Questions from a new KIA Soul EV driver

[smurfdaddy]

Hello, I’m from Germany (sorry for my english) and soon KIA Soul EV driver!!!

For „best“ way of charging the battery, I have some questions, which I did not find in the maintenance instruction.

Perhaps someone could help me?:

Normally I drive near 40 km to work, where I could charge on 22kw. Back at home, again near 40 km, I only can charge on 220V. So in addition I drive near 80 km daily, but with interruption for work.

And now the questions:

1. I’ve heard, the best battery range should be between 20 to 80 percent. Not upper and not down. Is this correct? Some people say or I’ve read this in the forum in Germany, KIA has counted this in, so that the 20% are the 0% in the car display and the 80% are the 100%. Is this true? In first case I have 60% to drive, in second case I really have the 100% to drive.

2. Due to driving to work only 40 km should I charge there, or not? If, up to 80% or up to 100%?

3. Is it a problem for longlife of the battery to charge always up to 100%? When is the latest range (0%?) to charge?

4. How is it about in the wintertime? Works the battery heating automatically or should/must I set this up for my own (if, how can I do this)? When the battery has its operating temperature (after time or after driving route)?

5. How about on holidaytime, when the car is not in use for some days or some weeks? Which battery range is recommended?

6. How about using the radio, bluetooth mobile phone, climatic, heating, etc.

7. How about driving by open windows? I’ve heard this is not good for the battery range.

Do you have another hints for best charging and longlife battery?

Thanks a lot!

 

[SoulEV2016]

1) like all EV, you can't use the top and bottom of the battery.

2) you can not stop the charge on 80 or 100%.
only Chademo charge stop at 84% (and can be restarted manually by the owner to 94%).



4) Planning the Heating space ... heat the battery, too.
But Battery have it's own strategy to heat when it's needed.



6) You must cut the breaker when you park the car for holiday (more than 2 weeks and without the charger attach).
When you let the car with the charger cord, cut the breaker is not needed.

report of this : http://www.mykiasoulev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=581



7) From 0 to 90km/h, opened windows do nothing ... the car consumption is the same.
From 90km/h to 152km/h, you increase the consumption with opened windows (AC consume less than wind loss with opened windows).

report of this : http://www.mykiasoulev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=4509#p4509

 

[notfred]

Just a couple of corrections:

If you use the scheduled charge you can choose to charge to 80% or 100%, it's only if you charge directly that it always goes to 100%. This is of the rated battery capacity, not the actual battery capacity. Given the trips you are planning on doing, I would set it up to charge at night to 80% in the summer and see how that goes. In winter you may need to bump it up to charging to 100% depending on how cold it gets and how much slush the tyres have to push through. Also set up the cabin heat timer to pre-heat in the morning.

Don't worry about the battery heater, it's all automatic and you can't control it. The only indication you will have (unless you hook up to the OBD-II port) is that on a very cold day you may find your range decreasing when the car is sitting parked as it uses the battery heater.

Agree on if you leave the car more than 2 weeks turn the switch off. However if you are leaving it at all then always unplug the charging cord. If the charging cord is plugged in then it uses the 12V battery to periodically wake up the electronics to see if it needs to charge the main traction battery. You can come home to a fully charged traction battery and a dead 12V battery that needs a jump start.

 

[jbrad4]

Hallo. Wie gehts?

Re: 6. How about using the radio, bluetooth mobile phone, climatic, heating, etc.

7. How about driving by open windows? I’ve heard this is not good for the battery range.
-----------------------------------------------------

The radio, bluetooth, and mobile phone get their power from the accessory battery,
but this battery is charged from the drive battery. The amount of energy for this is
miniscule compared the powering the car down the road. I wouldn't worry about it.

Driving with the windows open only matters at high speeds probably over 80 km/hr.
I would keep the windows up (closed) while driving on the autobahn.

Other Points: I drive with my tire pressure at 42 psi front, 40 psi rear.
(I don't know the metric equivalent to pounds per square inch)

Just looked it up:
40 psi * 6.895 = 276 kiloPascals (kPa)
42 psi = 290 kPa
This pressure is to minimize rolling resistance for better economy.

