New Car Arrived

[ernieb]

Picked up the new car today, over the moon just trying to come to grips with the Toyota app and settings.  Controls very similar to the Subaru, not surprising really as Toyota part own Subaru.

 

[roger_37]

4 minutes ago, ernieb said:

Picked up the new car today, over the moon just trying to come to grips with the Toyota app and settings.  Controls very similar to the Subaru, not surprising really as Toyota part own Subaru.

 

nice motor health to enjoy.

[flash22]

Toyota own 8.75% of Subaru's parent company when GM liquidated their assets 20 years ago later upping that to 16%

enjoy your new toy, time to invest in a step stool to clean the roof

[Trackpad]

That colour suits the car much better than the Tokio red in my opinion. Enjoy! 

[ernieb]

@roger_37, thanks especially for the “health to enjoy”

@flash22, thanks I think the last I read they had increased it to 20% and of course the new all electric Toyota and Subaru share a common development with Toyota having access to the Subaru all wheel drive train.

@Trackpad, agree the colour is good and suits the back roof and accents, thanks.

 

[flash22]

Well at least it isn't French like Nissan and Vauxhall are

It's a big slab of colour, but the black does break it up

[Rav Rob]

I had not bothered with the app much, but there has been a bit of car crime around my way recently and I realised the RAV4 had a built in tracker via the app! well its not live but shows where the car was last parked up and would be difficult for a thief to disable as its part the cars system via the emergency call facility.

Liking the Red - a lot!

[FROSTYBALLS]

.....  and Toyota and Subaru co-developed the GT86/BRZ and the new GR86/BRZ, which are both also built by Subaru.

[ernieb]

@Rav Rob,  the app has a “find my car” button.  Obviously right now my car on the drive but if I select the setting in the app, it shows a map and a car pin for the location.  I’ll try this out sometime when I’m parked and see how it works in a more real life situation.  I’m keen to try the preconditioning especially if it’s very how or cold, getting the car more comfortable when it’s being powered by the house mains could be useful.

 

[ernieb]

@FROSTYBALLS, it makes perfect sense when two companies use there expertise in a collaborative way to produce something better than they could individually.  It’s the only way to make any impact of the major players and also makes economic savings for both.

[ernieb]

“Find My Car” I’ve just played with the app and found that if I turn my phone towards the car the location marker shows a sector indicating the direction of the car and if I turn the phone away the display moves away from the car.  So by orientating the phone I can search for the car.  Hope that makes sense but I do need to try this in a more practical way. I’ve expanded the scale of the map to obscure my road name and location.

 

[ernieb]

Yesterday I had a couple of short trips to check out the car, all good I’m pleased to say and just enhanced my conclusions after the test drive.  The car said we’d returned a hybrid equivalent of 51.7mpg over optimistic I know but still better than I thought it might be.  The traction Battery was down to the reserve when we picked up the car so charged it overnight using one of the supplied cables, mains plug to Mode 2 type 2, and that worked OK.  I had spent time also yesterday registering the Navigation system and setting up the Toyota on-line account.  I managed to get it done but it’s complex, about 8 stages, luckily I’m not phased by such things and managed to work though and got it set up.  So this morning when I did the early run to Sainsbury’s I set the cars heating cooling remotely via the MyT app to 20 degrees that also worked well and it was nice to get into a comfortable car also the misted windows had cleared due to the internal heat.  In the winter I can switch on the front and rear window heaters.  This is all because the car was tethered to the car via the mains charging cable and uses the cars heat pump not resistive heating. It uses the house power rather than the traction Battery so that remained at 100%.  Very quiet except for the reversing sound, you have to hear it to believe it and seems to owe something from “Star Wars”. I did try forcing the ICE on but as the Battery was 100% it would not start as I think that once the engine fires the sound is cut.  I’ve seen a few reports of people trying reduce the volume but all seem to have failed, there no volume settings and I understand no OBD setting that can be changed.

