Palm Springs Summer TMS Torture Test!

Thanks so much to JejuSoul and others for getting the information on this forum to set up Torque Pro for data gathering. I've been curious as to the effectiveness of the Soul EV's basic cabin air cooling setup since I got the car and now I can collect the information.

I had Torque set up for about a week prior to this Palm Springs weekend and in day-to-day usage, even in warm weather (90 degree F) with long distances (70 miles+) the pack just never heated up much and when it did the fan would come on to status 1 or 2 and the temperature would drop right back down. I've been impressed with how effective the setup is at keeping pack temps stable in typical usage.

Now, on to Part One of my Palm Springs torture weekend.

I departed Los Angeles, CA at 6:20 PM and it was 90 degrees ambient. The car had soaked at 90+ in the shade for ten hours at my office and spent three hours trickle charging up to 100%.

Temperatures ranged from 90-100 F between Los Angeles and Cabazon, CA where there are quick chargers. I had the HVAC set to driver-only, auto, 75 degrees, recirc on. The total driving distance was just under 90 miles and covers an elevation gain of 1,100 ft. Most of the drive was at highway speeds of 65 MPH or more aside from a nasty traffic jam just after departing where I inched along for 90 minutes to cover 11 miles :shock: .

I quick charged from 10.5% to 81.5% SOC at Cabazon at about 9 PM and ambient temps were 95 F.

At about 9:30 PM I drove 21 miles from Cabazon to Palm Springs which is a net elevation drop of 900 ft. Ambient temps increased to about 105 degrees F.

The cooling system kept the pack at or below ambient temps (I really wish we had a PID for ambient!) for nearly the entire 90 mile drive to Cabazon. When quick charging the temps popped up to 113 degrees but then once I started driving, even though the ambient temp was rising, the pack temps started falling again. I lost nearly 4 degrees of peak pack temp despite driving an additional 21 miles at highway speeds.

I've attached the charts and link to the Google Sheets doc for part one. There are data and chart pages, feel free to peruse the raw information. Ignore the time stamps on the bottom of the charts; Google Sheets is not very good at charting. The time frame was from 6:16 PM to 10:11 PM.

Part 2, the return trip after heat soaking in Palm Springs all weekend, is coming soon!





https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gob1vVIE1yR8VbZ8F7Lcu0rc7gyr_cOaMfWcC4QF0RQ/edit?usp=sharing

Great data, thanks for compiling and sharing. Glad to see that the battery cooling system really works well -- heat is an issue that my father often worries about with his Leaf.

Am looking forward to part 2 of this post.
Did you leave AC on during the charging?
Those ambient temps are hot! 105 degrees F. is 40.5C at night. Wow. And I thought 27C at night was bad.

According to the lab data 45C (113F) is the threshold when major deterioration starts to occur. It seems your battery reached this figure but then began to cool because of the fans despite continued driving and rising ambient temps. It seems the TMS does work.

Sorry part two took so long! Been swamped at work and in personal life so here it goes.

The return home was essentially the reverse of the way there along the same route, but I began the trip with about 50% SOC and on the way home I L2 charged instead of DC quick charging while playing at the same casino I charged at on the way out. The L2 chargers are covered so there's no solar gain. The charging location is here: https://api.plugshare.com/view/location/15046

I left Palm Springs, CA on July 24th 2016 at about 10:45 AM and the temperatures were above 100 degrees on their way to a 108 degree F (42C) high. At the charging location in Cabazon, CA the temps were hovering right around 100F (38C). The car had been heat soaking in Palm Springs for about 30 hours in a range of about 90F low to 115F high (32-46C). The car was uncovered and soaking in the sun the entire weekend.

Elevation gains/losses were exactly the opposite. I had to climb on the way out of Palm Springs and then had a gentle decline from Cabazon to home in Gardena, CA. The charging location is at almost the exact elevation peak of the trip. While the car was L2 charging it was mostly done with the A/C off, yet the battery fan continued to run and was effective at keeping the pack at temperatures similar to that of ambient.

When I got home I charged briefly at 7.2 kW to bring the SOC up off the floor then remote-started the AC without initiating charging just to let the battery cool a bit and to get some data on how effective that is. I have overlaid L2 Charging kW on the fan status graph to give that some representation.

One oddity I noticed (that's reflected in the data) is that the car will ramp down the fan at stoplights and at very low speed. I assume this is for noise abatement but as a customer I'd prefer they just let the fan run at a constant speed to pull more heat out. When the car is exposed to that kind of heat (46C) the A/C is going at full blast and both seat fans are going on high speed, so the battery fan is not particularly noticeable. Seems like an odd choice by the engineers to me.

EDIT: Please ignore the time stamps on the charts as they are inaccurate. The duration looks correct but the actual labels are erroneous, for whatever reason. Google Sheets does not handle this well. The raw information can be reviewed at: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11wMA5jWUMgYssBA5fn_TZf50Mg6vncH69x5Hu1gh0IY/edit?usp=sharing

Thanks, interesting data. The TMS works.
The big differences between your return journey and the earlier outward trip are
1/ the return journey is hotter but the battery temps do not reach extremes. The battery temps were above 100F (40C) for longer, but never much above this.
2/ the really high heat on the outward journey was caused by the Chademo. It is the 113F (45C) that I would worry about. I think it was sensible to avoid the Chademo on the way back. Though that depends on how well you did at the casino.

Am updating the thread TMS Behavior with the numbers for what temperatures relate to each fan speed

JejuSoul said:

Though that depends on how well you did at the casino.

Click to expand...

I played for four hours on $10, so I feel like I got a decent amount of entertainment for my money! It was a fun day.