 

[slobodanc]

I have 50 km one way commute, so 100 km total.
Right now I use scheduled charge (80%) during night. Then I disable schedule and charge some more while having breakfast to 85% or 90%

I drive normal speeds up to 110 km and don't charge at work, use AC.

At the end of the day I am down to about 25%

So far I find this charging setup to work well.

I believe Lithium based batteries ideal range is 30% to 80% (even 90% is fine). Car software "hides" 10% so when you are reading for example 25% the real SOC is 35%.

During winter I plan on going to full 100% as energy use increases.

 

[ZuinigeRijder]

Hello, I’m from Germany (sorry for my english) and soon KIA Soul EV driver!!!

For „best“ way of charging the battery, I have some questions, which I did not find in the maintenance instruction.

Do you have another hints for best charging and longlife battery?

Thanks a lot!

The most important thing for longlife battery is by not driving too fast. I also have a twice 38 km daily commute. I am not a fast driver, but there is even a difference in driving 106 km/h or 96 km/h. My average consumption is nowadays 12 kWh/100 km, where it was 15 kWh/100 km when driving faster. When you drive 120 km/h you can expect 19 kWh/100 km. In Germany they did a test, driving 130 km/h with a Kia Soul EV and they had then only a range of 80 km So with driving a slower average, you get more km out of the battery over the lifetime by more than 50%. My average is 56 km/h over the last 10.000 km. Driving faster on the highway for my 38 km trip only makes a difference of a few minutes.

Next thing is to take a shorter route. For me this is 12 km shorter than taking the highway, or 3 km shorter than the navigation wants me to drive. And the advantage is for me, that I do not have traffic lights and the roads are not busy. So I drive less km per year and I am as quick as having the longer route. Advantage of the shorter route is also that the energy consumption is less. So this saves more than 10%.

In general it is not good to have the SOC on 100% for longer time. So when the 100% range is needed, charge to 100% full just before you go, using again the timer.

Try to keep the SOC between 20% and 80%, this gives the battery less stress. But of course, when the 100% charge is needed for the range, just use it.

Because I can charge at work, and they have solar panels, I charge there (3.6 kW charger), once a day. I use the timer function of the charging, start the charging at 11:00 and charge till 80%. This means that the SOC is around 64% when arriving at home and the next day I arrive with a SOC of about 48% at work. At Fridays I charge till 100%, so I can use the extra range in the weekend. I also can charge at home, with the trickle charger, at 10A and 240V. It will charge with about 2 kWh. At home I also have solar panels, but because when I arrive at home the sun is gone, it is better to charge at work. At work the cost for 1 kWh is 15 eurocents. At home this is 18 eurocents, so this is also cheaper at work and better for the CO2.

 

[JejuSoul]

I also try to keep the SOC between 20% and 80%. This isn't so important for the first two years because there is a buffer of spare capacity at the top and bottom of the battery pack. As the battery degrades this buffer is reduced first. Despite being 15 months old, and driven 21,000km my car still has 100% SOH. Obviously though there is less buffer than before. Avoiding leaving the car at 100% SOC is only really important in the summer. The combination of heat and 100% SOC is the real killer of a Lithium Ion Battery.

We are collecting data to create a Battery Ageing Model. At the moment there is only one factor which is significantly related to the percentage deterioration of the battery. That factor is the distance driven. I don't think ZuinigeRijder is wrong, in fact I try to drive the same way he does. I think the other factors that are important haven't shown up yet in our very limited data set. Those include the climate, high heat is worse for the battery. Charging style (try to keep the SOC between 20% and 80%), and less battery cycles ( slower driving gets better fuel economy which uses less battery cycles).

Here in Korea the cost to charge is 6 cents at night and 30 cents during the day. The baseload electricity is nuclear and that is much cheaper. Even though I don't like nuclear power it is much preferable to the dirty and expensive fossil fuel daytime power. Obviously I prefer to charge at night. It is also too hot in the summer to charge during the day.

 

[ZuinigeRijder]

At the moment there is only one factor which is significantly related to the percentage deterioration of the battery. That factor is the distance driven.

I think the factor is Cumulative Energy Discharged and not the distance driven. One who is driving with low average energy consumption uses less battery and thus the battery does last longer (less charge/discharge cycles). Actually, the battery degradation figures should be plotted against CED?