Scheduled Charging Issues

  • Thread starter Thread starter wizziwig
  • Start date Start date
  • Replies Replies 57
  • Views Views 18K
My EVSE purchase is a little deception as it only tracks the kw charged if charging begins within minutes of my activating it, which is not the case when using scheduled charging.

But I can now answer the original question. The scheduled charging and the scheduled climate from the car work just fine. However make sure you don't forget to designate your home as being the location where the schedule is to be applied otherwise it won't kick in. They made it that way so you can easily charge at any time while on the road and just adhere to the schedule while home.
 
It might be different for the niro but for the Kona I click on Charge Management and then on Charging Location, which is the option right beneath Charging and Climate. Hope this helps.
 
Hi All -- Bumping this thread back up as I am also having some charging issues. I have the onboard charger set to "off-peak only" and do not have a scheduled departure time set (nor do I want one). My off peak hours are 8pm -3pm. Today I got home at 4:30pm, plugged in the level 1 charger and the car started charging. Logged into the app which also indicated charging, double checked the settings which are clearly set to off-peak only, 8pm - 3pm. Anyone have any ideas?
 
Reviving an old thread and wondering if anyone has had any breakthroughs with the charge and climate scheduling?

We finally got our car back from the body shop in mid January, and I still cannot, despite my best efforts and many attempts, get the scheduled climate and scheduled departure timing to work.

The car will follow the off-peak charging that I have set up, which is good as it keeps us from paying much higher hydro rates but unfortunately I have had no luck with getting the car to delay charging and wait until later in the night to charge in order to reach its desired state of charge by our set departure time. Nor have I been able to get the scheduled climate to start automatically before the scheduled departure time.

I have been able to get the car to start the climate on schedule by sitting in the car and setting a departure time for just over a half hour later, then turning off the car, opening the door and then locking the car with the key from inside, then waiting a few minutes and the car will start the climate. Unfortunately this doesn't replicate when I want it to in the morning. It seems for some reason, that the car must actually be charging at the time of the scheduled departure time in order for the function to work.

Anyone having any success with these functions or have any suggestions for me.

Thanks!
Tom
 
I charged for the first time last night... I set the off-peak charging time (11 p.m. - 7 a.m.) and also the departure time of 7 a.m. According to my charger, looks like charging started right at 11 p.m. and finished well before 7 a.m. I'm happy with that as it didn't really effect the charge at departure which I had set to 80%. Range with 80% charge showed as 216 miles.
 
JasonG said:
I charged for the first time last night... I set the off-peak charging time (11 p.m. - 7 a.m.) and also the departure time of 7 a.m. According to my charger, looks like charging started right at 11 p.m. and finished well before 7 a.m. I'm happy with that as it didn't really effect the charge at departure which I had set to 80%. Range with 80% charge showed as 216 miles.
Click to expand...

So this is the same behaviour I experience, the charging stays within the scheduled off peak times, but unfortunately if the car charges from say 11pm until 3am to achieve the desired 80% charge, the battery has 4 hours to cool back down to ambient temp and therefore lose some of the additional efficiency gained from having a warm battery when you go to depart.

Also, as I mentioned in my earlier post, the scheduled climate function simply doesn't work for me, which means we have to remotely start the car from the app instead of simply scheduling a departure time and having a warm and preconditioned vehicle at the desired time.

It sounds like a few very small issues, but they're features that are advertised and the do not work as they're supposed to.

I have a small repair to the P button on my shifter to do in the very near future and will raise this to the dealer at that time and ask that it be responded to by Kia Corporate or their Technical Department.

Doesn't seem that the software is properly baked in...
 
We have used the scheduled climate feature successfully, setup from the Kia Access app. It appears that the car starts drawing current from the EVSE and warming up about 15min before the scheduled departure time, then turns off at the scheduled departure time. We are in the US.
 
CanuckTom said:
So this is the same behaviour I experience, the charging stays within the scheduled off peak times, but unfortunately if the car charges from say 11pm until 3am to achieve the desired 80% charge, the battery has 4 hours to cool back down to ambient temp and therefore lose some of the additional efficiency gained from having a warm battery when you go to depart.
Click to expand...

In order to use the departure time charging, you have to work around the poorly written software of the Niro.

