Double Trouble - both batteries dead.

Agreed.

I use both.

The percentage to a frequent destination is a good indicator.

I would also add monitoring of the consumption as another helpful indicator. I mean kWh per 100 km.

For us it is around 15 kWh / 100 in summer and around 30 kWh / 100 km in winter.

 

So the car would literally not move or drive at all even though it had 5% battery remaining? Was there any error messages or anything like that? I would have thought it could move in turtle mode or something like that with 5% left. Are you gonna have the dealer check that out?

Thank you for sharing your story.

 

I’m confused why you were surprised you ran out of juice. On paper you didn’t have enough even assuming battery hasn’t lost any potential.

Cold weather like that will result in 50-60% of potential (you should be using 50% for planning)

max range for Kona is advertised as 415km x 90% SOC per your facts x 50% cold loss = ~187km potential range assuming you don’t speed/use excessive heat. Ie 210km round trip was out of range.

 

Hi Kong,

I believe you can charge the accessory battery (12V) from another car battery or from a 12 V charger. I would suggest that you mesure the voltage (with a voltmeter), if you charge from a vehicule, to be sure that there is not an overvoltage during this operation. My guest is the Kona electrical system may be sensitive to overvoltage. If you are ready to charge the main battery, I would say that you do not need to charge the 12V battery to its full capacity, just enough to kick off the recharge of the main battery (15 min? 30 min?). Once this main battery charging process is in operation, it will charge the 12V battery. You may need to start the car for recharging the 12V battery (not entirely sure about that).

Concerning the trip, I find very interesting the information you are providing. I have a question: did you have the winter setting on before you begin your trip? since the beginning of the cold weather (I live near Montreal) I realize that I cannot trust the indication of the range available in km. It changes as you go when the temperature is below -7 or -8 degC. I have to do my own calculation as we go, for exemple, with a 10% drop in battery capacity, how many km of travelling I did. Of course at -25 deg C, it goes down quite drastically. I read in another post that the battery performance drop on cold weather (-15 and below) and when the battery remaining charge is below 10%, the car may just stop if you do not have the winter setting ON. There will not be enough current from the battery to operate the car. This setting will aloy the battery to be heated, thus drawing a lot more power from the battery and alloying the motor to draw enough power to run. If you charge on level 3 station, at low temperature, you must set the winter setting ON. Otherwise, the charging rate will not get as high as it should and it will take more time to charge therefore more expensive. And if you charge at home, make sure the charging rate is 6.5 kw. Otherwise, again at cold temperature, you will have to set the winter setting ON to make sure the car charger gets to 6.5kw. On cold temperature, if you heat the battery, you have a better performance from the battery and consequently a higher charging rate.

I hope all this text willl help you.

Guy

 

Thanks for an interesting post. You are the second one confirming a similar experience. The first one Apu from Manitoba. We in Alberta and Apu in Manitoba experience -20C and lower several months a year.

The experience is, roughly said, the Kona official 415 km range drops to some 50% = 200 km at cold temperatures. It can be 187 km, 211 km that is not important.

Not much is written or spoken about this sad reality. Some just do not believe it at all.

I would also add that 200 km is not fully useable. It is more like 120 km (to be on the safe side of things and to avoid any possibility of turtle mode) plus the buffer which is welcome if you get stuck at -20C / -30C somewhere and while waiting for the assistance you need heating because you forgot your survival pack with sleeping bags. Gluten-free chips are part of the survival pack as well.

The recommendation of using the "middle" 20 - 80% says it all.

60% out of 200 km is 120 km

This is no crazy prepping. This is just the reality of life in the Prairies in winter.

There is more to it but let us cut it here.

 

Any gas powered generator should produce a reasonable sine-wave output. Might not be a super stable 50/60Hz like the power company, (So an old fashioned electric clock may float). Not sure why the built-in AC->DC charger would care much as long as it gets the amps. Basically it's a diode bridge with a current limiter, I doubt it would even have a filter, i'm sure it's just sending DC pulses to the battery at some clamped voltage.

 

Excellent points. I learned my lesson a couple of winters ago when I got stuck just 100km west of Winnipeg on trans Canada short of power in -30C weather because the only 2 nearby DC chargers (PetroCanada ) were down. I managed to spend a miserable 3 hours in a very cold car while it caught a sufficient charge at a nearby hotel L2 charger to limp me home. Now If I travel outside of the city I always go with my -30C rated Canada Goose Resolute coat and a go bag with wool blanket, portable rocket heater, water and snacks.

 

I prefer mi(or km) per kwh rather than the inverse. Desired range on the top of the fraction, then divide by it to get the miles. 64KW per tank of fuel (64 gallons? ;-) * 4mi/kw = 256miles. If I'm going 200 miles i need 200/4 = 50KW to get there, I'll have a little under 1/4 tank of leccy when I get back. Just do the math like you did in your car with gas. In sub-freezing temps i'm thinking an EV is not the right car to take a trip in at the moment. Aluminum ION bats may help with that in 5 years.

