ALL POSTS about Charge Timer Failure

[waidy]

Yes, have 70C proximity interrupt added to J1772 inlet. Use Clipper Creek CS-100 at 40 amps, with ITT 75 amp cable and J1772 nozzle/plug.

After talking to my son who is driving the Rav today, he used the department timer and set it to end at 5pm (I forgot to tell him that everyone is having problem with Rav's timer). Therefore, I have concluded the charging failure is "timer" related, like everyone else.

 

[TeCKis300]

My car failed to charge again today.

Mine too!

Me three. May be the Ravs don't like January 31?

Mine 4!

And I thought it was my fault as I changed some delay timers the night before...though nothing was amiss in what I had set: Charge only departure @ 5:00AM, Charge and Climate @ 6:40AM

On Toyota recommended Leviton 40amp charger.

 

[SeaMonster]

Tony and SeaMonster: What are the EVSEs you are using? I was using ChargePoint. Also, were both of your charges a timer charge (via departure time programing)? Were they extended charge or normal charge? Lastly, does your inlets has the thermo control upgrade (mine does).

I have the Toyota recommended 40A Leviton. The charging is all done by timer. My schedule is simple: Charge only (no climate) for a 7am departure every single morning.

What is the "thermo control upgrade"?? Is that on the charger or vehicle? How do I know if I have it?

 

[waidy]

What is the "thermo control upgrade"?? Is that on the charger or vehicle? How do I know if I have it?

Here is the details. Basically, the thermo control is installed in the Rav4EV's inlet to control and prevent overheating by faulty J-plug (especially the one in Blink). It doesn't come with the Rav and Toyota does not offer it as an option. You either have to do it yourself or contact evseupgrade.com (in Berkeley) to get it installed.

 

[Dsinned]

Cheap insurance and would be a nice safety feature on ALL BEVs. ALL EVs should come from the factory with a thermal protection sensor like that. Doesn't look like it would cost much; maybe a buck or two in commonly available parts.

 

[TeCKis300]

And of course, everything worked as expected and she charged just fine last night. I didn't change or touch a thing except for it being Feb 1st.

If this is truly a bug in the system, it will get old fast.

 

[waidy]

"Charge Now" feature on EnTune does not work for us. Does it work for any one?

Knowing the charge timer doesn't work, Darren purposely set the timer at 7am for a designation time of 5pm, he then plugged in the J connector and noted the estimated "time start" (9:30am) on the dash. He then left the garage for work.

At 10am, he checked the charging status via EnTune. Not charging (not surprise), so he initiated a charging session via EnTune using the "charge now" button. After many pushes, he concluded that the "charge now" feature does not work and went to the garage and manually force a charging session.

Please advise of your experiences using enTune's "charge now" feature.

 

[TonyWilliams]

"Charge Now" feature on EnTune does not work for us. Does it work for any one?

... Please advise of your experiences using enTune's "charge now" feature.

I have had it start charging with EnTune after a timer charge failure. Perhaps poor AT&T phone service in the garage?

 

[waidy]

"Charge Now" feature on EnTune does not work for us. Does it work for any one? ... Please advise of your experiences using enTune's "charge now" feature.

I have had it start charging with EnTune after a timer charge failure. Perhaps poor AT&T phone service in the garage?

Good thinking. We will try again when the Rav is parked in a good AT&T signal area.

 

[Dsinned]

Tony, my thoughts exactly. Entunes is unreliable when you are in a poor signal reception area. Better to have the car parked outdoors (of course, when its not raining) for this reason alone.

 

[Dsinned]

"Charge Now" feature on EnTune does not work for us. Does it work for any one?

Knowing the charge timer doesn't work, Darren purposely set the timer at 7am for a designation time of 5pm, he then plugged in the J connector and noted the estimated "time start" (9:30am) on the dash. He then left the garage for work.

At 10am, he checked the charging status via EnTune. Not charging (not surprise), so he initiated a charging session via EnTune using the "charge now" button. After many pushes, he concluded that the "charge now" feature does not work and went to the garage and manually force a charging session.

Please advise of your experiences using enTune's "charge now" feature.

I would have to agree that using Entune to initiate a "Charge Now" is quite unreliable. Last night I had to do many attempt to get it to work. I probably tried at least 6 times before it finally initiated the "Charge Now" command.

At the time my RAV4 EV was parked outside in my driveway while plugged in to my Leviton EVB32 (7.7KW) series EVSE L2 charger. I tried both WiFi and 4G on my iPhone 4S and it did not initiate either way, but I think it finally worked on WiFi. Of course, it is possible my signal strength on 3G/4G was too weak at only 3 bars. However, my phone still works good enough to make a cellular call from inside the home, so that probably is not the cause of the Entune "Charge Now" failures.

