More range than expected

FWIW my range went up after my software update in January. I drive a 2021 Kona EV and this was the first update I had done. A nice surprise.

 

I recently took a 520km (return) road trip, 440 on a freeway, mostly rolling hills, 80 on a flat 80kph speed-limited rural arterial. Cool, sunny days, ambient temp 20-22C.

I drove to the speed limit - 110 on the freeway - and 80 where possible on the rural but there were many roundabouts, so a fair bit of slowing and regaining speed. I used smart cruise (SCC) most of the time.

In each direction at the end of the drive, when I added km driven to remaining GOM, the total was over 500km. Pretty happy with that.

We live in our state capital's outer suburbia, so ours is mostly suburban driving with the occasional freeway trip to the city and a very occasional long distance road trip. My long term average consumption over 16,000km of ownership is 13.2kWh/100km. Pretty happy with that, too.

 

It may not have gone dead, but for sure lost a lot of charge. It is a good idea to connect an external charger to recharge it to full again as soon as possible. Relying on the car to recharge it may not be enough.

 

Impressive. Here the current Kona 64 is rated at 14.7 kWh/100km WLPT, which presumably includes a margin for charging losses, so you’ve probably beat that.

 

This is the furthest I have ever driven on one charge. The GOM is blank, but I still had about 7-8% left, which would easily have given me another 20 miles or so. Before the GOM went blank, it was estimating that I could hit around 281 total miles of range. Not bad at all.


Sent from my iPhone using Inside EVs

 

In my case the range estimate visible in display does not work, it seems to be hardcoded to 393km at 100% charge(around 244miles).
So i have resorted to using efficiency figures to reverse-calculate the range left.
On an average:
11-12km/KWh (around 7miles/KWh) gives me a range of around 470kms(290miles or so)
And the trip meter shows the distance covered. So, whatever left from the 470kms is my range at that point.
This has worked almost perfectly for me.

 

This seems to be an unusual experience, based on people's reports here. Have you asked whether the GOM is fixable, or needs to be replaced?

 

My GoM reads the same all year round (about 500 +/-10 km) because I drive the same all year round and the climate is mild. There's certainly nothing broken.

The dash and especially the media centre economy readings are not perfectly accurate and don't form an ideal basis for further mathematical gymnastics. The SoC on the other hand precisely tracks what's available (in coulombs to be pedantic) according to all the OBD measurements I've done over the years.

On this recent trip I've used OBD data to log cumulative net draw from the battery by kms, the blue line. At the end it works out to 13.79 kWh/100km but the dash says it's 13.4.

The red line is the blue line but minus the power going to the 12V system via the LDC, basically what HV power is needed to keep the car alive outside of AC and heating, neither of which were used here. On the "Electricity Usage" screen that's the column labeled "Electronics", usually showing about 200 watts.

I just picked that factor arbitrarily but the result of 13.34 does suggest that the dash reading may be ignoring that particular use of energy.

 

So, the Kona i have is a 39.2 KWh one, not the 64KWh. The range estimates for this variant usually starts at around 330KM's and if driven efficiently, it starts showing higher values on subsequent drive-recharge cycles.
But the range estimate max's out at 393km (with efficiency calculated as 10KM/Kwh), it is almost like a hard limit, no matter how efficiently i drive it.
Now my consumption is around 11-12km/KWh (around 7miles/KWh) or in KWH/100KM terms it is equivalent to around 8-8.5KWh/100KM (around 13KWh/100miles). So, that usually gives me a range of around 470KM's (292miles) almost regularly. I have even tested it on a long drive, where i managed 500+KM on a single charge.
(Yes, it is better than the WLTP rating, but i have been able to manage it almost consistently for quite some time so can vouch for it.)
This is after almost a year's worth of driving, BMS upgrades, clearing out the memory etc - almost all that, I and the service center, could think of. Hence the conclusion that the range estimation has an upper hard limit of 393 km or basically 10KM/KWh. So, now i do not use the GOM but instead rely on reverse calculating using the Efficiency visible on the dash.

True. This would be the most precise calculation for the range. The SOC on the display is never as accurate as from the OBD.

I came to that same conclusion - the LV battery(12V) consumption may have been missed out.
The efficiency displayed on the dash vs the calculated efficiency using Odometer(kms) and SOC from OBD, had a shortfall of almost the same amount as the "Electronics" consumption calculated over that duration.
I had noticed the following on a night drive (cool climate) - only the blower was running(without the AC), so basically no consumption showed up in the "Climate" section. And almost all lights including the fog lamp and the internal ones were on, so the consumption of "Electronics" was almost at 0.45KW. On that trip the shortfall of the efficiency shown on dash was higher and almost matching with the higher "Electronics" consumption.

 

Fascinating. I have the larger battery (all that's available in the U.S.), so maybe it's set up differently, but I've certainly seen no sign of an upper limit to estimated range, which has shown as high as 352 miles, nearly 100 miles over the EPA range estimate). And I generally average about 5.5 mi/kWh (and under ideal conditions can hit 6 or better on an individual trip).

 

They seem to under report the mileage for everyone on here it's usually the opposite