[kcfoxie]

Hey electric drivers...

So I've had my car two years. It's done this several times -- usually in spring or fall (so temp related?) -- and I've confirmed with at least one other local owner that they've seen it on their 2014. Seems to mostly happen if HVAC is in use, in fact, the other owner said cycling the HVAC usually "fixes it."

Here's the problem: https://twitter.com/ecodweeb/status/872467594439208960?s=09

In that video, I have over 20% SOC, but 0 miles remaining. This morning, my friend took the car and I know it was fully charged because I got the push notifications from EvAccess that it had started charging and stopped charging. This morning he gets into it, and it shows 85% SOC and not 100%. He calls me somewhat panicked, and I tell him this is just a quirk of the car, not to worry. I start monitoring his drive from the EvAccess app, and it showed 84%, then later 89%, finally he was at 87% when he arrived at the dentist office. The range was there, but it wasn't properly indicated.

Sometimes it's the SOC, sometimes it's just mileage. I've seen it where it's both -- the SOC will jump and you can watch the Miles Remaining quickly count up one digit at a time (it'll go from 40 to 63 miles counting one at a time very quickly).

Anyone else seen this behavior? Any thoughts on what's causing it?

 

[Tony Margulis]

I have a 2014, my SOC guage has never had problems. The miles remaining however can be wildly innacurate. It's just based on your most recent few miles of driving. I recently left with a full charge and my miles remaining was 55. 10 miles later my miles remaining were 60. Checkout your trip odo and miles remaining when your SOC is at 50%. At 50% SOC they should be equal numbers (for example 31 miles driven and 31 remaining) but they never are. Your SOC guage should be accurate though. If it says 85% when you really have 100% I would be a little concerned about that.

 

[InjuredAgain]

I've seen some oddities, though nothing as severe as what you describe, which makes me believe the SOC meter is not merely a coulomb counter but that some input from the battery pack us used to either partly modify or fully determine what is displayed as the SOC. My oddities also happen during colder weather and have disappeared now that we are consistently warmer.

 

[kcfoxie]

It's a little Annoying that it is not giving me the appropriate state of charge immediately, but it does correct itself. I'm just wondering what causes it to not report the full capacity, and it's really interesting to see the mileage literally start to count up as the state of charge level is accurately reported.

 

[InjuredAgain]

I took my 15 ED in for service because I was told it had an outstanding campaign to update the battery management software. It is campaign 2006060002, and updated my software from 2013/29/1 to 2014/18/0, both as reported by Len Sokoloff's battery test device.

In the last couple of days, we've driven it nearly 200 miles and several things are clearly different. First, the remaining range seems to be calculated differently. Previously, the remaining range reported was ultra conservative, and what it seemed to do was to report range remaining until 20%, at which point the battery is "in reserve". Now, it reports remaining range that would result from running the battery down to somewhere around 5%. It still fluctuates but if the driving throughout the range has been pretty consistent, the range remaining is now really pretty accurate.

With the older software, being in regen down a long hill would move the SOC meter a minimal amount, and then the first longish acceleration would cause the SOC to drop back down. With the new software, the SOC meter shows about twice the gain on the same hill, and that charge is only slowly used during subsequent driving.

Which leads to the last thing, which seems to be that range is better by a few percent. On a rainy, windy 50 degree F. day, with small amounts of 65 MPH freeway driving, we got 75 miles with 5% remaining. The android EVAccess app is now showing the charging rate at between 1.7 and 1.8 kW, which only happened during 70 degree days last summer and dropped down to 1.3 or 1.4 kW max as temperatures dropped.

I haven't noticed any oddities in the SOC meter at all during the past two days like I had previously seen.

 

[InjuredAgain]

Well, for the first time, I got **three** email notifications this morning saying our smart had finished charging. They were each about a half hour apart. I just ran a battery check and everything looks fine. I typically get two notifications during the colder parts of our year, and yesterday was a cooler day where the garage temps were more typical of February or March.

 

[kcfoxie]

I'm already running software 2014/18/0, par the scan results I took this morning. I'll check my other cars and see what they report.