Analysis of a replacement battery.

[notfred]

It's not the range but the State Of Health of the battery that determines whether it gets replaced. You can use Soul EV Spy on an Android phone with a bluetooth OBDII dongle to read it.

[JejuSoul]

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Just looked at the charging profile of my replacement battery for the first time.
I don't charge to 100% very often and hadn't plotted this data before.
(Edit - I do have a similar plot from March 9th 2020. That one doesn't have this oddity.)

This is a 28.8A charge from 40% SOC to 100% SOC.



The battery is fully charged at 96.5% SOC. The last 3.5% of displayed SOC didn't add anything into the battery.
The BMS for a 27kWh car is built for the old battery cells, clearly it doesn't work correctly with the newer higher capacity cells.
They told me the BMS had been upgraded to cope, but is not working in this real example.

Note the energy added is equivalent to a battery capacity of 30.4kWh. It was fully charged. I haven't 'lost' anything.
The final resting voltage at 100% SOC is 397.1V
My other car a 27kWh with SOH = 96% has a final resting voltage at 100% SOC of 398.0V

The voltages are the same, the difference is that the old cells are 37.5Ah, the new cells are 40.0Ah.
(Parallel cell pairs will have 75.0Ah, and 80.0Ah.)

Also of note - a MY2018 30kWh Soul EV has a final resting voltage at 100% SOC of 410.0V
This has 100 cells, each charged to 4.10V
My car has 96 cells, each charged to 4.146V

I assume this means there is a much larger buffer on the MY2018 30kWh Soul EV than a MY2015 replacement battery 30kWh Soul EV.

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[RaleighRon]

Thanks for the info. I bought a "KONNWEI KW902 Mini BT Wireless OBD-II" - surprisingly inexpensive - the red one was less than $6 on Amazon, and then purchased Soul EV Spy app (Android only, as you said), and it worked great!

It told me I have 63% SOH (State of Health) - below the 70% warranty level. So, I have opened a ticket at Kia Customer Support website for battery replacement. At least, it's the start of probably a long process, as I'm in NC and nearest "qualified EV" Kia dealer is hundreds of miles away.

[JejuSoul]

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My replacement battery has now done 10,000km in ten months.
It is doing very well. It has lost 0.1% of capacity.



This is better than any other car we have data for.
Previous record holders were Elmil in Sweden, and SoulEV2016 in France. They both charged at 10A (~2kWh).
I always charge at 32A (~6kWh).

My assumption now is that the newer E400 cell not only has higher capacity but also degrades slower than the original E375.
This fits with the lack of data we have have from any 30kWh Soul EVs with degradation.
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Here is a list of the various ROM-IDs for each of the BMS Firmware updates on the original Soul EV.



This is badly translated from the Korean as is so often the case with Hyundai / Kia.
E4050 - 'Elevated Temp' actually means with Battery Heater.
E4000 - 'Non-Heating' means without Battery Heater.

My replacement battery is an E4200 - It has the new cells and no Battery Heater. I must have version 5702 BMS firmware.
MY17 in the lower section should be MY18 to match the actual pack I got.



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[JejuSoul]

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After 1 year and 12,500km the replacement battery is still doing really well.
Still 0.1% deterioration loss.

Here's the winter range at 7C. 197km is also the winter range as measured last March when the battery was new.



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The only issue with the car this year was yesterday. I left the car idle for 5 days during the Winter Holidays and the 12V battery died.
I am not the first to have this happen.