set up the account concerned me when she said "whoa, 3 year trial? I've never seen that before. Lucky you!" The contract ID I have looks just like yours with the 1 and the dash etc. I log in and I can see all my info but when I type in the contract ID to enable the EV apps it just keeps saying "Invalid Contract ID". It's a server glitch I suspect in that there is more to enable on the EVs that the usual call center folks have no idea about. They do like to guess at solutions: "oh, don't use the dash, that'll resolve it!" and "Oh, it needs to be all upper case!" and "Ah yes, that fifth character is a lower case l not an upper case i" "um yea, maybe you don't need the 1 and the dash, just the characters after it..." All very creative but quite annoying when it's the sixth person to "solve" the problem. Mom and I actually used the SOS button since my phone was running out of juice for our last call of the day. The guy had us on the elevator music for 20 minutes so we were making small talk with intermittent jokes about the hold music 'this is very relaxing music to be bleeding out to in a ditch..." when the guy finally chimes in "I'm still here and I can hear everything you're saying...." I'll try again tomorrow when I'm fresh and have a fully charged iPhone.

I also prefer to charge 12a to 6a for best electric rates.

My end timer is set to 7 AM and generally charging is done by 6 AM.

If real low charging wants to start before midnight. If you turn the car off, plug in quickly, then immediately get back into the car the display will show the recalculated start time. If the start time is early you just use the menu to delay the end time as needed. I have a 30 amp L2 EVSE, if you are just using the L1 cord you had better just plug in and let it charge.

My Safety Connect ID is 1-XXXXXXX where the Xs are both number and letters (all uppercase), if that helps. When you call the 800 number or your dealer (probably a better bet) they should be able to read it to you over the phone. My dealer didn't give me the Safety Connect paperwork when I bought the car so that's what I did.

As Khaihon mentioned, once you get that business squared away I'm here to help with RavCharge to get your charges happening when you want them to. The app not only gives you the ability to set a charge start time, but can also prevent the car from starting charges too early, and also lets you easily and accurately determine your range and time to charge, and there's other fun stuff too! It's completely free to try for 14 days. Read up at the RavCharge thread or shoot me an email at [email protected] for tips & tricks.

Congrats (to your Mom I guess) on getting a new Rav by the way! I'd figured all the new ones were long since spoken for.

If you have the SafetyConnect contract PDF and the Entune web site won't accept your Contract ID, call the main number, choose Entune, then talk to a rep. If they can't help you in a timely fashion, just ask to be escalated to an EV Entune specialist. It will probably land on Percy's desk and he'll call you back. There is also a chance that sleeping on it will allow the number to propagate through their system so that it will be accepted in the morning. Well, that's just wishful thinking...

After several requests to push me higher up the chain of techs, I was transferred over to Customer Care, Jasmine was going to take ownership. We went through all the information and confirmed what was and what wasn't correct. This allowed us to find the crux of the problem with the contract. The dealer has set everything up under my email address. That address was assigned to the VIN. When the car was delivered we called in to register and used Mom's email address. This allowed us to get the service but none of the EV specific apps would work due to the conflict. Once this was figured out we deleted Mom's account and went in under my address, configured the apps and then edited her information that included her email address and changed it from mine to her's. We then updated the apps within the car and alas, we were connected. Thank you all for the suggestions. Today was better than yesterday and now if I could just get my parents to stop pushing on the touch screen like it was a physical button we would be getting someplace. They keep trying to muscle everything from the starter button, the gear selector and the touch screen like it was a 1962 "3 on a tree" Ford truck...

Start timers are pointless if you charge on 240V, setting the end timer only is better for many reasons and unless you get up at 5am then it will keep you in off-peak times and have the battery warmer when you leave in the winter. Even on an EV like a LEAF with a start timer there is really no reason to use it.

4EVEREV said:

Start timers are pointless if you charge on 240V, setting the end timer only is better for many reasons and unless you get up at 5am then it will keep you in off-peak times and have the battery warmer when you leave in the winter. Even on an EV like a LEAF with a start timer there is really no reason to use it.

Click to expand...

