500 Miles

[markminnc]

Arrived home last night and plugged in my charger as is becoming my habit. The car normally takes 2-2.5 hours to charge after a 48 mile commute. The battery normally is in the 40-50 mile remaining range when the charge begins. I went out to the garage an hour or so later and heard a strange noise. Opened the garage and it was coming from the car. The battery cooling was on including the electric fan in the lower grill. First time I have noted that happening.

The car began with a full charge indicating about 70 miles. That number has progressively increased and this morning the battery range was showing 112 miles. So, the car does learn and predicts range based on historical drive parameters.

I have also noted that the system tends to drop miles off the range on the start of a full charge trip quickly. My commute is 22 miles one way. I normally will show about a 30 mile drop in battery range on my morning commute and a 20 mile drop on my evening commute.

Today I noted that after my morning commute of 22 miles I have 88 miles remaining which is the highest so far.

Mark

 

[jmueller065]

Yeah I'm seeing that as well (after 700 miles). The discharge rate, at least as shown by the "range gauge", doesn't seem to be linear at all. At first it drops like a rock and by the time I get to work (15 mile commute) it says -10 miles. Then on my way home I usually pick up +7 to +9 of those -10 miles!

 

[davideos]

It all depends on how and where you drive. The "miles remaining" is a good gage if you are driving consistently on a flat grade, but even a slight uphill or downhill commute will distort the numbers. For instance, I have a slightly downhill commute to work. I also drive 75 or so MPH on the freeway for 10 of the 14 miles. If there is some traffic that slows me down, I can get to work with the same number of miles displayed as when I left the house. Going home, it is quite the opposite, it is a slight uphil grade. Depending on how I drove to work the car will give a give a prediction based on how I drove the car. If I was ultra conservative driving in, it will give me a high estimate. If I drove fast, then a low estimate. So when driving home, since it is uphill, I'll usually loose many miles, but that depends on what its prediction was vs how many I actually used..

But the truth is in the Wh/mile. When you turn the car off, it will tell you what your average was for the trip...or go to myfordmobile and see how you are did. If you see a high estimate, go back and look at myfordmobile and see what your last trip was like. One time I drove up hill for an entire 6mi trip. The Wh/mi was so bad, it gave me a lousy predition when I got in the car to go home. However, since it was all downhill, I was using much less than 100Wh/mi. Based on my remaining charge, by the time I got home, it predicted I could go another 50 miles and I only had a quarter charge left! But that 50mi is based on the burn rate of coming home downhill.

Your best guage is to look at the percentage of charge left. If you typically get 80mi on a charge and you have 50% left, regardless of what the guage says, you have about 40mi left. If your trip will be freeway and uphill, figure you have 25mi. If surface streets and downhill, figure you have 60mi left. Everyone is different, but you get used to it.

 

[jmueller065]

Right; but my Wh/mile is consistently in the 240s regardless of where I'm driving (its basically flat around these parts).

 

[jeffand]

Yes the range estimate drops right away when I start out on a trip. Since the first thing you do is accelerate car. The range predicting software sees the high charge usage, and starts using this to predict how far you can travel. The good news is as you drive along it averages down the one time acceleration in its calculation.