Recent content by davewill

It greatly depends on how well it meets your needs. If a car with 65-90mi range will serve your needs for the next 5 years, and you really like it, then maybe it would be worth it. You certainly would never get the money you invest in it now out of it any other way but driving it.

You can certainly try that, but most dealers do not resell the vehicles they take in trade, so only take the wholesale value into account. Even if they DO decide to resell it themselves, they are likely to use the wholesale value and consider any extra profit they might generate from the tax...

As long as the brown isn't rusty water...

Batteries degrade over time. Your experience is pretty typical.

As the battery degrades you eventually lose bars. The GOM number also suffers from degradation. It also goes up or down depending on recent driving efficiency. I'd guess that your daughter is being a bit of a lead-foot, accelerating hard and braking hard.

It depends on their driving style. If they are using B Mode to do one-pedal driving like a Tesla, and keeping consistent pressure on the accelerator when they want to maintain speed, rather cycling between slowing and accelerating, then there's no reason for it to be less efficient, it might...

B Mode in a Toyota hybrid is similar to the EV. They both use more regen braking when you let off the accelerator in B mode, and they both disable cruise control. I think one of the differences is that when the battery is full, the hybrid can still use the gas engine to brake, but the EV can't...

Only the obvious. Since, the car is on, someone could jump in and drive it away. You can help mitigate that by using the manual key to lock the doors. Also, systems in the car itself will be drawing power, not just the inverter you've connected.

Yeah, that's exactly what it sounds like when the motor is going out, a whirring sound that rises in pitch with the RPMs. Unfortunately, the dealers seem to be having trouble sourcing the replacement motors. There are a few shops around that know how to rebuild motors that get into this shape.

Probably be worthwhile to have your colleague test with your cable as well,

Would I be right in thinking that you are using your own Type2 to Type1 cord when charging at public stations, but perhaps have an EVSE that adapts from the wall plug directly to the Type1 inlet on the RAV4 EV? So, you wouldn't be using the same cable when charging from the wall? Could it be as...

Don't know what your vehicle actually needs, but when I got an informal quote a year ago from QC Charge (Tony's shop) they said that doing the whole job of rebuilding a motor with water on the speed sensor (with pulling and reinstalling the motor) was about $5000. Now that I've seen the vids...

It's spam intended to get his website pumped up on search engines. Each of his two posts show minimal effort and have a link embedded in the middle. The ones quoting his post are helping him.

If I had a motor that didn't make the milling noise and didn't have coolant behind the speed sensor, I wouldn't want a reman replacement. Many (most?) of the RAV4EV (and early Model S) motors just seemed to work without problems. Those of us who did have the milling noise and got replacements...

The last time I talked to QC Charge on the subject, about a year ago, they said they had a large backlog, and that rebuilding a unit that showed water behind the speed sensor was on the order of $5K.