2023 RAV4 PRIME

Two things I learned from the CCN videos. A lithium battery is most stable at half full. Charging it to full and not using it is bad practice. Apparently batteries have to be conditioned before they're charged so if you know your departure time Toyota has some sort of timer to take care of all of this when charging.

Of course gas going bad is an issue and ethanol free would be better to prevent rust/rot, etc. We do have ethanol free here but it's 91 octane so I'm not sure if that's the way to go. Best thing to do is drive it as a regular hybrid every once in a while. A road trip which seems routine these days would solve this without having to go to 91. I have 58 miles on the car but it says there's 8 miles left of EV so I guess regen has added some charge to the battery. It shows as slightly less than half full. I spent time sitting in the car with it on configuring the dash screen and the middle screen. Found out there's a compass in there ha ha. The old Toyota system allowed you to configure your home screen to 3 sub screens. The new setup doesn't have hard buttons anymore so it doesn't look like there's a way to configure the home screen. I love the fact that it defaults to whatever I was listening to last. With the Passport it always went to Apple music so I would have to ask Siri to play a playlist on Spotify every time the car was started.

I've barely heard the engine so I will put it in hybrid mode to get the engine circulating.

Really loving this white. Reminds me of a white Acura Integra I had which with smoked black windows. Thinking about getting some overlays to black out the chrome placards. I find all of this fun. This RAV gives you options. If it matches the regular hybrid mpg's I'll be charging it much less than I would have expected.

donc said:

How long does gas (with ethanol) usually last before starting to go bad ?

Click to expand...

Gasoline generally goes bad in three ways...

1) volatility - gasoline will lose volatility over time, and this will degrade engine performance over time. Good news is that you can just add fresh gas, burn it off and get back to your original performance. Volatility can depend on fuel composition which can vary from season to season, region to region and even state to state.

2) exposure to air - the hydrocarbons in gasoline react with oxygen and form new compounds such as gum and varnish that can clog up fuel lines as well as carburetors and injectors. Oxidized gasoline can smell sour and have a dark color to it.

3) exposure to moisture - most E-free gasoline performs well as long as it doesn't get too much water contamination. If it does get water contamination, then the addition of alcohol (ethanol or HEET, for example) can help bring it back to performance standards.

However, if gasoline containing ethanol is exposed to too much water, at some point it can't absorb any more water, and you run into performance problems. Sometimes you can add additional alcohol, if your engine can handle it. Otherwise, may need to drain the gas and start fresh. Point is, you have some ability to recover e-free gasoline once it's compromised, but very little ability to recover ethanol once it goes bad.


All of that said, I've had e-free easily last a year, and ethanolized gas last for up to a year in a dry environment. Most experts seem to recommend 3-6 months, maybe even less, somewhat depending on the humidity in your environment, how protected your fuel system is from the environment, as well as temperature swings responsible for condensation if water vapor is able to get into your fuel system.

Moreover, if you purchase fuel from a filling station that has low turnover (sells less gas, so therefore has older gas in the bulk tank), the life of your fuel will likely be less.

Adding a preservative like Sta-bil can prolong the life of gasoline for up to a year. I would avoid using it past a year, though.

Modern fuel systems tend to insulate fuel from air and moisture a little better than older systems, but you still need to follow above precautions.

Getting off-topic here, but you do not want to use ethanol in an older engine or fuel system that has never used ethanol before. This isn't much of a problem in the auto industry, but is a huge problem in the marine industry, older power equipment and classic cars. The main issue here is that you have older fuel tanks that have built up crud over the years. Ethanol is a cleaner and will scrub the crud from the fuel tank walls, and that crud will then clog fuel lines, fuel filters and other components (such as fuel injectors or jets in carbs).

In the marine industry, there are a lot of older boats with built-in fuel systems. These boats are often re-powered with newer engines. The engines will run fine on ethanol, but the fuel systems on the boats can't handle it. This is why ethanol is such a huge controversy in the marine industry. Fuel suppliers in marinas offer e-free, but it comes at quite a premium cost. Just another over-inflated cost for boaters.

Sorry, I'll get off my soapbox before I really get into a rant about all of the environmental damage that ethanol has caused....

Just loving the drive of this thing. Love the way it pulls off the line, out of turns and eats hills!! Battery now drained, time for first charge. Almost have decoupled my brain from the Honda setup except for the radio controls on the left side of the steering wheel and the Passport automatically going to park when shutting the engine off. Glad to be rid of that push button shifter and stop start. This thing is good and fun.

Found some charging info from the app. Not sure what they mean because for the first charge it was supposedly empty. When I charged today it was around half full. Either way if the kWh are actuals there are some savings.