Range is increasing

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MikeP

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I purchased my Kona EV on Feb. 24, 2020 from a dealer in Maryland. My first drive with it included several DC charges as I made my way back home to Kentucky. When I picked up the car from the dealer, the battery-full range showed 291 miles.
Once at home, the battery wouldn’t show a range past 250. I was certain I damaged it slightly from all of the DC charges.
I started using a 30%-80% charge range after reading something which suggested it was better for the life of the battery. Occasionally I top it off to 100%. What I noticed each time the Kona is charged to 100%(after several 30-80 cycles), is that the range increases a small amount.
This morning, after performing another 100% charge, the range showed 304 miles.
I will continue this charging pattern and will update as I notice changes.
2b630079b68efdcb1e2a27384cf7c9e3.jpg



Sent from my iPhone using Inside EVs
 
The estimated range will rise and fall depending on efficiency, which is affected by weather (chiefly HVAC use) and driving patterns. Charging routines have nothing to do with it, and you certainly didn't damage the battery by charging.
 
I agree GOM is heavily temperature, speed affected, mine recently went up to 511 km or 319 miles. I really don't think i could get that unless mostly urban driving with no HVAC. One of these days I am going to have to try to make full charge test run, problem it is such a large battery it will probably take the better part of a day.
 
apu said:
I agree GOM is heavily temperature, speed affected, mine recently went up to 511 km or 319 miles. I really don't think i could get that unless mostly urban driving with no HVAC. One of these days I am going to have to try to make full charge test run, problem it is such a large battery it will probably take the better part of a day.
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I was driving yesterday with 90 degree heat and the AC on. Range is a little reduced - nowhere nearly as much as having the heat on in the winter.

I would note that I am finally seeing some amount of power consumed by "battery care". Which I presume is the circulating pump for the glycol coolant that regulates the battery temperature. It was only about 0.4kW if I recall correctly.
 
Good for you. As summer comes you will likely see more improvement as it gets warmer. Optimum temperature is in the 70-80F. Your GOM will unfortunately reflect your range on your previous several trips. I think they could improve it. Realistically some get more than 258 miles usually based on the way they drive. I'm sure you can also. Batteries are damaged by fast charging but it is so slight that you may never see the affect. I also choose the 20% - 80% charging regiment but you shouldn't be afraid of damaging your batteries by fast charging. The Battery Management System(BMS) of your Kona EV will handle it. I assume it is a 2020 model so the BMS will warm the batteries when needed (winter mode) and cool them when needed (hot summer days).
 
Warmer weather and "driving like a granny" really have an impact on miles charged. I, too, am charging over 300 miles now the few times I've done a full charge. Today I charged only to 80 percent and put 254 miles in the battery. I extrapolate that out to simulate a 100 percent charge (254*100)/80 for a 317 mile potential. I've found that, barring any long highway trips, I'm actually able to drive that much. There seems to be some critical speed, perhaps around 55-60 mph?, above which miles per kWh drop to 4 or below on highway trips longer than, say, 20 miles. Just tooling around, I'm seeing 6 up to 7 m/kWh.

Unfortunately, in Maine, summer is at best 4 months. I also bought my Kona from a Maryland dealer back in January, so it was easy to see what toll the cold took on mileage potential then. Amazingly, it got better and better as the months went by. Now I'm curious to see what happens after we go back into colder days after September.
 
Bill Carter said:
Warmer weather and "driving like a granny" really have an impact on miles charged. I, too, am charging over 300 miles now the few times I've done a full charge. Today I charged only to 80 percent and put 254 miles in the battery. I extrapolate that out to simulate a 100 percent charge (254*100)/80 for a 317 mile potential. I've found that, barring any long highway trips, I'm actually able to drive that much. There seems to be some critical speed, perhaps around 55-60 mph?, above which miles per kWh drop to 4 or below on highway trips longer than, say, 20 miles. Just tooling around, I'm seeing 6 up to 7 m/kWh.

