No, It’s Real: EV Range Down

Hopefully...

Still, a pretty big drop from 31-32ish a mere 5 months ago.

On the upside though, I can still get to most of the places I need to go day-to-day strictly in EV mode. When it was down to 25 miles, one twice-a-week destination didn’t quite make it...

 

Evenings have gone as low as the lower-mid-70s, although that only for the past few days, more typically mid-80s.

 

Data above: Charging 5.3-5.4 KWh from the HV threshold to full, estimated range from 25.x to 27.x miles.

No substantial difference in efficiency as far as I can tell — still on the order of 4.7 miles/KWh.

Hybrid Assistant = ?

 

Well, amount charged is hard data, although, yes, I agree that doesn’t say much about *why* those data values are down. Typical outdoor temperatures that I’ve reported might give hints.

I have a Carista thingie, but unfortunately haven’t had a chance to plug it in yet... BZ

“Phone app” = “Hybrid Assistant”?

 

I keep the car in one garage or another most of the time and, yes, almost always charge it in the garage at home or in a covered parking garage.

 

Ours at least is quite a bit cooler than outdoors.

 

Hmmm... The guesstimatron is up to 28.7 miles this time around. Unfortunately, I don’t know exactly how many KWh, since I didn’t discharge it quite to the HV threshold. Well, actually pretty darned close though: I discharged it down to 0.3 miles, and it charged 5.433KWh.

 

Mostly letting you folks hear what I’m seeing, since you folks haven’t seen this huge of a drop (yet at least!). “War stories,” so to speak. That, to give you an idea what you might see if any of you end up following in my footsteps!

It’s been reading 4.7 miles/KWh pretty consistently since I got it, and at least a rough manual calculation concurs that it should indeed be in that range.

The question is why it decided to stop charging as much, in particular in three distinct steps, from which it’s now gradually creeping back up. It’s highly likely that summer temperatures were at least one reason why it dropped.

Well, actually, what I most am wondering about is whether and how much of the 32ish original range I’ll eventually get back. That might just be a “time will tell” kind of thing.

 

(Reasonable question.) Not actual EV range, in detail.

BTW, this is the first time in 4ish months I’ve gotten home, after charging at work, and still had more than 10 miles of (predicted) EV range left. Before this strange drop, it had been more like 12ish.

 

Today was a curious case, and I think it’s more or less along the lines of what Bob mentioned:

I came coasting in to work on electron fumes (insert joke about Heisenberg and electron “clouds”). No chargers were available, so I parked it with 0.1 miles to spare.

When a charger came available and I fired it up to move it over to the charger, the Guesstimatron said 1.2 miles. Wanting to get a reading on it, I drove it ... less than “around the block,” until the ICE kicked in. I then plugged it in.

When it finished charging, the GoM estimated 27.5 +-0.2 miles (I forget the exact number). That’s less than the 28.7 estimate this morning after charging overnight. However, the interesting part is that ChargePoint reported charging 5.755KWh, which is considerably more than the 5.43KWh charged yesterday, and a lot more than I’ve seen for quite a while.

 

Well now, this is interesting: Charging an extra 0.32KWh probably didn’t translate to longer EV range; probably just compensated for the extra mile or so I drove to ultra-deplete the battery. I landed at home with only about 5 miles of range rather than 10 miles yesterday.

The biggest difference was that traffic went faster today, so more wind resistance and more power required.