Chuck salsgiver
New Member
I'm having the exact same issue!! Sucks
Hyundai Kona EV not charging to full range
- Thread starter Jay Lightning
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I'm having the exact same issue!! Sucks
FloridaSun
Well-Known Member
The moment you turn on the heater, your range will drop 30%. Even if you don't run the heater.. if it's colder than 70's and your car's battery temperature is below 70's, you will lose some range.. The down side of owning an electric car in a cold climate is that you will lose range in colder months.. Significant loss...
This applies to ALL electric cars.. Electric cars don't produce enough heat to warm the cabin with battery coolant therefore they have to produce heat via heat pump or resistance and neither of them are very efficient. Heat = wasted energy..
Also, I would recommend ECO mode, especially for climate control. The good thing is that once you get back to summer, your range will increase again..
One little correction -- both resistance and heat pump heating ARE very efficent. Because their efficency reach 100% or even to 400% (heat pump). Almost every Joule of energy used by resistance heater warms your cabin. Every joule of energy used by heat pump find even three colleagues from the atmosphere to make your cabin warmer together. BUT every joule of energy in res. heater and every joule of energy who looks for external colleagues to keep your cabin warm come from your car's battery. And can't be used to speed your car, to give you the range. You receive range or heat from your battery.
FloridaSun
Well-Known Member
What I meant when I talked about efficiency was related on how it affects the efficiency of the car and it pulls significant energy from the car's High Voltage battery, therefore reducing it's efficiency significantly..
NRH
Active Member
I know this sounds unhelpful, but bear with me. You haven't lost anything Chuck! The full battery is exactly as full of energy today as it was on the day you bought it. Also, even though on day one the range said 260, and today it says 200, it will still take you exactly as far as it would on day one (IF the driver and driving conditions were the same).
I think the confusion that people have (and many have it - you're not alone) is based on thinking that the remaining miles indicator on the dash is like a gas gauge. It's not.
That Range indicator (often referred to as the GOM or Guess-o-Meter) is not a measure of how much charge you have in the battery. When you fill up your 2-month old electric car and the GOM shows 200 miles instead of the 260 that it showed when new, it's not the same as if you filled up your 2 month old gas car and the tank needle only went to 7/8ths full. The GOM is not telling you how big the battery is - it's just telling you how many miles you squeezed out of the last full charge (on average). It's all about driving conditions, not about battery condition (at least for a fairly new car).
The GOM is reporting an algorithm that takes 64 kWh, and divides it by your average energy consumption which is reported to the right of your speedometer, in miles/kWh (the equivalent of fuel economy for a gas car.). When you bought your car, the computer used an average guess at efficiency (something like 3.8 m/kWh), and multiplied that by a full charge. That equals about 260 miles of range on the Guess-o-meter.
You can watch the GOM changing it's guess if you just turn on the heater. The GOM will drop by double digits. That's not because the battery got any smaller or less healthy - it's just that the car thinks "he's going to use a bunch of electricity to heat the cabin now" and it gives you a new guess of you how far you'll be able to go with the heat on.
If you drive fast, or accelerate hard, or drive with the heat on, then you can very easily average less than the original 260 reported range. As the car adjusts it's expectations based on your first couple weeks of driving you'll see the full GOM miles decrease. That doesn't mean the battery has degraded, because the GOM is not a battery gauge.
If you drive in warm weather, use a hyper-miler driving style, keep speeds below 60, etc, then you can very definitely exceed the original GOM distance. The battery is exactly the same in both situations. The GOM is just reporting a range prediction based on your recent efficiency history.
If you want to check how your driving history has been, open the EV page on the infotainment screen, and choose . . . I forget, is it "driving history"? Anyways, you can see a log of your past trips' efficiency (m/kWh if it's an American car), and if you see a lot of 3.0, 3.1, 2.9 etc, then your 200 mile GOM is showing you how far YOU go on your full, healthy 64kWh Battery.
(If there were a problem with your battery's health or capacity, then you would expect to see higher efficiency, but lower range performance.) If you're regularly getting 4.0 and higher, and your range on the GOM is 200, then maybe there's a battery problem, but this is likely not the situation you're in.)
I think the confusion that people have (and many have it - you're not alone) is based on thinking that the remaining miles indicator on the dash is like a gas gauge. It's not.
That Range indicator (often referred to as the GOM or Guess-o-Meter) is not a measure of how much charge you have in the battery. When you fill up your 2-month old electric car and the GOM shows 200 miles instead of the 260 that it showed when new, it's not the same as if you filled up your 2 month old gas car and the tank needle only went to 7/8ths full. The GOM is not telling you how big the battery is - it's just telling you how many miles you squeezed out of the last full charge (on average). It's all about driving conditions, not about battery condition (at least for a fairly new car).
The GOM is reporting an algorithm that takes 64 kWh, and divides it by your average energy consumption which is reported to the right of your speedometer, in miles/kWh (the equivalent of fuel economy for a gas car.). When you bought your car, the computer used an average guess at efficiency (something like 3.8 m/kWh), and multiplied that by a full charge. That equals about 260 miles of range on the Guess-o-meter.
You can watch the GOM changing it's guess if you just turn on the heater. The GOM will drop by double digits. That's not because the battery got any smaller or less healthy - it's just that the car thinks "he's going to use a bunch of electricity to heat the cabin now" and it gives you a new guess of you how far you'll be able to go with the heat on.
If you drive fast, or accelerate hard, or drive with the heat on, then you can very easily average less than the original 260 reported range. As the car adjusts it's expectations based on your first couple weeks of driving you'll see the full GOM miles decrease. That doesn't mean the battery has degraded, because the GOM is not a battery gauge.
If you drive in warm weather, use a hyper-miler driving style, keep speeds below 60, etc, then you can very definitely exceed the original GOM distance. The battery is exactly the same in both situations. The GOM is just reporting a range prediction based on your recent efficiency history.
If you want to check how your driving history has been, open the EV page on the infotainment screen, and choose . . . I forget, is it "driving history"? Anyways, you can see a log of your past trips' efficiency (m/kWh if it's an American car), and if you see a lot of 3.0, 3.1, 2.9 etc, then your 200 mile GOM is showing you how far YOU go on your full, healthy 64kWh Battery.
(If there were a problem with your battery's health or capacity, then you would expect to see higher efficiency, but lower range performance.) If you're regularly getting 4.0 and higher, and your range on the GOM is 200, then maybe there's a battery problem, but this is likely not the situation you're in.)
Last edited:
Claire Spencer
New Member
Hello! I am curious about the "spare capacity that never gets filled". I have a 2019 Kona EV and I live up a mountain. For the first year and a half (until we had to limit our charging to 80% due to the recall) every time I charged my vehicle and headed down the hill I would get a "ping" and a message saying that regenerative braking was not available because the battery was fully charged (it defaults to "Level 1" regenerative braking when I start it). I expected to get that message again once my battery was replaced due to the recall and I was able to charge to 100% again. Since the battery was replaced, my KWH/100km has increased by 20% (from 15 to 18-19), and my range decreased accordingly. When I go down the hill after charging, I no longer get the "ping" about my battery being fully charged, even with no heat, fan, radio, wipers, etc. running and regenerating at Level 2. It's as if it says it is charging to 100% but is only charging to 80%, or as if the spare capacity is there now but wasn't before. I'm missing my extra range :/
My suggestion (if not running an OBD2 dongle and app) is to run the vehicle for 50% of the displayed capacity, keeping an eye on your consumption. Calculating this way will tell you how many kWh would be @full charge...should be ~64kWh. If not, and it is less, you may be correct on the assumption of lost useable range due to increase in top end buffer
