Kona ev charging does and don'ts

A

Andrew storry

New Member
Hi All.

Got my first EV in March, Hyundai kona electric 64kw.

Read loads of stuff on charging best practice e.g no lower than 20% or higher than 80% (although manual doesn't say this, cycles and so on

I'd appreciate advise if it's OK to top up the car 5kw each day (solar panels / zappi) on slow charge? I need the car fully charged twice a month for long journey.
 
Hello Andrew, welcome to the forum. A few clarifying questions, if I may:

I presume by "charging best practice" you are intent on maximizing the life of your batteries?

Other than needing to take a longer trip (just how many miles or km is that "long journey"?), how many miles or km do you drive your Kona daily?

I am confused by the expression "top up the car 5 kw each day". Are you saying that you use solar panels with a Zappi brand EVSE which have a maximum output of 5kW or that you can only stuff 5kWh/day into the car using your solar panels and thus must continuously charge your car during daylight hours in order to bring it up sufficiently for your long trip?

What do you mean by "slow charge"? The car is happy using low currents at the usual ac voltages (120, 230, or 240vac).

"Top up the car each day" implies charging to 100%SoC, which is ok just before taking a long trip, but otherwise is a no-no in daily use.

FYI, I keep my Kona at around 50%SoC for daily use, but have no qualms charging much higher just before embarking on a long trip.
As far as the lower limit for SoC, the evidence nowadays seems to be that it doesn't matter with most Lithium chemistries from a battery longevity perspective. One's personal comfort zone usually dictates that. In my case, having lived with EV conversions which had ranges on the order of 10-15 miles and having a stable of daily-driving i-MiEVs with maximum ranges <50 miles, seeing 20%SoC in our Kona Electric is simply of no concern.
 
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I generally don't charge over 80% because most of my driving is local, so there's no need. When I do need to take a long trip, I charge to l00% or close to it shortly before. The OP didn't mention the model year of his Kona, but many owners of the first generation (including me) find that the car regularly exceeds the official EPA range estimate. Not sure about the current model.
 
JoeS said:
Hello Andrew, welcome to the forum. A few clarifying questions, if I may:

I presume by "charging best practice" you are intent on maximizing the life of your batteries?

Other than needing to take a longer trip (just how many miles or km is that "long journey"?), how many miles or km do you drive your Kona daily?

I am confused by the expression "top up the car 5 kw each day". Are you saying that you use solar panels with a Zappi brand EVSE which have a maximum output of 5kW or that you can only stuff 5kWh/day into the car using your solar panels and thus must continuously charge your car during daylight hours in order to bring it up sufficiently for your long trip?

What do you mean by "slow charge"? The car is happy using low currents at the usual ac voltages (120, 230, or 240vac).

"Top up the car each day" implies charging to 100%SoC, which is ok just before taking a long trip, but otherwise is a no-no in daily use.

FYI, I keep my Kona at around 50%SoC for daily use, but have no qualms charging much higher just before embarking on a long trip.
As far as the lower limit for SoC, the evidence nowadays seems to be that it doesn't matter with most Lithium chemistries from a battery longevity perspective. One's personal comfort zone usually dictates that. In my case, having lived with EV conversions which had ranges on the order of 10-15 miles and having a stable of daily-driving i-MiEVs with maximum ranges <50 miles, seeing 20%SoC in our Kona Electric is simply of no concern.
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Hello. Thanks for your reply. Yes, I want to maximise battery life. I do two trips per month of 180 miles return so charge the car to 90% and have about 30% left when I get back. I recently started topping up the car each morning 6kw using the power from my panels before we go out with the aim of avoiding tying up the car one day a week to charge it to 90%, but it seems from your reply it's not a good idea? Other than 2 long trips a month I probably average 120 km per week.
 
Andrew storry said:
Hello. Thanks for your reply. Yes, I want to maximise battery life. I do two trips per month of 180 miles return so charge the car to 90% and have about 30% left when I get back. I recently started topping up the car each morning 6kw using the power from my panels before we go out with the aim of avoiding tying up the car one day a week to charge it to 90%, but it seems from your reply it's not a good idea? Other than 2 long trips a month I probably average 120 km per week.
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Andrew, thank you for your clarifications. Looks as though you're trying to avoid charging the car from the grid.
Interesting that you can pull 6kW from your solar array - that's significant! You didn't perhaps mean 6kWh energy pumped back into the car?
120km/week is about 11 miles/day and is roughly 1/3 to the national average here in the US. This translates into ~3kWh/day for our Kona, wall-to-wheels. I asked that because I didn't know what other constraints you were operating under.
If you really did mean 6kW and not 6kWh, for your daily driving I'd be inclined to top the car up to around 50%SoC once a week (or whenever it's convenient) and, now that it's summer, simply charge it up to 90% the afternoon before your bi-monthly trip.
As far as best practices for battery longevity, you might peruse this post I made a few months ago (unfortunately, not realizing it was a bit off topic in that thread):
https://www.insideevsforum.com/comm...nd-see-real-capacity.10585/page-4#post-211231
My conclusion from those TMC discussions is that keeping the car below 55%SoC will provide a measurable extension to its battery life, going way low on SoC doesn't hurt anything, and there's nothing wrong with fully charging the car when needed for a trip (but not to keep it fully charged when not using it).
 
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