Wanted: Extreme Cold Range Data (earn free t-shirt!)

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TonyWilliams

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 19, 2011
Messages
10,107
Location
Vista, California USA
I'm not in a position to personally validate extreme cold weather range performance, so I'm offering a free t-shirt to qualified data runs.

What I want is a car that is charged and driven at substantially the same temp. Generally speaking, the car would be outside or in a detached, unheated enclosure. I prefer outside. Also, I'd like a 4 hour period after a 100% charge and before the driving test.

I'd like data at any temperature below 14F/-10C.

Then, I'd like an hour of your busy day to drive your cold soaked, cell balanced LEAF over substantially level terrain (or at a minimum, arriving and departing at the same elevation). Start with a reset on the trip odometer and the dash miles/kWh.

Please drive all the way to Very Low Battery. Super mega extra credit for a run to turtle. Astronomical stupendous extra credit if you have a Gidmeter. <<--- we might be able to get a loaner to a dedicated data collector.

At the conclusion of your data run, I'd like:


Gid count, if available, at start-
Assumed battery temperature -
Dash miles/kWh ---------------
Miles traveled total ------------

Miles driven at Low Battery ------
How many fuel bars showing-----
Gid count, if available------------

Miles driven at Very Low Battery -
How many fuel bars showing-----
Gid count, if available-------------

Miles driven at Turtle, if applicable-
Gid count, if available--------------

Heater nominal power use kW----

Your t-shirt size:
shipping address:

No GuessOmeter data is requested, nor desired. No CarWings data.

An ideal run will be mostly level, with a mostly stable low temperature, with no extreme power used, particularly at lower battery levels (below the first Low Battery Warning). It will have charged to 100% the night before at roughly the same temp that the data run was made, and have 4 hour minimum between the charge and the beginning of the data run.

If you have your "end of charge" text message at the end of the charge, and then get another one 1.5 hours later, after the cell balancing top off is complete, there's no need to wait the full 4 hours.

Happy data collecting!
 
EdmondLeaf said:
I admire Tony's dedication and thank you for Range Chart


Thanks. Since this is the first full winter with more than a handful of owners, it's really our best chance to get this information.

There's lots of guessing (myself included) on temperature induced battery degradation, and this is the only idea I've come up with to put data to the problem.

I intend to do something similar in the desert heat this summer, but I can do that myself.
 
Tony, great idea! I've been wanting to gather more data as well, and one of the ideas I had was to repost this in the Canadian Facebook group. Can I do that? We'll have to put up with metric units of measure, but that's a small price to pay ;-)

http://www.facebook.com/groups/282243388457758/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
 
surfingslovak said:
Tony, great idea! I've been wanting to gather more data as well, and one of the ideas I had was to repost this in the Canadian Facebook group. Can I do that? We'll have to put up with metric units of measure, but that's a small price to pay ;-)

http://www.facebook.com/groups/282243388457758/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Great idea. I don't know if there's a Scandinavian version of that. Cold places in the USA don't have any LEAFs! Well, actually, they may have more than Canada!
 
TonyWilliams said:
surfingslovak said:
Tony, great idea! I've been wanting to gather more data as well, and one of the ideas I had was to repost this in the Canadian Facebook group. Can I do that? We'll have to put up with metric units of measure, but that's a small price to pay ;-)

http://www.facebook.com/groups/282243388457758/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Great idea. I don't know if there's a Scandinavian version of that. Cold places in the USA don't have any LEAFs! Well, actually, they may have more than Canada!

Hey Tony. I can give it a try. High of -13C tomorrow and -11C on Saturday here in Ottawa, Canada. I don't have a Gidmeter though.

I'm on the Canadian Facebook group (I actually created the group :). I'll spread the word there and maybe get more volunteers. We have a member from Winnipeg, usually way colder than Ottawa.

Ricardo
 
rborba said:
I'm on the Canadian Facebook group (I actually created the group :). I'll spread the word there and maybe get more volunteers. We have a member from Winnipeg, usually way colder than Ottawa.

Ricardo
Hi Ricardo -- good to see you here, and thank you for offering to help with this effort. In lieu of gids, would it be possible to note the number of hours on the 120V charging display? Obviously, we could use all the data you can collect, but that could get tedious. A few key figures would be a great improvement over what we have. I think Tony did a great job outlining the requirements.