1) Disable all off-peak charging schedules via the app. They should be blank/clear.
2) Set the departure time on either of the two available timer slots.
3) Plug in the EVSE cable with enough time available for the car to reach the target SOC % before departure time.
4) Force car to start charging immediately using the app.
5) Once the in-car odometer display shows an estimated duration to complete charging, force car to stop charging immediately using the app. The reason this step is necessary is to force the car to measure your actual charging speed and thus properly calculate the time it needs to begin charging in order to complete charging exactly at the desired departure time. Without this step, it seems to use some default assumed charging speed which is rarely true due to variations in available voltage and current supplied by your EVSE. As a result, this would usually make the car begin charging too early and complete charging too early before your actual departure time. Other properly designed scheduled charging implementations (for example Chevrolet Bolt) do this automatically every time you connect the EVSE - they do a quick test-charge for a few seconds and then stop charging until closer to departure time. Bolt also allows combining the off-peak schedules and departure time schedules so you don't have to pick one or the other for charging the battery like the Niro.

It would be great if KIA was willing to fix their crappy software but I'm not holding my breath. They have not released a single update since the car was released beyond just simple nav/maps for the infotainment system. When I asked my dealer to pass these issues along they just told me to file a complaint via the website (which I did last May).
 
wizziwig said:
In order to use the departure time charging, you have to work around the poorly written software of the Niro.

1) Disable all off-peak charging schedules via the app. They should be blank/clear.
2) Set the departure time on either of the two available timer slots.
3) Plug in the EVSE cable with enough time available for the car to reach the target SOC % before departure time.
4) Force car to start charging immediately using the app.
5) Once the in-car odometer display shows an estimated duration to complete charging, force car to stop charging immediately using the app. The reason this step is necessary is to force the car to measure your actual charging speed and thus properly calculate the time it needs to begin charging in order to complete charging exactly at the desired departure time. Without this step, it seems to use some default assumed charging speed which is rarely true due to variations in available voltage and current supplied by your EVSE. As a result, this would usually make the car begin charging too early and complete charging too early before your actual departure time. Other properly designed scheduled charging implementations (for example Chevrolet Bolt) do this automatically every time you connect the EVSE - they do a quick test-charge for a few seconds and then stop charging until closer to departure time. Bolt also allows combining the off-peak schedules and departure time schedules so you don't have to pick one or the other for charging the battery like the Niro.

It would be great if KIA was willing to fix their crappy software but I'm not holding my breath. They have not released a single update since the car was released beyond just simple nav/maps for the infotainment system. When I asked my dealer to pass these issues along they just told me to file a complaint via the website (which I did last May).
Click to expand...

Thank you for this write up, based on my observations of how the software works, I can definitely see how this process would make the function work "properly".

Yes, indeed it is astonishing that Kia seems to have little to no interest in providing us with software updates to fix some of these issues. I would think that a company that appears to be making a serious attempt to challenge as a relatively early entrant into the EV space (for a traditional auto maker) that they would be more willing to engage their early adopters and try to work out their kinks with our help.

I know personally, I would rather have buggy software that I know is being improved upon regularily with input from the end user even with the inconvenience of the bugs rather than just be forgotten after purchase.

Here's hoping Kia decide to learn from their early cars rather than just moving on to the next vehicle to make the same mistakes...
 
I just got my Niro EV EX last week and completed the first full charge today to check the range available. It charged to 290 miles or 466 kilometers. Outstanding range! I wonder if I got the SK battery pack and it has a higher capacity than the LG maybe? Checking Torque Pro, I noticed that there is a 3% buffer at the top. BMS shows 97% charge when the charging stops at 100%.
I did not want to leave the car charged at 100% for too long and wanted to control when it would reach its maximum charge. While applying the technique above, I also read the manual and found out that the software actually has a 3 minutes routine that the car uses to estimate the charge rate. So you do not need to do this manually with steps 4 and 5. Just set the next departure time, make sure that the "Schedule Charging deactivation button" is not active, exit the car, plug in and you will see the center light blink for 3 minutes. When it is over, the car will turn off the light and get ready to start charging per your preset schedule to the max percentage you specified.
Now there was one glitch for me that I want to share in case it happens to someone else. The date and time were set accurately, but the year was 2016 instead of 2020. For 2 days, the schedule did not kick in until I realized that the year had not been set properly when the car was delivered. The car thought we were Wednesday instead of Monday, even though the date was correct.
So far I am extremely happy with my purchase. I was considering a model Y and had a reservation for a Mustang Mach-E. But I could not justify the difference in price. The Niro is very comfortable, fun to drive and was less than $30k after discounts and US federal tax credit. To compete with the Niro's 290 miles range, I would have needed to get an extended range Model Y ($53k) or Mach-E ($48k). The Niro EX non-premium is well equipped with all the active safety features and even a heat pump. This is the best deal by far right now
 
