Highlander Traction Battery
 

Has anybody with a Highlander Hybrid every seen the traction battery indicate fully charged? I have owned my HiHy just over a month and have seen the traction battery indicate green and 1 bar from the top twice. I have never seen it indicate completely charged. Most of the time it is two bars from the top and a purple color. It goes red when its two bars from the bottom. The 2 or 3 times I have seen it in the red it only took 15 minutes or so of driving and it was back to 2 bars from the top. Also, if the batteries are never fully charged, can that effect the FE or Bias the ICE to run more often, or kick in sooner under acceleration.

Thanks,
AZJet:lightbulb

Re: Highlander Traction Battery
 

The intent is that the battery is never fully charged or discharged (or...very rarely). Keeping it in the mid-range is actually better for battery life.

Re: Highlander Traction Battery
 

My understanding is that the gauge that we see doesn't represent 100 to 0 percent, or rather the limited 80 to 20 percent full, that the software will allow the battery to charge/discharge to.

Does that make sense?

Re: Highlander Traction Battery
 

Of course that makes sense, but that would mean i'm not even getting up to 80% charge.

Re: Highlander Traction Battery
 

Exactly. That's how the battery/hybrid system components can be warranteed for 8 years/100,000 miles (10 years/150,000 miles in CA, maybe other low-emission states?)

Allow for more discharge and charge and you get the hybrid myth that batteries need replacement every 3 years.

Re: Highlander Traction Battery
 

The display is actually showing 40% to 81%. Go to...

www.privatenrg.com for a nice graphic on the display (near the bottom). This site also shows a lot of other neat things about the technology. It is about Prius I and Prius II but I suspect a lot of the information will apply to the hihy and lexhy.

Re: Highlander Traction Battery
 

This is normal behavior. In fact, when Toyota hybrids get up past the blue bars (or purple, depending on perception), the car will make an extended effort to "burn off" the extra charge (green bars) bringing it back to two-bars-from-full. The Prius will go so far as to cycle the gas engine on-off-on-off-on-off at a stop light just to burn off charge when it's indicating full green.

You want extra capacity in the battery for prolonged regen periods. If the battery was always "full," you wouldn't have any place to put regenerative braking.

Hope that makes sense.

-Drew

Re: Highlander Traction Battery
 

hi

we were wondering about that ourselves -never being able to keep the battery full.

makes sense. Thanks for the info:)

Re: Highlander Traction Battery
 

An article at http://www.forbes.com/2006/05/26/toy...0530flint.html says:

Re: Highlander Traction Battery
 

hi

read the article. He is very knowledgeable. I also know that Toyota and Honda especially, know all about plug in tech much better than anyone.

However, it does appear to me the author talks about a 'today' battery stance vs one perhaps 2 or 5 years down the road. With Global tensions, cost of war, and price of oil, i suspect it will be the former time frame rather than the latter.

:D