Actual mileage/efficiency

I can't figure out the frequency.. I drove 1 month without it changing and 4 days ago, it changed again to Level 2 for no apparent reason.

 

Just got my Kona on Friday and did a bunch of driving this weekend. When I picked it up at 100% charge from the dealer, the GOM said 275mi of range. At the end of the weekend (yesterday) also at 100% charge, it was 302mi. Most driving this weekend was done on backroads (35-45 mph) and at 70-80F temperatures, so that makes sense. I think the last trip average I saw was 4.7mi/kWh. This morning on my first commute (mostly highway, ~50mi) I was a little afraid at first when the average seemed to settle around 3.5mi/kWh, but then towards the tail end of the commute it crept back up to 4.1mi/kWh. I do drive fairly fast (75-80 mph to keep up with the rest of the traffic).

I don't have charge vs. miles accumulated energy use yet, but I have a new add-on to my TED power meter on order that will allow me to monitor the car charger circuit from the breaker box and give me actual kWh consumed vs. the mile counter in the car. Looking forward to generating more stats on that longer-term.

 

Going over 70 mph will kill efficiency.. I just recently got my estimated range back up to 349 miles when fully charged.. I do keep my highway speed to 65 mph unless I'm in a hurry.. That seems to give me excellent efficiency especially when the AC is off. On my daily commute, I have about 6 miles of 45 mph local roads and 18 miles highway. On my morning commute at 6 am, I get between 5.3 mi/kwh and 6.0 mi/kwh depending on traffic.. In good traffic it's closer to 5.3 mi/kwh and it bad traffic I get up to 6 mi/kwh on my way to work. I drive at the speed limit to 5 mph over on local roads and 5 mph under the limit on the highway.. My commute is all flat.. no hills..

 

Yeah, I know it does kill efficiency. But driving from NH to MA in the morning on our "main drag" which is I-93 -- while the speed limit is 65, literally nobody actually does 65. In fact, you will get someone riding your bumper and flashing lights/honking if you don't at least go 75. In my old Avalon I'd routinely do 85 just in the middle of traffic (not going faster or slower than other folks in my lane). Cops don't seem to care as long as you're below 80. Maybe even 85 as I've seen people just speed past them and they do nothing.... I did hit 83 in the Kona briefly this morning, which I got to very easily.. Still getting used to the torque this little guy has.

There are some hills on my commute, both on the highway and on the local roads. But they're not too bad. On the tail end of my commute (last 10 miles in MA), I have a choice of taking local roads at 25-45mph or taking the highway and sitting in traffic. Usually I take the local roads, which is what I did this morning. That's where I saw the efficiency creep back up to 4.1 mi/kWh. I would love to see 5 mi/kWh, but I'm actually satisfied with 4. (4*64kWh = 256mi range).

Incidentally, my wife drove the car yesterday back from a shopping trip. She's got a lead foot and got up to 90 mph at one point. I was afraid to look at the efficiency after we got back, so I didn't (I also forgot, as I was mostly glad to still be alive).

 

Yeah, no question speed really reduces range. I do mostly in-town driving, but occasionally do a short trip on the hwy. The diff is very noticeable.

Also be sure your tires have lots of PSI, min 36 when cold. 40 is even better, but you might feel the bumps more. I learned that from my Prius days.

 

Yeah, I played with tire pressure in my old Prius as well. I haven't touched the pressure since I took delivery, and I want to say I saw it at 34 in the TPMS screen. I'll probably up it a little, but maybe to 38 for starters to see if I see a difference in efficiency and not too much of an increase in noise and decrease in ride quality.

 

I have recorded efficiency as high as 5.8 miles/kWh driving in town and cycling regen through all levels and off to maximize coasting before using regen. Originally I thought driving with zero regen on the highway would give best efficiency, but recently notice that when I added regen at highway speeds, the kWh usage of the motor drops. Basically with level 3 regen at 65 mph the car delivers higher efficiency than regen off. Another nice feature of running full regen at highway speed is the ability to instantly shed speed when in heavy traffic without going throttle to pedal.
I've also discovered that less energy is used for AC when just the AC button is pressed. When using auto mode, the AC kWh usage starts out over 2, but quickly cancelling "auto" and going straight AC drops kWh usage closer to 1 and less as the interior cools off.
Using full regen I've manged to average 4.2 kWh during 40 mile commute with approximately half stop and go and the other half freeway.
Running 75-80mph will generally yield about 20% reduction in range, or put another way, for every 80 miles traveled, about 100 miles of range comes off the clock.
If possible - meaning if one has relatively short commutes, it's better to charge to no more than 80% and even as low as 70%, and top off when the battery drops to around 40%. The reason is due to charging time versus battery SOC. It can take 3x longer to charge to 100% using DCFC as opposed to stopping at 80%. When paying by the MINUTE to charge this means that extra 20% costs not only another hour or so in time, but another $18 ABOVE the $13 or so based on local EVgo rates. On my 240V 40A home charger, going to 100% adds about 2 hours to the total.

 

Tires to 60 PSI and try to keep it under 70 mph, and you'll easily be closer to 5 mi/kWh.
*That's* what our Prius days teach us...

_H*

 

Wow, I though I was rare in only hitting 100% twice in 10 months, never under 24%. That SoC range is exactly what I use as I only drive a few kms most days with the occasonal trip. I'm stuck with public chargers only at the moment and since the local 32 A AC has been broken for 3 weeks so far, it's FC at 50kW or park outside a filthy bigbox for an hour at a time that has a free Type 2, which means at 7am to avoid a door ding. It's a bit of a problem at the moment as I am fully aware of the owner's manual advisories about FC and try to keep the FC to just 10% or so.

After nearly a year of neurotic analysis of this car, I'm certain I will never learn everything about it and the actual battery capacity is the most elusive number, but not particularly important. Hyundai says it's 64.08kWh and so-far I've seen no reason to disbelieve it. You can't extrapolate SoC to capacity because the SoC slope cannot be assumed to scale to the full amount. This is just a concept of what likely happens, made linear (vs voltage) for simplicity.

 

If going faster, what helps is to drive behind semi trucks.. Some of them go pretty fast. This morning, I drove close to 70 mph for most of my highway commute behind a semi truck and when I got to work, I was at 6.0 mi/kwh....

 

Haha. I remember doing that in my early Prius days to get a high mileage. I don't think I was ever able to get much over 55mpg by doing that though. Figured later that the increased safety of not being in the truck drivers blind spot outweighs the minimal savings.

 

And a good way to get a rock in your windshield...

 

Just make sure that the truck in front of you has good mud flaps..

 

I fail to understand how setting any particular regen level would affect
steady-state highway travel efficiency in the slightest. What it takes
to buck a 65mph wind is constant, so what other factors may have been
in play at the time? Headwinds? Tire pressure? Weight load? That
kayak on the roofrack?

_H*