Apologies if this all is normal to the forum members but it’s all very new to me.

[IanML]

Don't apologise - that was very interesting.  Keep it coming, please.

[philip42h]

31 minutes ago, ernieb said:

 Very quiet except for the reversing sound, you have to hear it to believe it and seems to owe something from “Star Wars”. I did try forcing the ICE on but as the battery was 100% it would not start as I think that once the engine fires the sound is cut.  I’ve seen a few reports of people trying reduce the volume but all seem to have failed, there no volume settings and I understand no OBD setting that can be changed.

The "EV alert" sound is required by law. It's there to give the poor pedestrians half a chance as you try to mow them down, and there's no way that you are going to be allowed to go into stealth mode to reduce their chances ... 😉

[PeteB]

40 minutes ago, philip42h said:

The "EV alert" sound is required by law. It's there to give the poor pedestrians half a chance as you try to mow them down, and there's no way that you are going to be allowed to go into stealth mode to reduce their chances ... 😉

not even for traffic wardens?  😁

[Rav Rob]

When I had an Outlander PHEV it had a button to switch the warning sound on or off, we used to call it assassin mode.

It was an odd metallic noise that carried quite far in that I became very attuned to it but other people were not really aware of it, if my wife was using it and I was outside my house, I could tell she was nearly home before she came round the corner at the end of my cul de sac.

Fuels economy yup OK, but I would be more excited to give it the full beans and see how quick it really is!! but I probably need to grow up haha!

[MrNuts]

That looks like a lovely motor, I like the colour as well.

 

[ernieb]

I’ve charged the car a couple of times now and have completed a number of local trips all using the EV, in fact, the ICE has not been used.  I’ll be doing some longer trips in a couple of days which will eat up the traction Battery and ensure the ICE gets used and then I can “run it in”.

So far I’ve been using the ECO mode and I’m surprised just how good the car performs even in this mode, I guess it’s a combination of the huge amount of instant torque that the electric motors have this available at any speed.  I’ve been achieving 3.5miles/KWh so a range of 48 miles per charge (I’ve not run the Battery out so just added my actual range to the cars estimate of range left) which I’m very happy with as I’ve had the AC and heating set on.

Interestingly the maths dose not work out if I calculate the performance against the installed Battery size, 18.1KW.  The fully electric range is only allowed to use 80% of the battery with 20% (3.5KW ish) being reserved for the car to use in its hybrid mode.  In addition I’ve found out that the car may say it’s 100% charged but actually stops when it’s around 95%.  This depends on temperature but also to allow for battery drop off with time to maintain the driven range.

Hope this is of interest to somebody?

[ernieb]

Quick update as I’ve had the car a couple of weeks and clocked up around 600 miles. Obviously I’m sticking to a running style of driving not that I’m aggressive anyway more defensive.  I’ve charged it 4 times and driven on EV for around 192 miles. I managed 45 miles on EV with an early start 6oC, very misty, lights on, windscreen wipers on and heating set to 20oC with AC outside air. (mostly motorway but variable speeds)  I’ve just filled the tank as I wanted to get an idea of the overall real HEV mpg.  I’ve used 6.24 gallons (first click as was the initial fill) so pretty accurate and the HEV has covered around 400 miles. (595 miles overall minus the EV 192 miles approx) and that says the HEV is around 64mpg. Unless anyone tells me I’ve got the calculation wrong?

I’ve noted a couple of things, when the EV mode transfers to HEV there is 30% traction Battery capacity left (as indicated by the MyT app) so more than I had expected.  When the traction Battery says full it’s not, I’ve read elsewhere that the reality is it’s around 95%.  This is evident in some ways as during last week we were located in Derbyshire at the top of a hill (above Matlock) with a fully charged, indicated 100%, when we drove out the charge screen showed the Battery being charged.  On the next day the same initial trip was started with a range of 6miles EV and had charged to 8 miles by the time we’d got into Matlock.