Later today I need to take a long trip (~100 miles), so I set it to do an extended charge last night which started at 9:22pm (PG&E's off peak rate on weekends) and completed at 3:22am this morning, for a total duration of 6 hours. I started with 9 miles on the GoM and after completion, my range gauge went up to 119 miles. This implies the car has normalized my recent driving efficiency with respect to the GoM, to about 2.9mi/kWh, or perhaps it is because of the relatively cold OAT (<50F) at the time of this charge. Hmmm, I wonder . . . . as my driving efficiency indicated in the Entune ECO Dashboard is currently at 3.3mi/kWh!

Here's a graph that show the charging event on my Home Energy Monitor (HEM):

https://www.enerati.com/Electricity/ConfigDashboard.aspx?param1=NzM0&param2=NTU0&param3=ODAwMDAxMDAxMDAwNDAwMjkwMDAwMDAyMDAwMjAwMDA=

Note, that the total kWh usage, according to my HEM, for this charge was 42.12kWh. The maximum output power near the end of the charge was 7.7kW which seems about right for my EVSE. Since I did not start with a fully depleted battery, it did not receive a 100% charge of its full capacity of 41.8kWh. I started with 9 miles on the range gauge, which Entunes said was at ~15% of full capacity. So, doin the math, the actual amount of charge put back in the battery was ~85% of total 41.8kWh capacity, or ~35.5kWh. Thus, in terms of efficiency, consuming 42.12kWh seems about right at an overall charging efficiency of ~85% from the EVSE to the battery pack.

Also note, as can be seen in my HEM graph, that this charge did not exhibit the phenomena of a post charge completion "balancing" top off charge at a substantially lower power level. I have observed this mostly several hours after the completion of a "standard" charge. However, by zooming in on this graphs toward the tail end of the extended charge around 3am to 3:30am, it is apparent there was a slowly decreasing charge level accepted by the battery during the last 20 minutes. Fwiw, this behavior is exactly the same as I see whenever fully recharging my Chevy VOLT.

 

[Dsinned]

***UPDATE***
Just a few minutes after I last posted here, while still monitoring my RAV4 EV in the driveway still plugged in and totally undisturbed, it resumed charging all by itself. It resumed at ~9:22am, 6 hours after the previously completed charge! At first, it spiked quite high to over 6kW, then varied irratically for several minutes, while slowly dropping down, eventually leveling off at around 600 watts. This belated charging event finally ended at 10:08am for a total duration of 30 minutes.

I went out to listen to the car while it was still at 600 watts to hear if anything like a coolant pump or fan was running somewhere, but I could not hear anything. Both LEDs inside the back window above the charge port were ON initially, then turned OFF about the same time the 600W charging was still in progress. My EVSE indicated it was in the active "charging" mode during this 30 minute period.

Now, look again at my updated HEM graph (link given again below) and you can see what I am describing. Apparently there really is post-charge, resumed charge balancing - top off event that generally happens well after the first, or main, charging event. In this case, the gap between the two charging events was nearly 6 hours from the end of the much longer main charge to the start of the 30 minute topping charge.

https://www.enerati.com/Electricity/ConfigDashboard.aspx?param1=NzM0&param2=NTU0&param3=ODAwMDAxMDAxMDAwNDAwMjkwMDAwMDAyMDAwMjAwMDA=

Oh and btw, Entunes now indicates my range is 120 miles (bumped up by 1 mile during the topping charge) and my departure time is still scheduled for 10am, which is was I last set it to be. It also says my last charge completed at 9:41am, but according to my HEM it did not actually complete until 10:08am. So, this again PROVES the scheduler is faulty, or at least confused, because of the seemingly randomness of this balancing/topping charge event. Thus, the car cannot really tell when a "Charge Now" or scheduled charge actually ends, at least not accurately, and neither can any of us as owner/drivers of the RAV4 EV! :?

 

[waidy]

***UPDATE***
....It resumed at ~9:22am, 6 hours after the previously completed charge! .... This belated charging event finally ended at 10:08am for a total duration of 30 minutes.
.... In this case, the gap between the two charging events was nearly 6 hours from the end of the much longer main charge to the start of the 30 minute topping charge.

Thanks for sharing your experience on cell balancing on the new Rav4EV.

This is very inconvenience if I have to leave the Rav to plug-in at least 6 hours after 100% refill to get cell balance. I don't like my EVs sitting at 100% because it allows the battery to discharge itself.

 

[Dsinned]

Waidy, I think the point of the subsequent cell balancing & topping charge would be to more accurately FULLY CHARGE the battery. The computer probably only "schedules" that to be done every once in a while, like after an "extended" charge, but probably not after EVERY standard recharge.