 

Just to be clear, the Kona does not charge the 12V battery continuously in Run mode (either when parked or while driving), only when parked and "off" (for 20 min every 4 hours) and when in Utility mode (constantly), both at 14.65 V. The original 2019 model year used to charge in Run mode for the first 30 min of the day but no longer after the 196 update. It's still a mystery as to why Hyundai changed this.

In Run mode it does however maintain the 12V system voltage high enough (13.1 V or higher) to avoid any further discharging of the 12V battery, and that's important.

 

I don't think I have D111. If I recall I was told that update and another would be delayed until my new battery is installed.
But I do notice that I will get an added charge if the 12V battery is depleted.

 

I grew up with the metric system and still did not get used to imperial units. :-(

Agree with your "In sub-freezing temps i'm thinking an EV is not the right car to take a trip in at the moment."

As much as I am excited about EVs, after 147,000 km in less than three years, though it is difficult for me to say it, I would not repeat it.

If some neighbor or friend asks me if they should buy an EV I tell them both the "good" and the "bad". It is up to them to decide what is best for them.

My suggestion usually is to start with a cheap source of electricity.

Currently, we pay 27 cents per kWh for overnight charging. The savings on fuel are not great.

We are going to install a natural gas CHP to produce our own electricity onsite at 4 - 6 cents per kWh and heat for our house at the same time. We will stop paying $300 - $400 monthly electricity bills.

 

I (well we) have a Kona and Niro EV. I live in Phoenix. I'm getting around 300mi/"full" charge in both. Generally driving max 50MPH these vehicles are pretty stunning. I'm 0.07/kw off-peak, no brainer for me. I've charged a few times at EVGO/EA just to get my feet wet. The KWH chares at commercial are plain too high. It can cost MORE than just buying gas. I've found roughly .30/kwh is pretty much the limit to "save money on gas". I adopted EV tech because I think it's the wave of the future, and just better long term. Long term = 10 years from now? I want to support the technology, and I can afford it. OTOH, frankly if I lived in Canada or New England, or Montana, ... I wouldn't have TWO EV's, but for any kind of a commute it's very viable.

Brave soul's all 100% dependent on an EV in the frozen tundra ;-).

 

Thanks to sunny Phoenix.

Wow, 0.07/kWh off-peak, it will never happen here. It is only going up. Was 24, now 27.

Fast chargers, because of the cold-gate, are somewhere 0.50 - 0.80/kWh as even with the winter mode on we get 25 kW most of the time. Around -30 or lower never over 25 kW.

We wanted to go to the Rockies when it was -30 all the time. I went to test a fast charger, did not get over 25 kW, it took 67 mins to charge 28 kWh at a 50 kW charger. That would mean adding about 1 hour for charging 100 km, as the consumption was around 30 kWh / 100 km. Adding 6 hours for charging to 6 hours needed for 615 km. We canceled the accommodation.

Upon the basis of those three winters and 147,000 km, my current feelings are that I am not going to buy another EV any time soon.

First I need to have an all-year-round reliable cheap source of electricity - from the natural gas CHP - for EV overnight charging and producing heat for the house at the same time.

That would be my recommendation to anyone living in a cold climate like the Prairies. Start with CHP.

Only then I will start looking around again. Likely will not be making any compromises. Either/or. I mean 1000 km range with 1,000,000 km lifespan advertised, which will translate in our conditions to 500 km range at cold temperatures, 200 - 250 km range when towing at cold temperatures.

Lifespan 1,000,000 km? My first battery died after 134,000 km, EV bricked and Hyundai customer support reaction was " you drive too much ". It was not classified as a recall for the first two months. At the moment I am not convinced with fairytales that batteries will survive cars.

All that does not mean I do not like new technology but you get kind of tired dealing with those things. We just need a car that works the way we need it in winter.

 

There are two major issues with EV's. First is the batteries. Current battery/storage technologies are drastically better than they were just 10 years ago, but frankly they need to improve by a factor of 2+ to be viable long term. Time will tell but the batteries need to last for 10 years with minimal degradation, and energy density needs to increase.

If they can ramp it up to scale, an outfit working with Queensland University in Australia is now producing prototype coin cells with an Aluminum Ion process. From an environmental standpoint, if they can just match current technology specs, the recycle-ability of the materials could be a huge win. They hope to have some pouch cells as drop-in replacements ~ 2024. The tech has demonstrated 3 fold energy density in the lab, and more importantly for you ice-bunnies, they appear to temperature agnostic. They don't heat up charging, and the current prototype coin cells can be fully charged in around 10 seconds, compared to several minutes for a Lithium ion equivalent. Stamping a few coin cells does not a battery factory make :-O! but, I bought some of the stock. They still haven't produced anything saleable, might not be able to ramp, we shall see.