George
 
surfingslovak said:
Hi Ricardo -- good to see you here, and thank you for offering to help with this effort. In lieu of gids, would it be possible to note the number of hours on the 120V charging display? Obviously, we could use all the data you can collect, but that could get tedious. A few key figures would be a great improvement over what we have. I think Tony did a great job outlining the requirements.

George

Yes, I can definitely do that. I just need to change the config to show the charge time to 100% -- I'm charging to 80% right now. How precise is it compared to the Gid meter?

I was thinking about using the iPhone to take pictures of the dashboard along the way. The photos will have the time stamps in their metadata.

Ricardo
 
TonyWilliams said:
surfingslovak said:
Tony, great idea! I've been wanting to gather more data as well, and one of the ideas I had was to repost this in the Canadian Facebook group. Can I do that? We'll have to put up with metric units of measure, but that's a small price to pay ;-)

http://www.facebook.com/groups/282243388457758/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Great idea. I don't know if there's a Scandinavian version of that. Cold places in the USA don't have any LEAFs! Well, actually, they may have more than Canada!
I think the Chicagoland posters might disagree!
 
rborba said:
Yes, I can definitely do that. I just need to change the config to show the charge time to 100% -- I'm charging to 80% right now. How precise is it compared to the Gid meter?

I was thinking about using the iPhone to take pictures of the dashboard along the way. The photos will have the time stamps in their metadata.
Ricardo, that's exactly what I'm doing for now. A local Leaf owner loaned me his Gid meter. It's a great device, but I unfortunately didn't find logging to be all that easy or intuitive. The charging time display has a linear correlation to gids, but it can lose its point of reference sometimes. It's probably in good shape if you don't trickle charge often, but it may need to be re-calibrated if we wanted to be certain.

For that to happen, you would need to top off to 100% using 120V. The algorithm that calculates the distante to 0 hours on the charging time display seems to be a bit touchy, and it's important not to turn the vehicle on while it's charging. Preconditioning should not be used either.

George
 
rborba said:
We have a member from Winnipeg, usually way colder than Ottawa.

I always had reasonable weather in my few times into CYWG, but CYEG killed me. I think I was close to frostbite on my cheeks. The cold physically hurt.

Oh, I'd like to know the heater power draw. I know the meter is all over the place, so just a synopsis of the load. After the car is warmed up, what is the median load.
 
Here in YYC my draw for the CC has typically been about 3.5kw. For short periods of time I have seen it get closer to 5, and as low as 1.5, but 3.5 seems to be the average. Typically I have had the temperature control set at 19 degrees Celsius with the fan setting on the lowest or second speed with the AC off. Temperatures have been -20 Celsius to -33 Celsius all week.
 
Tony, thanks for putting so much energy into the chart and getting info from colder climates. just curious why you want a cold soaked battery. seems to me the car is designed to be prewarmed before driven in cold climates. the EV project is now suggesting that everyone charge closer to the time they drive to warm the battery. seems like almost everyone is prewarming and precharging. wouldn't it be valuable to get data the way most people are using the car in the cold so that they can use the chart in a manner that will more likely match their vehicle's likely range? or maybe you were thinking of doing this later after you had a baseline?
thanks again for your work!
 
GaslessInSeattle said:
...get data the way most people are using the car in the cold so that they can use the chart in a manner that will more likely match their vehicle's likely range? or maybe you were thinking of doing this later after you had a baseline?

Like all the performance data, there's a baseline, and then a correction to the baseline. So, if you're driving in a cold soaked car at -30C, you'd use that data for your battery temperature and performance.

If you're doing something that affects battery temp, you'd use that data.
 
TonyWilliams said:
GaslessInSeattle said:
...get data the way most people are using the car in the cold so that they can use the chart in a manner that will more likely match their vehicle's likely range? or maybe you were thinking of doing this later after you had a baseline?

Like all the performance data, there's a baseline, and then a correction to the baseline. So, if you're driving in a cold soaked car at -30C, you'd use that data for your battery temperature and performance.

If you're doing something that affects battery temp, you'd use that data.

it seems that most folks are routinely preheating/charging their car and we have no idea what the actual battery temp is after that in order to adjust the chart. have you found any ways of adjusting for this? In my experience, all I see is a shift from 4 to 5 bars, which could be a wide or not so wide swing... it's frustrating that they don't give us an actual temp reading. so far, I'm finding getting the temp to 5 bars returns the range practically to summer time temps. Also, the battery cools while driving, the colder it gets, throwing another curve into the equation even when the car has been sheltered/warmed beforehand... very tricky to pin down. I have not found a better way to predict distance to zero in real time, given all the changing factors, than using the GOM/bubbles and MPkWh, factoring in a estimate based on SOC bars and moderating driving accordingly, which is rather tedious at times. Fortunately the GOM gets very accurate toward the second half of the bars.