It may also be that in order to allow sufficient time to do a topping charge, even if only for a much short duration, this may be the reason why our cars get out of sync with the expected completion time of a scheduled charge. Every time I have noticed the occurence of this "extra" topping off charging mode, it has been fairly close to the scheduled end time setting; actually about 8 minutes beyond the expected completion time. This may be because I have a 32A Leviton charger instead of the "recommended" 40A charger, so a topping charge takes a few minutes longer, although I highly doubt this is the reason.

While on the subject, it occurs to me, there may be no need for any cell balancing and certainly not a so-called "topping charge" for a standard charge, since the battery is not actually fully charged in that case. Cell balancing may still be necessary nevertheless, which seeks to equalize the voltage across all cells in the battery pack so they are all equally charged to the same capacity, (even though still below 100% of full capacity).

The time gap between an extended charge (or standard charge) and the point in time to do cell balancing/topping charge may be a variable. The idle time duration could depend on the initial charging start time and the type of EVSE L2 EVSE (40A, 32A or 30A). Although, I have no idea why there needs to be any "gap" at all.

I wish there was a Tesla battery engineer on here that could enlighten us. :?

 

[Brandy]

For those having trouble with Entune. Last week I was having trouble Entune or the phone did not know which Entune was acting stupid. I went into the 'Application manager' (Android) and did a force quit on Entune. Entune restarted and worked perfectly the first time.

Now I do not wait for Entune to go brain dead as soon as I see it acting confused I do a Forced Quit and restart the app.

=D~~Brandy

 

[elia72]

I was not mad until I read this post, because yesterday I called my dealer (Davis, CA) regarding this, they had never heard of it and transferred me to a special Toyota headquarters line where I told my story and they put me on hold for 20 minutes while he researched the issue and came back and told me Toyota had never heard of it, blamed it for using a clipper creek and public charging stations and told me to go to the dealership for a official diagnoses.

I've had the same problems discussed, maybe worse. I'm up to almost 2,000 miles with no luck using the timer.

1. The timer has NEVER charged by the ready time. Either:
a) 9 out of 10 times it charges immediately, even if ready time is 12 hours away. BUT, if i unplug it just after it starts, wait 20 seconds for it to restart, plug back in, then it goes to standby mode 100% of the time. 1 out of 10 times it automatically goes to standby mode.
b) Once on standby mode, it has never been close to done by the ready time. most frequently, when I go out at ready time, it has only been charging for 20 minutes, if at all. I have played with the timer trying to find how much it is off by so I could just adjust accordingly, but cannot find any real pattern worth betting on.

2. I have never gotten the pre-climate to work. I was convinced it didn't work for pre-heating and was only for cooling. It's hardly been over 60 degrees since I bought the car, so I have not even tried to cool it yet on the timer. I'm excited to hear the heater is supposed to work on pre-climate so maybe someday it will work

Moral of the story, I have never gotten the timer to work even close, under various public and private charging stations (all mostly clipper creek) and various starting battery levels.

Otherwise we love the car

 

[Dsinned]

I just sent a request to Leviton Tech Support regarding this matter. It can't hurt to turn up the heat a little by bringing Leviton in on this issue. Afterall, it could conceivably give them a "black eye" as well as Toyota and/or Tesla.

 

[SeaMonster]

Toyota sent two techs to my dealer today and they installed the monitoring device. It connects to the diagnostic ports in the front and back. Unfortunately I won't get photos because they installed it in the side panels and packed foam around it to prevent rattling. They unmounted the connectors in both locations so that their equipment could be connected without sticking out. So basically I can see nothing without undoing panels and I don't want to disturb anything. But it is recording info from both the Toyota and Tesla halves of the car.

They want me to wait for a charge failure and then keep recording for 7 days after that. Then they'll remove it and search through the records.

More news as I get it.

 

[SeaMonster]

1. The timer has NEVER charged by the ready time. Either:
a) 9 out of 10 times it charges immediately, even if ready time is 12 hours away. BUT, if i unplug it just after it starts, wait 20 seconds for it to restart, plug back in, then it goes to standby mode 100% of the time. 1 out of 10 times it automatically goes to standby mode.

...

2. I have never gotten the pre-climate to work. I was convinced it didn't work for pre-heating and was only for cooling. It's hardly been over 60 degrees since I bought the car, so I have not even tried to cool it yet on the timer. I'm excited to hear the heater is supposed to work on pre-climate so maybe someday it will work

Are you sure you are in the right mode? The car can be in immediate charge mode or scheduled mode. In immediate mode, the schedule will never be used. Note: changing mode is different than just pressing "charge immediately" on the shutdown screen. Also I don't think pre-climate will work on a schedule if you are in immediate mode. I recommend always staying in schedule mode, and when you need an immediate charge, do that on the shutdown screen or via Entune.

 

[Ampster]

............... I don't like my EVs sitting at 100% because it allows the battery to discharge itself.

I have not had that experience with other Lithium batteries. Could you explain what you mean by "discharge itself"?