Standard Range Decreasing

We have had our RAV4 EV for two weeks and are getting progressively less miles with each charge. Our latest charge resulted in a range of 75 miles. When we took possession of the vehicle we were getting 90. Any ideas?

Epmoreton said:

We have had our RAV4 EV for two weeks and are getting progressively less miles with each charge. Our latest charge resulted in a range of 75 miles. When we took possession of the vehicle we were getting 90. Any ideas?

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Turn off climate control and see if that raises the number. But, it guesses your range. I recommend learning how to determine range based on the fuel gauge.

EV "range" is a wildly variable kind of thing. It almost entirely depends on how, where and when you drive your car. If you have a "heavy foot", or spend most of your time in "sports mode", for example; that is surely going to reduce range. Or, if you drive a lot on freeways at the speed limit or greater. Or, if you don't practice judicious regenerative braking skills. Even transporting a lot of passengers, or extra cargo weight can be detrimental to range. Tire pressure is yet another subtle factor, as is driving with your DRLs on all the time. But as the last post said, driving with HVAC (especially forced air heating) ON most of time is an absolute killer!

The best way to get feedback on what may be affecting range, is to monitor you driving efficiency gauges. By checking the Average Efficiency reading, which displays for a few seconds to the right of the i/p at the end of your last drive, after you turn off the car, you can find out how "efficiently" your driving from day to day. This is NOT a round trip reading, but rather feedback for each and every On/Off "trip" cycle.

The same average efficiency reading appears on the center console, but in near real time, while displaying the "EV" app. This reading will give you continuous feedback while you are actually driving the car. If it starts going down, you are obviously driving LESS efficiently. If it goes up, just the opposite.

A driving efficiency reading of less than 3.0 (miles/kWh) is going to adversely impact your maximum range the next time you charge the battery. A reading greater than 3.0 generally contributes to more appreciable range, which will generally "reward" you on your next recharge. The higher the reading the better the effect on maximum battery range (after recharging). The lower the reading, the worse the effect. It's really just that simple!

I am officially claiming highest GOM range, and this was from an 80% "normal" charge!!!! No, I didn't just drive down a 10,000 feet mountain, or drive at 20mph for 100 miles previously. It just went nutty. Putting a lot of mental energy in the GOM is also nutty!!!! The Tesla is the only car that uses "rated range", so that a full charge will show substantially the same number, regardless of how you previously drove. I wish they had both that and a proper fuel gauge that shows energy above 80%.

This morning, I wasn't sure if I'd accidently charged to 100% (I had not, as the top 16th fuel bar segment extinguished at 9.1 miles of driving this morning). The temperature this morning was 57F/14C.

I drove 6.1 miles to see this:





9.2 miles driven, and now missing one fuel bar segment, therefore we can substantiate that the car was not charged to 100% today. Of course, based on the crazy GOM and the crazy fuel gauge, I could have taken off on a drive and come up WAY short:





My typical economy:

Tony, did you disconnect the (12V) battery cable before your last charge? Even so, how could you possibly get "167" miles of range from a STANDARD charge? Seems impossible unless your driving efficiency was a whooping 4.8mi/kWH before charging!!! Or, did something just get totally screwed up after the dealer replaced your drivetrain???

Btw, the second picture makes no sense. The max range reported above the CC display says, "167", while the GoM displays, "97". For a driving efficiency average of 2.8mi/kWh, as indicated on your center console, after a standard charge, you should have got a refreshed range reading on the GoM of around "98", which is what is shown in the second picture with no miles driven on the trip odometer. The "167" reading was obviously bogus!!!

Fwiw, my GoM has always displayed fairly accurate information and correlated reasonably well with respect to my cumulative average driving efficiency. Btw, I try not to reset that reading, so that it more closely reflects my overall driving "history".

Dsinned said:

Tony, did you disconnect the (12V) battery cable before your last charge? Even so, how could you possibly get "167" miles of range from a STANDARD charge? Seems impossible unless your driving efficiency was a whooping 4.8mi/kWH before charging!!! Or, did something just get totally screwed up after the dealer replaced your drivetrain???

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They did update the firmware with the motor last week, but all has been normal until this morning. I did not disconnect the battery (it would not have gone to 167 if I did).

I was losing about 2 miles on the GOM per actual mile driven. It just went nuts.

I can't seem to break above 2.9 miles/kwh. That's probably due to my living in SoCal, driving up and down mountains with passengers all day and using the AC consistently.

What I'm interested in is changing the scale of the efficiency screen. I don't need it to go to 10. A scale between 0 and 5 would suffice. Any way to change that?

Admitted lead foot here.......75/80 on normal charge & 95/100 on extended charge.......

Routinely get 112-113 miles on a normal 80% charge and about 131miles on extended.

in almost 4000 miles of owning the car, the "lowest" standard GOM range i've gotten at a full standard charge is about 96 miles and the "highest" about 113. I keep a log and i record milage (Odometer) and GOM *every time i turn off the car*.

One thing i do on long drives is also record the contents of the right hand screen (not the center display the little screen to the right of the Speedometer) when i turn off. It gives what i think is the most accurate information for th emost recent "drive".

I get about 2.9 mi/kwh when driving *up* to the mountains and about 3.7 mi/kwh when reversing the same drive downhill. (this is about a 120 mile drive).

My goal is someday do 120miles at 4.0 mi/kwh but i think i'll have to draft trucks *seriously* to do that, which scares me.

n3ckf said:

My goal is someday do 120miles at 4.0 mi/kwh but i think i'll have to draft trucks *seriously* to do that, which scares me.

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Nope, easy.

4 * 41.8kWh = 167 miles range

I have been actively trying to drive efficiently getting 3.2 to 3.8 Mikes/kWhr, but my mileage range on has decreased on over the last week. Last weekend went from 95 Mi for 80% charge to 73 Mi/80% charge. Extended only up to 97 Miles now. This does not make sense?

I brought to Toyota they stated no codes,updates from Tesla or Toyota, so Toyota did nothing.

Another strange issue is when I use AC the mileage only goes down by 3 miles in Eco Low, 4 Miles on Eco High, and 6 Miles on Normal AC. This is really strange because when I test drove other RAV4 EV's mileage went down by like 25 or 30 Miles when the AC was running.
I have 2013 Rav4ev w 870 miles on the car.

I opened a case w Toyota corporate to find out why I am not at 105 for an 80% charge.

Has anyone experience this odd behavior and how have you improved?

Thank you for any advice.

I'm getting about 139 mi on a full charge. It's perfect for getting me to Palm Springs and back. Seems to use more miles going home as I think there's more uphill driving (slightly).

David Grigg said:

I have been actively trying to drive efficiently getting 3.2 to 3.8 Mikes/kWhr, but my mileage range on has decreased on over the last week. Last weekend went from 95 Mi for 80% charge to 73 Mi/80% charge. Extended only up to 97 Miles now. This does not make sense?

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How many miles are you actually getting on a charge? For example, if you do a standard charge and then deplete the battery to only 2 bars of charge (of the 16 state of charge bars shown next to the GOM estimate), how many miles have you driven?

Doing an experiment like this will determine whether you are truly suffering reduced capacity or whether your GOM is just crazy. Each of the SOC bars should be roughly 2.1 kWh of energy for a new RAV4 EV.