Unfortunately, in Maine, summer is at best 4 months. I also bought my Kona from a Maryland dealer back in January, so it was easy to see what toll the cold took on mileage potential then. Amazingly, it got better and better as the months went by. Now I'm curious to see what happens after we go back into colder days after September.
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Doing the same sorts of calculations as you do based on a partial charge, over 3 months of ownership my car has been consistently showing 275-285 miles of range. That's with a somewhat (but not severely) grannyish driving style, probably 90% city driving in hilly San Francisco and almost no use of HVAC, with outside temps almost always in the 60-70 degree range. It will be interesting to see what happens when I'm able to take it out on longer highway drives and in different weather conditions.
 
Bill Carter said:
Warmer weather and "driving like a granny" really have an impact on miles charged. I, too, am charging over 300 miles now the few times I've done a full charge. Today I charged only to 80 percent and put 254 miles in the battery. I extrapolate that out to simulate a 100 percent charge (254*100)/80 for a 317 mile potential. I've found that, barring any long highway trips, I'm actually able to drive that much. There seems to be some critical speed, perhaps around 55-60 mph?, above which miles per kWh drop to 4 or below on highway trips longer than, say, 20 miles. Just tooling around, I'm seeing 6 up to 7 m/kWh.

Unfortunately, in Maine, summer is at best 4 months. I also bought my Kona from a Maryland dealer back in January, so it was easy to see what toll the cold took on mileage potential then. Amazingly, it got better and better as the months went by. Now I'm curious to see what happens after we go back into colder days after September.
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It gets worse and worse. ;)
 
Hi Wildeyed, thanks for verifying what I guess I already know. What I'll be curious to see, though, is how slowly or quickly miles charged will decrease, and come January again, whether there will be some increase over what I was charging last January, before I had developed the current driving style.
 
That's pretty much what you'll find. 12 months of your routine driving inputs will definitely make for more accurate GOM readings come next winter. Having gotten my car a year before you I'm going through my second annual cycle now. The benchmark I'm keeping an eye on is whether I can achieve my highest range this summer as I did last summer. While my range readings are going up I'm not sure I'll be able to reach the high 400s as I did my first summer. Besides, Covid has so reduced my driving (by 90%) that a direct comparison is probably impossible anyway.
 
Your range estimate depends on a lot of factors..
Based on my experience, the Kona looks at the average mi/kwh for the last 400 miles or so. Driving mode also changes estimated range. Your Kona will show you a different range in sports or normal mode than in ECO mode. The moment you turn on the AC, the range drops. if you turn on the heater, it drops even more. After a high speed road trip, your range will be very low and after 300 miles of city driving without heater or AC, your Kona will show you a very long range. I have almost 30k miles on my Kona and right now, my 80% range is 255 miles which translates to 313 mile range at 100%. A few months ago, after a high speed road trip, my 80% range was at 217 miles.
 
It definitely likes the warmer weather - over the winter with the heat and all I was getting around 240. Now it's around 280, mostly highway 65-70 mph with AC and two people in the car. BTW I always charge to 100%, I do a long trip every week and need the range.
 
MikeP said:
I purchased my Kona EV on Feb. 24, 2020 from a dealer in Maryland. My first drive with it included several DC charges as I made my way back home to Kentucky. When I picked up the car from the dealer, the battery-full range showed 291 miles.
Once at home, the battery wouldn’t show a range past 250. I was certain I damaged it slightly from all of the DC charges.
I started using a 30%-80% charge range after reading something which suggested it was better for the life of the battery. Occasionally I top it off to 100%. What I noticed each time the Kona is charged to 100%(after several 30-80 cycles), is that the range increases a small amount.
This morning, after performing another 100% charge, the range showed 304 miles.
I will continue this charging pattern and will update as I notice changes.
2b630079b68efdcb1e2a27384cf7c9e3.jpg



Sent from my iPhone using Inside EVs
Click to expand...
Interesting that your Bluelink App only says "KONA". Mine says 2019 KONA ELECTRIC..

