Full Charge in 2h 35min (level 2)

[curtalva]

Last night I charged my recently purchased a 2015 Soul EV (11K miles) using my newly installed 32-amp ChargePoint level 2 charger. I started the charge at about 12% and the charging stopped at around the 2 hour and 35 minute mark. The ChargePoint app clearly showed "Charging Complete, 54 miles added, 15.9 kwh added".

Today I drove the car to work and back which is a 75 mile round-trip commute. I left with 100% battery and GOM initially indicated 92 miles but quickly went to 88 miles when I turned on driver-only A/C. I made it to work which is the halfway point of my drive (37.5 miles) using 42%. I left work to begin my drive home (37.5 miles to home) with the battery at 58% and barely made it home. I expected to make it home with about 13 miles to spare. I was doing pretty good until the GOM was under 10 miles (about 4-5 miles from home) and then the bottom dropped out it seemed. Miles starting disappearing about every 30 seconds as did battery percentage. I made it home with the GOM reading "---" and the battery at 3%.

Tonight I charged again and again the charging stopped at around 2hr 35min. ChargePoint app indicates"Charging complete, 56 miles added, 16.87 kwh added". Inside my car the instruments read battery at 100% and GOM says 92 mile range. I will drive to work again tomorrow and see how it goes.

Doesn't that seem like a very quick full-charge (2 hours and 35 minutes)? And it seems to only be adding 16 to 17 kwh.

The car apparently has been setting around the car lot not being used for well over a year so I'm not sure how that impacts the battery pack. Will more frequent use now and more charging help any?

Is there a way for me to check the health of the battery pack?

Any thoughts, ideas, advice are appreciated.

Thanks,
Curt

 

[JejuSoul]

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I think the battery in your car may be severely degraded. Or perhaps there is a fault in the BMS.
The actual range you are getting is the definitive proof of how much battery you left.
In your car the GOM seems to assume the battery is not degraded, and still has the capability to go much further than it actually can.

My paranoid suspicion is that an unscrupulous dealer has reset the BMS to show zero degradation on a car that actually has a bad battery.
This has not actually occurred before with the Soul EV, but famously has with the N issan L eaf.
It is also possible, that there is a fault in the car electronics, causing these mistaken readings.
Continue to monitor the car for a few days, try a few different c hargers, and then take the car to a Kia dealer to get it checked.
Please report back here on what they say.
To get detailed battery stats you can use the Torque app. Link in my signature below.

There is a similar new thread about a recently purchased used Soul EV here - EV Range

 

[nickb64]

We had almost exactly this issue on our 2015 Soul EV at 40,000 miles. After nearly a month in and out of the service department, we finally have some level of resolution (I think). Kia finally decided (the third time we brought it in) to allow the dealer to have the battery pack replaced under the battery warranty. The first time they told us there was nothing wrong with the car at all.

The second time they "did a software update" which seemed to have recalibrated the range estimate. When we brought it in that time it was still estimating 85-90 miles range on a full charge, but actually providing about 45 miles real range per charge. After the "update" it provided an estimate of 67 miles on a the first full charge after we got the car back, then reported between 44 and 49 miles on each subsequent full charge, so we brought it back in, along with emailed documentation via pictures of the UVO screen showing battery percentage and estimated range, the trips and mi/kWh from the ECO section on UVO, and screenshots from Chargepoint with various charges showing the amount of energy received, with corresponding time-stamped pics of the charge level when the vehicle was unplugged after a charging session.

I suspect our extensive documentation helped in actually getting them to do something and figure it out, since they didn't seem to have done much the first two times we brought the car in.

The dealer has had our car since Wednesday, and said they should get the replacement battery pack sometime in the next week and then replace it. Luckily they set us up with a loaner since we only have one car. I would recommend just pestering your closest dealer's service department to check the battery health and figure out what's up, but my guess is that you also have a degraded battery, even with much lower mileage than we did.