The difference between the Leaf and the Rav is that the Leaf's end timer actually works, while the Rav's will initiate charging way too early (or sometimes not at all.)

fooljoe said:

The difference between the Leaf and the Rav is that the Leaf's end timer actually works, while the Rav's will initiate charging way too early (or sometimes not at all.)

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Isn't that the truth. I have my end time set for 7am and the charge finishes between 3:30 and 4:30am daily. It usually starts around 12am or just after, but sometimes before if very low. The worst is when it only needs a small charge, then it doesn't start until 6am, which is when I usually leave. In this case I usually interrupt charging or disconnect before it starts and just leave with below full charge. Thankfully the range is adequate so this is not a problem.

dstjohn99 said:

fooljoe said:

The difference between the Leaf and the Rav is that the Leaf's end timer actually works, while the Rav's will initiate charging way too early (or sometimes not at all.)

Click to expand...

Isn't that the truth. I have my end time set for 7am and the charge finishes between 3:30 and 4:30am daily. It usually starts around 12am or just after, but sometimes before if very low. The worst is when it only needs a small charge, then it doesn't start until 6am, which is when I usually leave. In this case I usually interrupt charging or disconnect before it starts and just leave with below full charge. Thankfully the range is adequate so this is not a problem.

Click to expand...

That's interesting. I have a LEAF and a RAV both set up to charge on an end-timer, and I've not had any significant problems with either car charging; they both consistently finish early, though they do vary a bit in terms of actual finish time. They've never not finished in time to leave.

My RAV charges on a Juicebox Pro at 10KW, and the LEAF charges on an upgraded EVSE at ~3KW.

I also have a LEAF and RAV4-EV and I use end charging timers. I think I had one missed charged in the RAV4-EV early on (I think the 31st of the month bug). Since then both vehicles finish pretty consistently. I simply choose an end time that is adjusted for the early finish that they both have (with different offsets).

Both vehicles are pretty current on software.

My RAV4-EV charges at least 5 days a week so the longest it doesn't charge is a couple of days. I don't know if they changed software so it detects the voltage of the charging station when you plug it in. Early versions of the software remembered your previous charging voltage and didn't bother checking. The problem was it only remembered it for a few (3?) days. So if you don't charge for a several days the car assumes the worst case, something like 100V charging, which makes for a super early start on the charging. I haven't experienced this recently but I don't know if they fixed the problem or I just haven't had a long gap between charging lately.

FWIW my RAV4-EV is currently a Blink set at 24A for charging.

arnold

lemketron said:

That's interesting. I have a LEAF and a RAV both set up to charge on an end-timer, and I've not had any significant problems with either car charging; they both consistently finish early, though they do vary a bit in terms of actual finish time. They've never not finished in time to leave.

Click to expand...

The problem isn't about finishing in time to leave; it's about starting way too early. How much of a problem that is for you depends upon how long of a low-rate window you have, and how powerful your EVSE is - if you have a 24A EVSE and a 6 hour window, like me, it's virtually impossible to keep the Rav from missing the window without constant babysitting. On the other hand, if you have a 40A EVSE and a 12 hour window (or if you're not on TOU metering), the Rav's odd timer calculations likely won't bother you.

arnolddeleon said:

My RAV4-EV charges at least 5 days a week so the longest it doesn't charge is a couple of days. I don't know if they changed software so it detects the voltage of the charging station when you plug it in. Early versions of the software remembered your previous charging voltage and didn't bother checking. The problem was it only remembered it for a few (3?) days. So if you don't charge for a several days the car assumes the worst case, something like 100V charging, which makes for a super early start on the charging. I haven't experienced this recently but I don't know if they fixed the problem or I just haven't had a long gap between charging lately.

Click to expand...

The Rav doesn't check the voltage when you plug it in, nor does it remember the voltage you last charged at. It always calculates its predicted time to charge the same way, which is to assume approximately 140V for >20A and approximately 70V for <=20A charging stations. No software updates have changed any aspect of this behavior; the only significant change that's been made was to fix the 31st bug.

I've determined how the timer works through extensive testing on my car and my RavCharge customers' cars, which span all model years and software versions, and this testing has allowed me to develop the early charge protection (ECP) feature in RavCharge, which will automatically push back the car's departure time when the car would have started the charge before the time you specify.