(right now, my car shows exactly the rated range for 100% of charge at 80% of charge and all that with about 30k miles on the clock.. No signs of degradation despite frequent fast charging)
Screenshot_20200608-080131_MyHyundai.webp
 
I know Mike, this is getting exciting ;-). Best charge yet yesterday for my Kona. I was surprised that it went that high, given the rather cool ambient temperature of about 56 degrees. Extrapolating from this 80 percent charge to 100 percent suggests that I'd have almost 329 miles in the battery.
Interesting that BlueLink doesn't indicate that I have a Kona, but rather shows the name we gave it.

range.webp
 
I actually once drove 358.8 miles on a single charge with 29 miles remaining range (9%) with an average of 6.0 miles/kwh.
However, that was just a range test, driving 55 mph on the highway without AC and taking it easy around town..
The highest "estimated" range that I ever got was 348 miles at 100%..
 
So an interesting and counter-intuitive thing happened to me this weekend. Perhaps I'm putting too much faith in the GOM's precision, but it gave me a slightly puzzling result after my first significant highway drive in over a month.

My usual driving, and even more so now due to COVID restrictions, is about 95% city driving, with occasional short freeway trips. In the 3 months and 720 miles I've had the car (I never drive a lot and it's even less right now), it's only been on 3 highway trips of more than 20 miles, and one of those was bringing it home from the dealer. Overall I've been averaging 4.5 miles/kwh (just checked that to confirm). Pretty consistently when I do the calculation based on my current state of charge (and as a new EV owner I'm still a tad obsessive about keeping an eye on these things), it's given me a range of 275-280 miles based on 100% charge.

So today I took my Kona out for its first highway trip in some time, a round trip of about 50 miles, about 45 of it freeway, with the cruise control set at 62 MPH for about 2/3 of the highway miles. The car was showing me energy consumption of 4.2 miles/kwh for the trip -- a bit worse than my normal average. About a mile and a half from home, the battery charge hit exactly 50% while I happened to be looking at the readout, and the GOM showed a range of 144 miles. And it held at 144 for a bit, so it wasn't about to drop when I looked at it. That's an easy enough calculation that even I, definitely not a math person, could do it in my head while driving: 144 at 50% = 288 at 100% -- a slight bump up from my usual readings, even though my energy consumption on this trip was a bit more than my average.

Is this just the margin of error of the GOM showing itself? Or is something going on here I don't understand?

(by the way, entirely off-topic, my Kona is named Iz and he says hi)
 
Bruce M. said:
The car was showing me energy consumption of 4.2 miles/kwh for the trip -- a bit worse than my normal average. About a mile and a half from home, the battery charge hit exactly 50% while I happened to be looking at the readout, and the GOM showed a range of 144 miles. And it held at 144 for a bit, so it wasn't about to drop when I looked at it.
Click to expand...

I thought that it gradually recalculated based on recent driving, but I don't have a good sense of how much driving you need to do for it to fully re-adjust.

On my old car, the GOM would sometimes actually *increase* as I was driving. After about an hour of driving it would sort of level out and then begin to drop at the expected rate.
 
ericy said:
I thought that it gradually recalculated based on recent driving, but I don't have a good sense of how much driving you need to do for it to fully re-adjust.

On my old car, the GOM would sometimes actually *increase* as I was driving. After about an hour of driving it would sort of level out and then begin to drop at the expected rate.
Click to expand...

Perhaps some longer-term owners can chime in with some words of wisdom. I do sometimes see my GOM go up by a mile or two if I go down a lengthy downgrade with the regen showing it's charging. The GOM on my old CR-Z hybrid would make fairly radical readjustments after a few miles if the type of driving I was doing changed radically. Suddenly it would show 30 miles or more of increased or decreased range.
 
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