Frederic said:
I just got my Niro EV EX last week and completed the first full charge today to check the range available. It charged to 290 miles or 466 kilometers. Outstanding range! I wonder if I got the SK battery pack and it has a higher capacity than the LG maybe? Checking Torque Pro, I noticed that there is a 3% buffer at the top. BMS shows 97% charge when the charging stops at 100%.
I did not want to leave the car charged at 100% for too long and wanted to control when it would reach its maximum charge. While applying the technique above, I also read the manual and found out that the software actually has a 3 minutes routine that the car uses to estimate the charge rate. So you do not need to do this manually with steps 4 and 5. Just set the next departure time, make sure that the "Schedule Charging deactivation button" is not active, exit the car, plug in and you will see the center light blink for 3 minutes. When it is over, the car will turn off the light and get ready to start charging per your preset schedule to the max percentage you specified.
Now there was one glitch for me that I want to share in case it happens to someone else. The date and time were set accurately, but the year was 2016 instead of 2020. For 2 days, the schedule did not kick in until I realized that the year had not been set properly when the car was delivered. The car thought we were Wednesday instead of Monday, even though the date was correct.
So far I am extremely happy with my purchase. I was considering a model Y and had a reservation for a Mustang Mach-E. But I could not justify the difference in price. The Niro is very comfortable, fun to drive and was less than $30k after discounts and US federal tax credit. To compete with the Niro's 290 miles range, I would have needed to get an extended range Model Y ($53k) or Mach-E ($48k). The Niro EX non-premium is well equipped with all the active safety features and even a heat pump. This is the best deal by far right now
Click to expand...
When I ordered Kona, the range for the price (at the time $8K more for the M3) along with the heat pump and rear hatch were the reasons as well.
Always happy to here from a contented new owner :)
 
Frederic said:
While applying the technique above, I also read the manual and found out that the software actually has a 3 minutes routine that the car uses to estimate the charge rate. So you do not need to do this manually with steps 4 and 5. Just set the next departure time, make sure that the "Schedule Charging deactivation button" is not active, exit the car, plug in and you will see the center light blink for 3 minutes. When it is over, the car will turn off the light and get ready to start charging per your preset schedule to the max percentage you specified.
Click to expand...

That has never worked my Niro without performing the manual pre-charge as I described in steps 4/5. My charging speed is not typical. I usually charge at 240V/12A. Due to wiring and voltage variances, actual rate could be closer to 233V/11.5A. The car always gets it wrong and begins charging and stopping many hours before the actual departure. With the pre-charge, the car stops charging within a couple minutes of departure.

The 3 minute thing is just the time the car always takes to fall asleep. It will blink the green LED during that time to tell you that charging has been delayed and you have 3 minutes to override it with the button inside the car. At no point in this process is it actually measuring your EVSE true charging speed capability.

If it worked for you, it probably just means that your EVSE luckily happened to deliver the exact amount of power that the car's dumb scheduling algorithm was expecting. How close to departure time did it stop charging and what power can your EVSE deliver?
 
Last edited:
I did another test today either my Mustart travel EVSE at 32 amp. The car started charging 30 minutes before departure time, to go from 85 to 90%. It finished charging just 5 minutes before departure, so perfect for me.
Your problem may be due to the 12 amp charge rate. I noticed in the app that you can tell the car to charge at different rates, that might be another option for you. My app shows level 2 by default, seems to remember that this is what I sued the last time.
 
All I know is that every day I came home from work and plugged in, it would start and end charging many hours before departure unless I did the short pre-charge.

Did you unplug the car between these tests? As long as it remains plugged in, it remembers the true charge rate from prior charge session. That't the whole point of the short pre-charge procedure I discussed above. It may also remember if you didn't turn on and drive the car anywhere. Most likely the default charge rate is uses for its calculations is based on 32A so you may not be affected by this bug unless your EVSE allows a way to reduce charge rate. I don't know if/how the location based charging factors into all this since my Niro trim does not have navigation.
 
I had unplugged and driven before starting the test. I have the EX trim as well. The car has three charge levels for 240V, have you tried to adjust it to the lowest one?
 
Yes. All three produced the wrong results. That brings up another bug with the car. That menu allowing you to change 120V and 240V charge current (at least here in USA) is wrong. It makes you think you have independent controls for portable vs. station EVSE based on their voltage. That is not the case. It actually categorizes them based on their maximum reported current. So I think any EVSE that reports below 32A max will be qualified as a "portable" unit and be affected by those parts of the menu only. Those menu items offer fixed current dividers. Minimum charges at 50% maximum reported current while reduced is 75%. They are not absolute current values like on some other cars.

You can verify this by experimenting with the current button on the included portable 120V/12A EVSE. You can create many different combinations of charging rates by setting that portable EVSE to 12, 10, or 8 amps and then scaling that maximum current by 0.75 or 0.5 using the in-car menus. None of them provide reliable departure time charging and things are completely wrong if you supply 240V at those low current values. The closest was the maximum 120V/12A setting on the portable EVSE combined with maximum in the menus. Most like the other maximum of 240V/32A is also close.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top