miimura
Well-known member
When a RAV4 EV is driven enough miles and ages through the years, it will gradually lose traction battery capacity. This is an eventuality. The question is, how will the car indicate this capacity loss?
We know the range indicator (Guess-O-Meter) next to the fuel gauge is based on your past driving efficiency, so this is clearly useless for actual battery capacity indication. The Leaf has capacity bars on the gauges and it is now well known how much capacity each bar represents. The RAV4 EV State-of-Charge indicator is 16 bars that roughly represent 2kWh each. If the battery were to lose 2kWh capacity, would the 16th bar not come on after a full Standard Charge? What if you use the Extended Charge? The reason that I'm asking is that the car already doesn't have any indication for the capacity above the Standard Charge level. If the car did not have any indication of capacity loss until the total capacity dropped to 15 bars worth of energy, it would be possible to have lost 28% of the capacity with no indication to the owner/driver. (41.8-(15*2))/41.8 = 0.2823
While I think the Leaf capacity issue was made worse by the clear indication of traction battery capacity loss, at least from a PR perspective, the scenario above is far worse for owners.
We know the range indicator (Guess-O-Meter) next to the fuel gauge is based on your past driving efficiency, so this is clearly useless for actual battery capacity indication. The Leaf has capacity bars on the gauges and it is now well known how much capacity each bar represents. The RAV4 EV State-of-Charge indicator is 16 bars that roughly represent 2kWh each. If the battery were to lose 2kWh capacity, would the 16th bar not come on after a full Standard Charge? What if you use the Extended Charge? The reason that I'm asking is that the car already doesn't have any indication for the capacity above the Standard Charge level. If the car did not have any indication of capacity loss until the total capacity dropped to 15 bars worth of energy, it would be possible to have lost 28% of the capacity with no indication to the owner/driver. (41.8-(15*2))/41.8 = 0.2823
While I think the Leaf capacity issue was made worse by the clear indication of traction battery capacity loss, at least from a PR perspective, the scenario above is far worse for owners.