Question regarding range please help

[Sfbruner]

I recently purchased a Kia Soul EV Luxury in Canada and I absolutely love the car. In fact, I managed to convince a buddy of mine to buy one as well and we both drive the same car now. One thing that we noticed is that our driving habits, outside conditions, etc affect range. For example, my friends car started off with 154km range on full charge and recently he was only getting about 134km on full charge. This is causing him some anxiety. Having said this, we figured out that if we manage to drive in eco mode such that we get eco level 8 the range increases. My question is this, is the readout the actual range or is it more of a guideline based on recorded driving habits? For example, if I went around the city peeling from every light/stop sign and doing my best to drive as inefficiently as possible I imagine my range would suffer greatly [lets say 120km for argument sake] but if after all that I decided to drive down a mountain in B mode would I only be able to go for 120km??? I imagine the readout doesn't have anything to do with the actual range. Can anyone confirm? Would the car restrict you to the readout range in some way or would I basically be able to keep on driving until the battery is actually depleted?

Hopefully I explained what my concern is adequately.

 

[JejuSoul]

The range displayed is officially called DTE (Distance to Empty) , but no one calls it that. It is the GOM (Guess-o-Meter).
It is an estimate based on your previous driving style, the temperature, how much you use the heat / air con, whether you are going uphill or downhill and so on. It is normally quite conservative and quite consistent. If you turn on the heat the GOM will go down. Turn it off and the GOM goes back up.

Mountain driving is a little different and may seem strange the first few times. Going uphill you will lose range fast. Particularly at speed. The GOM will go down much faster than it originally estimated. I drive over a mountain often and can judge how much I need to get to the top from prior experience. It doesn't matter how much the GOM says you have left at the top. Going down the mountain in B mode puts back energy into the battery, The GOM will go back up.

Example: I have SOC 50% and GOM 100km at home. I drive up the mountain 20km, At the top SOC is now 20% and GOM 30km. It looks bad because there is still 20km to go, but driving down in B mode I get SOC 30% and GOM 50km when I arrive back home.

 

[Sfbruner]

Thanks for the reply. After doing some more reading it seems most of us are learning about the guess-o-meter the hard way. It makes perfect sense to me what you said and I will use the GOM as a relative measure only from now on. The battery charge level and my driving efficiency on a daily basis is a more accurate level. For example, as long as I drive 18kw/100km or less I should be able to get at least 150km range theoretically [with the 27kw battery]. I don't know why Kia designed the car this way. I would have preferred instantaneous range readout for the distance-to-empty. That would be a much more useful indicator in my opinion.

Thanks again.

 

[slobodanc]

Be warned that when you compare efficiency display (ex 18 kWh/100km) and SOC display, the "usable" energy is more close to 25 kWh!!!!! Otherwise if usable were 27 kWh then displays underestimate.

The reason why it is GOM - Guess is because efficiency and concordant range change drastically all the time while driving. As an example, if I were driving 30-50 km/h even now in winter you could get 200 km. However try to maintain 120 km/h on highway and you range drops to below 100 km @-20C

So the computer can only guess as your speed keeps changing.

The short answer is:

Keep speed under 90 km/h and you will have over 100 km range almost guaranteed even @-20C with heating.