Ontario Soul owners

[Ever]

anyone in Ontario (GTA) driving their soul EV, how's your range affected by this recent heat wave?

 

[DarthNick]

anyone in Ontario (GTA) driving their soul EV, how's your range affected by this recent heat wave?

Can't say I've noticed much of a difference. I do have the A/C on a bit more often than usual, which affects range as expected (moment I turn on A/C it drops the range estimate by ~6 km).

 

[irfca]

Yes, I can't say I've noticed much of a difference in range from the heat either. From what I've read, it is more about the potential damage from charging when it is hot ... and I tend to charge over night, or as recommended, the few times I've charged during the day at the Markham DCQC, I've started the vehicle and cranked the AC to feed cool air from the cabin to the battery.

 

[Beachman]

only driving it less than a week but definitely notice an impact but it's not drastic. like maybe 5-7km on my 53km trip but offset by some Regen in stop and go gardiner traffic so I make it up a bit. the manual says the optimum auto temperature is 23C so I have set to auto 24C and that seems ok with driver only. no idea if the cooled seats eat into the range but they are great.
can anyone explain the issue of not charging when the battery is hot ? I'm still sorting out the charger with Bosch and arranging installation so having to charge in the day at a shopping mall level 2 but did not read anything about the using AC to try and cool the battery when charging.

 

[EVEREVE]

set the temperature at 24C, the range difference is 3-5 km.

 

[irfca]

can anyone explain the issue of not charging when the battery is hot ?

There is some good research that shows charging the batteries in hot temperatures leads to a faster deterioration rate for the batteries ... I don't think I've actually seen numbers (eg charging at 30C leads to a specific deterioration rate vs at 20C or 10C).

Not specifically about charging and temperature, I've found an interesting website that looks to have consolidated a lot of info and research on Lithium Ion polymer batteries: http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries
It looks like most of the research is based on cell phone batteries, but from what I can tell, the chemistry is the same as the batteries in most EVs. It also confirms some of the info in the various forums about level of charge and battery longevity (i.e. charge to 80% if you can, and only charge to 100% for short times, ideally close to use).