I'm talking 75-80 easily, mostly highway miles, before VLB warning.
My car is kept in a non-insulated garage with a rather drafty door, darn close to ambient. In another thread you mention the charging process should add an insignificant amount of heat to the battery. Either my approach to charging/prewarming is adding significant heat to the battery, or the battery is remarkably resilient to cold. I'm not sure which, the important thing is that I'm getting the miles, remarkably close to the summer, by driving the same loop in as close to an identical way as I can muster over a wide range in temperatures since early fall. I will work on getting you KW readings from the blink, but for some reason, the charger comes on and off periodically, on it's own, it's like it tries to balance the cells even after an 80% charge. it's common to get up in the morning and have it show zero KW's for the last charge and I only charge to 80% at night. If a QC would be more accurate, I can run it down to VLBW the next time I drive to Olympia and see what it takes.
My goal has been to figure out how to get the most out of the car, as designed, using the tools it came with and so far, I'm pretty pleased with how it functions in this climate. A few changes to climate control, and adding the CWP would be very nice.
TonyWilliams said:
GaslessInSeattle said:
Interesting. hmm, well, I have found that the battery seems surprisingly resilient to cold and it's much more the climate control that eats the range. If I preheat so much that I don't need the climate control for my driving, the MPkW's stays in the 4's. I've been seeing that down into the upper/mid 20's (as cold as it's gotten here so far). I really don't know whether it's the prewarming that is keeping the MPkW's up or simply not using the Climate control at all or a combo. In any case, the 1% loss of range for every 2 degrees F does not seem to hold for me in this climate with the habits I have been applying, it's much less... I can still get 75-80 miles out of a charge.
Are you actually driving 75-80 miles, or getting that off the GOM ?
The 1% per 2F rule-of-thumb is for battery capacity, not reduction in miles/kWh. Your heater will reduce miles/kWh, not the battery's capacity.
Range is simply miles/kWh multiplied by battery kWh available.
Whether you think so or not, the non-temperature controlled battery will change its capacity with temperature changes. If you're getting 4m/kWh at a 20F
battery temperature, your range is reduced by 17%-25% due to reduction of the battery's capacity to 15.7kWh - 17.4kWh.
I suspect that you're not actually experiencing that reduction if your car is protected from the elements to not allow your battery to reach ambient.