The second problem with EV's is charging them. Somehow the politicians and media think we make all the cars electric the world turns colder, which may not actually be a good thing, and the electricity is all free from wind and solar. Not to burst anyone's bubble, but for every ICE car we take off the road, we have to come up with a similar number of BTU's (Or Kilowatt-hours, or Calories or whatever) on the electric grid. If your generating your electricity with Natural gas or other fuel, I'm not sure what is the point of forcing this conversion. The impact to the electric grid is going to be significant. I am fortunate to be getting relatively inexpensive electricity at night from the Palo Verde, nuclear plant just outside the city. If we can get people to stop being afraid of it, the micro-nuclear generating stations hold great promise to provide inexpensive localized power, with a fairly low environmental impact. Until then, we couldn't produce enough electricity with Solar if we carpeted the world with panels, and covered it with windmills, so we are back to burning something organic for our watts.

If you can run a generator on natural gas and produce electricity cheaper than you can buy it from the grid that would be pretty impressive. My back of the napkin calcs puts it closer to .50/kwh. My brother on the east coast has a nice generac direct connected to natural gas. He only runs it when the power is out ;-)! Then he cringes at his gas bill. I'd love to see real data showing you can use NG to run a generator and charge a car for under .30/kwh. Summer, on-peak here (between 1300-2000) July/August is like $0.35ish. Around 0.08 off peak. Winter is like 15/7 cents 0500-0900, 1700-2100 is winter on-peak. I would definitely entertain reverse EV charging to run the A/C during peak hours.

Fun stuff.

 

Hi Keith, good points. Many to attest. I will address the last one first and my get to the other topics later.

In my previous post (and other threads) I was mentioning a natural gas micro-cogeneration aka micro-CHP.

Not natural gas generators which produce only electricity.

I was talking about producing both electricity and heat from natural gas at the same time. Cogeneration.

There is also a possibility to produce all-in-one - electricity, heat, cooling. Trigeneration.

My apologies if the following sounds like a school lesson/presentation. It is not meant to be. I will just try to express my opinion.

With our natural gas furnace, we heat our house 6 - 8 months a year. We have 4 - 5 cold months in the Prairies (fluctuating between 0C and -10C/lower), out of which we have 2 - 3 months with around -20C or lower. The last four weeks were most of the time around -30C, diving to -40C. Add -10C for windchill. I mention this as for your area this may not be very common. We have frosts till late May and start having frosts in late September.

Natural gas furnace only heats the house.

Then we take electricity from the electrical grid. That electricity, in the case of Alberta where we live, is mostly produced at big natural gas power plants. The efficiency of those plants is somewhere around 40 - 50%. The remaining energy is waste heat, which is wasted by releasing it into the air.

The CHP (combined heat and power) appliances, the residential ones, have got an efficiency of around 90% for one reason only. They capture the waste heat and use it for heating the house.

The residential natural gas micro-CHP can cover, for our situation, nearly ideally both the charging of our EV overnight and producing the heat overnight when it is colder than during the day.

One natural gas appliance producing both heat and electricity at the same time seems to be the way to go for us.

We are shopping around. Currently - Aisin, Ecopower, Yanmar are available here. Engine based. Those could be called CHP 1.0.

Then there are micro-turbine-based. Some in Europe. Turbines last longer than engines, is my understanding

Finally, the new kid on the block seems to be natural gas fuel cell micro CHP. No moving parts. Those could be called CHP 2.0.

I am no expert by any means.

I just try to get familiar with all that as much as I can.

 

Okay, I'll follow-up to my own post. I'm seeing the number 8CF/kwh. In Phx we pay ~>$20/KCF non-commercial, so theoretically you could do around 0.16/KWH. Of course amortizing a generator that can output a sustained 8KW output for 6-9 hours, say twice or three times a week, along with the maintenance is going to drive that up significantly. Might be worth it for the hassle.

 

This is way cool. I'd have to move (literally a block away) to get NG, gonna probably do something with solar as $$ permit. I wasn't thinking, doh! you were already using gas for heat, and were going to swap with a dual use unit. That actually sounds like it could be even more efficient, bleed off heat for the house while you spin a generator, and dump it in the car, house, etc. (Thinking while typing, ...) it would be interesting to put (say) a ~20KW battery pak in the basement, let the generator/heater run at some maximal efficient rate, and use the batteries to handle peak loading. Frankly for what you describe if the heater/generator isn't exorbitantly expensive sounds almost like a no-brainer. What does the efficiency/split look like?