Need Help* 02 Rav4 EV Just Purchased Stals out after seconds

[WuTangUsaLa2]

so i just purchased an 02 Rav4 with 80k on it . . came with magne charge station . . bought it from auction unseen . . got it charged for like an hour . . after charge it drove for like 7 minutes fine . . then a turtle light came on and the car stalled . . turned it on and got it home . . after that every time i turn it on it only drives for 10 seconds at a time then it stalls out then the turtle light comes on . . anybody hear of anything like this? i searched the internet and cant find anything on the early rav4's . . i hooked up a obd2 scanner but it doesn't seem to communicate with the car . . need some help . .

 

[TonyWilliams]

so i just purchased an 02 Rav4 with 80k on it . . came with magne charge station . . bought it from auction unseen . . got it charged for like an hour . . after charge it drove for like 7 minutes fine . . then a turtle light came on and the car stalled . . turned it on and got it home . . after that every time i turn it on it only drives for 10 seconds at a time then it stalls out then the turtle light comes on . . anybody hear of anything like this? i searched the internet and cant find anything on the early rav4's . . i hooked up a obd2 scanner but it doesn't seem to communicate with the car . . need some help . .

Well, thanks for being a pioneer! There are only about 300-ish of these cars driving around, so it's a exclusive club indeed.

I'm going to make a well educated guess... your battery is shot. There is a company in Sacramento that can rebuild it.

Good luck.

 

[jgblair]

Hi and welcome to the club. I have both a 1st Gen (2002) and a 2nd Gen (2013). I love the little 1st Gen RAV. I removed the rear seats to have more room to carry dogs and stuff. A good resource for the 1st Gen is the forum:

https://pairlist5.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/rav4-ev

This is a mailing list where a lot of very knowledgeable 1st Gen owners hang out and are available to answer questions. Also, visit: http://evnut.com/

Darrell has done a lot of cool modifications to his 1st Gen and posts them on that website.

Tony may be right about the battery needing to be refurbished (no new batteries are available for the 1st Gen). Battery MD in Sacramento handles all of the battery refurbishments for the 1st Gen cars and are the experts in the field. My cars battery was refurbished by them before I bought it and I was fortunate to tour their very modern and high tech facility.

You said you charged it for an hour. What was the state of charge (SOC) before and after the charge? I would first try charging it for the full amount of time until the charger shuts off and note the SOC before and after. If your car is really empty, it should take at least 5-6 hours to charge. Every 10th charge cycle the charge runs longer to balance the battery pack. According to Battery MD, you should charge your car whenever the SOC drops below 80%. In my case, for short trips around town, it gets charged every other day. For longer trips, I charge when I get home. It is generally not good for the battery to drive when the turtle comes on. In general, you should not drive when the SOC gets down into the yellow and red areas. It can stress the battery. Same thing is true for the voltage meter: keep it in the green. Your scanner has to have a special program to read the RAV. The people on the forum are much more knowledgeable about that than I am. I have a Palm that I bought used on eBay with a special program that plugs into the OBD port that shows SOC and lots of other information. One of the guys on the forum provides the cable and software if he still has any available.

Good luck with your new toy!

John
John Blair

 

[miimura]

Maybe somebody on the First Generation Facebook Group can help you.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/915465945155204/

 

[Promedic]

Hi WuTangUsaLa2,

I also bought a 00 Rav4 EV at Ebay and the car has the same problem.
I think Tony is right, but to find out exactly, you need the data via OBDii connector (Error codes and internal resistance of the batteries)
The Regeneration of the batteries costs about 8500.- at BatteryMD - that was to expensive to me so I found a specialist for battery resuscitaton - the Austrian Battery Resarch Laboratory. They already did the first 3 batteries with verry good result (92% of the original capacity), now they try do regenerate the rest. Till now it was not necessary to change single cells. When they finish this project, they will give me the data and i will publish them in this forum.

Kind regards from Austria

Clemens

 

[fred_dot_u]

I hope this isn't out of place here, but the thread does seem directed at and for the legacy Rav4EV owners.

Until recently, we had a pair of these pioneering vehicles, purchased used at pre-EV-world-dominance market prices, about half retail. With the plethora of production EVs now available, the market price has certainly fallen. It makes the vehicles no less valuable to the owners, in my opinion.

I'm hopeful the new owners of our legacy models will enjoy them as much as I did.

More to the point, one of the tools we had to keep our enjoyment level as high as it was is the factory-grade OBDII scan tool with the Rav4EV specific personality module. Too many functions and features for me to fully understand and use, but the most valuable by far is the ability to read and reset error codes.

Another feature of importance is the ability to read impedance values of the battery pack.

The various resources on the 'net for the legacy models have noted a few other settings and features I've not used with the tool, including the ability to turn on the pack fans in manual mode. This was a method involving reducing pack voltage gently to the point where all batteries were as low as possible, allowing for a bottom-balancing to be performed with more accuracy than other methods.

I still have the tool in hand, including all cables and a spare NiCd battery pack. The individual AA cells in the packs are user replaceable, which is good, as they die from lack of use, as the tool is generally powered by the OBDII and it was a waste of money for me to purchase new a dozen cells when I first bought the device (used) many years ago.

Even though the major traffic here is more-or-less founded in Australia, I would be willing to sell to the land down under with shipping charges added, which I understand is somewhat pricey.

Eventually, I'll post it on eBay, but for now, it's going to sell at US$850 plus shipping, check or money order. Paypal wants too much extortion for its cut.