At one point, there was a lot of emphasis put on the increased wind drag of colder air as one of the main culprits. so far, my loops around lake washington seem to suggest that increased wind drag from denser colder air has little effect.

In the end, I'm considering insulating my garage and keeping the car close to room temp and since my garage is built into my house, under the master bedroom, it will be a good idea to seal it up anyway.

Why the CWP doesn't allow for a prewarming of the battery to 70 degrees is beyond me... seems like it would greatly help folks leaving their car out all day to be able to use the prewarming app to both heat the cabin and the battery directly, especially if plugged in.
 
With regard to pre-heating: I think the data is valuable since my LEAF is "cold-soaked" every day after work. Since you can't have two timer settings PER DAY and I can't plugin at work, most days the car is frozen when I get out to the parking lot at 5:30. Yes I sometimes remember to turn on the CC remotely 15 minutes before I get out there but most days I'm forgetting. Of course some days I don't want to pre-heat without it being plugged in as I need the range. There is probably some magic scenario of pre-heat time/CC settings to get the best range but I for one haven't figured it out yet. You could say no pre-heat and no CC would give the best range but I'm not sure that's accurate as above -20C the battery is very cold (I've had several days with one bar on the dash temp gauge). With the battery very cold you have no regen on the brakes for some time as well.
 
GaslessInSeattle said:
we have no idea what the actual battery temp is after that in order to adjust the chart. have you found any ways of adjusting for this?

You're right. We have no idea. So, why would I want unknown data? That's why I want the car cold soaked, with NO CHARGING, or anything else that will affect the temperature of the battery. That's how we get baseline data.

These quite efficient batteries aren't getting that much warmer with charging. If the battery temp gauge went from 5 to 6 bars, that could mean that the temp went from 73 to 74. We don't know.

We have to make educated guesses as to the battery temp if not at an ambient air temperature. We will develop a method to measure and display battery temperature, since it's so key to range.


the battery cools while driving, the colder it gets, throwing another curve into the equation even when the car has been sheltered/warmed beforehand... very tricky to pin down.


Yes, it is. If we could measure the battery temp accurately, we would have (hopefully) a baseline of data to suggest what the battery capacity should be.


I have not found a better way to predict distance to zero in real time, given all the changing factors, than using the GOM/bubbles and MPkWh, factoring in a estimate based on SOC bars and moderating driving accordingly, which is rather tedious at times. Fortunately the GOM gets very accurate toward the second half of the bars.


I don't use the GOM at all. Sorry, can't offer any comments beyond that we already know its not accurate. Even in the lower area where you think it's "very" accurate... let take a drive up a hill and see how long that lasts.


one point, there was a lot of emphasis put on the increased wind drag of colder air as one of the main culprits. so far, my loops around lake washington seem to suggest that increased wind drag from denser colder air has little effect.


I think you know I'm a pilot, and the effects of air are very, very well known. I estimate a change in range of 1.5% per 1000ft/300meters of density altitude. A really wide temperature swing at the same elevation would only change the range a relatively small amount.


Why the CWP doesn't allow for a prewarming of the battery to 70 degrees is beyond me... seems like it would greatly help folks leaving their car out all day to be able to use the prewarming app to both heat the cabin and the battery directly, especially if plugged in.


Just put a warmer on the bottom of the battery, and plug it in to 120v with a timer. DON'T USE AN OIL PAN HEATER... they are too hot!!!
 
surfingslovak said:
Ricardo, that's exactly what I'm doing for now. A local Leaf owner loaned me his Gid meter. It's a great device, but I unfortunately didn't find logging to be all that easy or intuitive. The charging time display has a linear correlation to gids, but it can lose its point of reference sometimes. It's probably in good shape if you don't trickle charge often, but it may need to be re-calibrated if we wanted to be certain.

For that to happen, you would need to top off to 100% using 120V. The algorithm that calculates the distante to 0 hours on the charging time display seems to be a bit touchy, and it's important not to turn the vehicle on while it's charging. Preconditioning should not be used either.

George

Sounds good. I trickle charge every day at work (bad?) but I have a short commute so it often tops of to 100% (good?). Last time it happened was 4 days ago.

I should be able to run the experiment tomorrow morning at -15C. Wish me luck. :)

Ricardo
 
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