How is the health of this battery?

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logum52

New member
Joined
Nov 21, 2020
Messages
3
Hi Guys

I'm looking for a electric car and I found an used one from 04/2015 with about 43k miles (or 69k km).
My biggest concern is the battery. The owner said the battery has about 92% SOH which he saw with using the app "EV Soul Spy".
Some days later he said he went in a kia garage and got the new update and they say he has now 100% SOH.

So I tried to get deeper in this topic and know that a soul ev battery has 27 kWh usable and 30 kWh at total.
So I started that it could be possible the 92% is relative to the total 30 kWh and the 100% from the kia garage are relative to the 27 kWh?
Does someone of you know the "EV Soul Spy" app and can tell if the SOH value is relative to the 30 kWh?
I guess 92% from 30 kWh would be fine after over 40k miles.
But it would be a heavy degradation if it's actually 92% from 27 kWh which would result in less then 25 kWh.

What do you think about this battery?

It's in Europe if that matters and the car has warranty until 04/2022.
 
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I assume the previous owner is telling the truth. SOH = 92%.
That would be normal for a 5 year old car with 69k km.
I have a car the same age with 75k km with SOH = 96%.
If you live in the UK then your climate isn't hot enough to cause rapid deterioration of the battery alone. (Above 45C kills the battery fast!)
It is more likely that your car's range will continue to decline in a slow linear fashion.
Unless that is, you intend to regularly drive very far, and very fast, using multiple rapid DC chargers. (Bjorn Nyland style!)

Kia resets the computer to factory defaults when they do an upgrade.
They are supposed to take the SOH reading before they reset to 100%, but they never do.

The manual for updating the BMS is here -
Service Action: Battery Management System (BMS) Logic Improvement (SA297)
Inform the customer that the BMS update will reset the adaptive learning values to default conditions. As a result, the displayed range/DTE (Distance to Empty) and charge times may be temporarily increased. It does not affect the actual range or battery charging time. These displayed values will gradually be relearned to reflect the actual battery condition with multiple drive and charge cycles performed above 50°F (10°C) from less than 20% SOC to more than 90% SOC.

Important: If the customer has any range concerns, capture all BMS data BEFORE applying the update.
 
JejuSoul said:
-
I assume the previous owner is telling the truth. SOH = 92%.
That would be normal for a 5 year old car with 69k km.
I have a car the same age with 75k km with SOH = 96%.
If you live in the UK then your climate isn't hot enough to cause rapid deterioration of the battery alone. (Above 45C kills the battery fast!)
It is more likely that your car's range will continue to decline in a slow linear fashion.
Unless that is, you intend to regularly drive very far, and very fast, using multiple rapid DC chargers. (Bjorn Nyland style!)

Kia resets the computer to factory defaults when they do an upgrade.
They are supposed to take the SOH reading before they reset to 100%, but they never do.

The manual for updating the BMS is here -
Service Action: Battery Management System (BMS) Logic Improvement (SA297)
Inform the customer that the BMS update will reset the adaptive learning values to default conditions. As a result, the displayed range/DTE (Distance to Empty) and charge times may be temporarily increased. It does not affect the actual range or battery charging time. These displayed values will gradually be relearned to reflect the actual battery condition with multiple drive and charge cycles performed above 50°F (10°C) from less than 20% SOC to more than 90% SOC.

Important: If the customer has any range concerns, capture all BMS data BEFORE applying the update.

Hi
Thank you for your comment.
I'm not sure if I got this:
So the real usable capacity is 0.92*27 = 24.8 kWh?
And the Kia Garage decided to make these 24.8 the new 100%?

i actually planned to make some longer trips with over 400km and 5-7 DC Charging.
But yeah, I live in South Germany so the weather isn't that hot.
 
logum52 said:
[...
So the real usable capacity is 0.92*27 = 24.8 kWh?
And the Kia Garage decided to make these 24.8 the new 100%?
...
The real usable capacity is 0.92*27 = 24.8 kWh? Yes.
The Kia Garage reset the computer so that it thinks usable capacity is 27kWh. (factory default)
The computer will adjust to reality over time. (maybe 2 weeks or so)
 
JejuSoul said:
logum52 said:
[...
So the real usable capacity is 0.92*27 = 24.8 kWh?
And the Kia Garage decided to make these 24.8 the new 100%?
...
The real usable capacity is 0.92*27 = 24.8 kWh? Yes.
The Kia Garage reset the computer so that it thinks usable capacity is 27kWh. (factory default)
The computer will adjust to reality over time. (maybe 2 weeks or so)


Alright, thank you!
Too bad it isn't higher but as you said this is about the usual value for this mileage?
 
JejuSoul said:
[...] Unless that is, you intend to regularly drive very far, and very fast, using multiple rapid DC chargers. (Bjorn Nyland style!)
As a regular viewer of his YouTube channel, this made laugh. Heh. Kia Bj0rn! :)

logum52 said:
[...] Too bad it isn't higher but as you said this is about the usual value for this mileage?
It seems to be about usual for the results I see posted in this forum, yes. Lots of variables (temperature, speed of driving, speed of charging, whether the car is typically charged to 80% or to 100%). If you want to baby the battery, charge it up to 80% for daily driving, and only charge it to 100% for road trips. Another way to baby the battery is to charge at 10 amps or less when doing destination charging, if you have that option. 13 amps isn't terrible, but 10 amps would be even better.
 
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