Read Battery Capacity Yourself (Autel AP200 Breakthrough)

I could be wrong, but it seems more likely to me that there is some device on Alter's car that is stuck and not reading the battery capacity correctly. Hard to tell now without a previous capacity number. If it doesn't change as he keeps driving it, that would point more and more than way.

 

It's my understanding that battery capacity is not 'read' it's measured through usage. It's calculated based on current usage vs. battery voltage. All relevant sensors appear to be working in my car.

Now the troubling or interesting thing is that wrt the PDI honda (if I read the PDI manual correctly) does take the PDI reading of the vehicle to be the true capacity as proof that the battery was good on delivery. If it does take a while to calculate the value and if it defaults to 55.0 Ah then they really are falsely misrepresenting the health of a vehicle battery upon delivery. And it's not like Honda has never misrepresented anything. Lots of class action lawsuits.

 

One more anecdote - when I had my 12 month service done at the Honda dealership I asked for the capacity check, and when I was finishing my visit they gave me my invoice sheet and a hand written "55 Ah". At first I thought, wow, the battery is in great condition, but later I figured they probably didn't really run the test or perhaps it was like 54.5 Ah and they rounded up or something. But after @alter mentioned his capacity number I wonder if that is some sort of default number when the car's computer doesn't know.

At that time I hadn't disconnected the 12V battery at any point and I don't believe they had done it during service as there would have been no reason to, and I didn't lose any settings. So it is still a mystery if after 12 months it was really reporting 55 Ah, and why. I haven't had the capacity check done since then as they were going to charge me a lot of money. I will see if I can get the Autel thing configured, or buy the suggested alternative OBD-II reader.

 

Just to be clear, what happened to me wasn't exactly like disconnecting the 12 volt line. When the dealership did that two years ago it reset my settings and my GoM. None of that happened with the conniption. I just likened it to it as they mentioned the 12volt undervolt.

 

If they didn’t hand you a full print out of the electric powertrain, they probably just looked up the number, or, this is unlikely, actually knew the number that Honda provides. Of course the 55Ah number is derived from data provided by Panasonic, the manufacturer of the batteries.

 

I purchased my Clarity Dec 30, 2017 so it is now beyond the 3 year warranty which would cover the 12 volt battery. In February this year I had a couple of times I could not start the car without a jumper to my wife's car, so on March 1 I had the 12 volt battery replaced. That caused a lot of the settings I had done earlier to be lost, I guess because the battery was disconnected.
I ask MrFixit if he would add me to the list for the Autel AP200 update and he said he would in the next couple of days. When I get that update I will post my numbers and see if I also get 55 Ah.

 

NorCal, Bay Area, Clarity purchased Sept 2019 - 20300 miles BPC 51.4 Ah
50% EV mode (city) , 50% HV mode (highway)

 

Now that many of us have (or soon will have) access to battery capacity data, would it be useful to start a new thread where we record our data so it's all in one place? If so, what data points should be included in each posting? Here's my potential list (in no particular order):
Year
Mileage
Current Battery Capacity (BC)
Prior BCs with dates
Percent EV:HV use
Manufacture date
Purchase date
Location (i.e., climate influence)
Typical Charging (Level 1, 2, or both)

 

How?

 

So now i can get the battery capacity on my ap200?
Or should i contact autel?

 

I can put together a Google spreadsheet to record and analyze the data. I have one that we used in thread https://insideevsforum.com/community/index.php?threads/request-for-data-from-obdii-using-android-app-car-scanner-from-0vz-only.8708/ - see post #44 & 46

The link to the spreadsheet is https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LHtqVuPzHUDXmX1jiHOQIpT_YiGp9N-vnBOiSz96C2I/edit?usp=sharing

There are share settings that restrict access, but I can remove those if they are too cumbersome. I can rework that spreadsheet to focus on battery capacity instead of SOC. We can enter data in English or Metric and I can set the spreadsheet to give us all the data in either system.

Regarding data. I suggest sharing the overall mpg / kpl data as a different measure of % EV / % HV. I'm thinking that higher % EV will have higher overall mpg / kpl and it will be a more objective number.

 

I have the spreadsheet together enough to collect the data NorCalPete and I suggested. Once we get some data I'll work on some charts to see what the data looks like. I removed the sharing restrictions on the spreadsheet so anyone can go in look around and edit. Google keeps historical versions so we can go back to a previous edit point if it gets messed up.

There are two tabs on the spreadsheet to enter data.
The first is the Battery Capacity Data.
The second is the Vehicle Data.

NOTE: There is a script that runs to set the validation for State / Province depending on what we pick for Country. It takes a second to run to give the State / Province options once we pick the country. Google may also warn you about the script being in there and prompt you about going ahead and loading the spreadsheet.

I only have Canada and the US for country options. There are some in other countries and we can add those countries as needed.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LHtqVuPzHUDXmX1jiHOQIpT_YiGp9N-vnBOiSz96C2I/edit?usp=sharing

 

Fixed that to Edit.

 

This is great -- two suggestions:

1) Add a column for "how measured" -- one of "AP2000", "ELM327", or "Dealer", just in case we later find out it matters or just to see how many people are doing what.

2) While the spreadsheet is really nice, I think a dedicated thread for people to talk about the capacity itself would be good also. People are going to want to analyze, wonder, gloat, complain, talk about strategies, etc, so it would be good to have a combined freeform place for that separate from these 2 "how to get the data" threads.

Just my opinion. I have to say, while disappointing that Autel decided not to fully support this, I wasn't thrilled about their product in the first place because it seems more expensive and less generic, flexible, usable for live "dashboard" usage, etc, as the ELM327 devices. I'm kind of glad their decision spurred research and breakthroughs there instead. And we don't have to feel guilty for using those instead because they made their business decision

 

I suggest adding two more columns to the spreadsheet. First, the model year of the Clarity. Second, the month and year of the new car purchase. I would also have the build date along with the model year but that might be asking too much.

LeoP

 

I added a column for "how measured." It might matter. We might find that one of those options is less reliable than the others.

I agree that we will likely want a thread to talk about BPC and related ideas.

FWIW - I am hoping that Autel is getting a more complete update ready for all vehicles that will include the beta update we are using and just isn't ready yet. That would seem to fit their comment about resources on their end.