What range do you show?

Hi all, Just passed 5 month with our Spark EV and loving it. Pretty surprised with the range we are getting. Granted we have had a good deal of time with mild weather where no climate control beyond the fan is needed. Even with the A/C on it still does pretty good. Very often it shows 100+ range after charging. Honestly I have only gone over 100 miles on a charge once (5 miles remaining) just to say I did it (and to annoy the Leaf owner who sits next to me at work) Is this very common or do I drive in a great EV environment (streets, few hills, no more than 45mph)

Sorry to disappoint you, but I think this is pretty common for Sparks. I routinely show 100 miles or more of range in mild weather. I've driven over 100 miles on a single charge several times. This morning when I arrived at a public charger, I had traveled 92.8 miles and it showed 8 more miles of range (its been a little cooler in my area lately). I typically get around 5.5 mi/kWh. Any time the weather is consistently above 70 degrees, it doesn't take much effort for me to get 100 miles on a charge.

David

That seems about right for just tooling around town. I do a lot of highway (above 65mph) and typically can only get <75 miles per charge. Given the EPA number is 82 miles, I have been pleasantly surprised with my range.

Mine showed 72-75 on the original tires and now it's 63-65 on my much better but not LRR tires. I do not drive slow and run 35-37PSI in the tires. The only weirdness/waste my car displays is that the A/C seems to create cold air even with the fan off and only the fresh-air vent set to open. I'm not sure how much range that is costing me if any.

JoeSchmoe said:

...the A/C seems to create cold air even with the fan off and only the fresh-air vent set to open. I'm not sure how much range that is costing me if any.

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That is the TMS running to cool the battery. You can see how much power is used for "battery conditioning" on that 'Leaf' page. Unless it's really hot where you are it shouldn't be running that often, I would think.

I routinely see mid 80's for estimated range and I drive on sporty non-LRR tires (at 48 psi) and I hang with all my buds in the left lane at 70-80 mph on interstates. Evening rush hour can be stop and go at times, so that helps the range display.
If I take the country way to work, max 50 mph, I'll see low to mid 90's.

My '14 rarely shows a % for 'battery conditioning' in my daily use. I see it after a DCFC so it is working. And now that hot weather is here I get the txt from onstar that 'charge is complete' and then about a half hour later I'll get another txt from chargepoint that my "car is no longer using power and probably done charging". If I go get my car from the charger immediately after the first txt I see ~0.8 kW of power still being used. This is the TMS still cooling the battery after it has finished charging, so it's best to let it continue cooling on grid power. It won't continue to cool itself if I unplug it immediately after a charge.

We see 93-99 range each morning so far - depending on how fast my wife drove the car the day before. If she rushed home the night before (30-40 mile drive) - then she sees less range in the morning.

Here around the portland area isn't like driving down in the bay area - where everyone is bombing along at 75mph - and you would get "blown off the road" doing 55 mph. . The speed limits in the portland area are 55 mph - On my commute out 26 and my commute home (before the wife stole the car from me!) - I would do 50-55 mph heading in the a.m with a little bit of traffic - and sometimes a little slower in the pm with more traffic in the afternoon... I was seeing over 6 miles/kwh.

As a side note - My wife is remote starting the vehicle in the morning - apparently, this can take a lot of energy - dehumidify + heat the cabin. More than the wall can supply - so you leave home with less than 100% charge...

jeff

I try not to obsess over the range but the most significant battery conditioning I've seen was a day where the vehicle sat parked all day on a hot blacktop in full sun with 105-degree temps and moderate humidity. The drive home was a freeway run @ 75MPH slightly uphill into a headwind with the A/C on. I forget the % used for conditioning but it was higher than I've ever seen. I can't imagine working the car any harder than that.

I'm going to try bumping tire pressures up to 39 front and 41 rear (while cold). A quick trip with those pressures made the car feel a bit like the old LRR tires.

When I get in the the car I'll often see 100 as the projected max range, but not as the mid-point projection. I have had days where I drove for 25 or 30 miles and had the mid-point projection go down 5-10 miles, but I've never tried to see how far I could get on a single charge.

The funnest thing to do is drive up a huge mountain, charge on top, then cruise down:

I regularly get a max range of between 73 and 76 miles with non-LRR tires.

I charged this morning, finishing off around 11:30 am. The range meter showed 103 miles. At that point, I was showing 4.0 mi/Kwh.

My spark used to charge up to 80 miles. Now it only gets a full charge up to 69 miles. Is that a problem? If so, a problem that can be fixed or is it just likely to get worse?

uptempo777 said:

My spark used to charge up to 80 miles. Now it only gets a full charge up to 69 miles. Is that a problem? If so, a problem that can be fixed or is it just likely to get worse?

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cold weather and use of the heater will impact your range. My numbers are similar since the weather changed.


BTW, I started out this morning with 69 miles and a full charge, arrived home with 44 miles and 50% charge. So the 69 mile estimate was very low.

nikwax said:

uptempo777 said:

My spark used to charge up to 80 miles. Now it only gets a full charge up to 69 miles. Is that a problem? If so, a problem that can be fixed or is it just likely to get worse?

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cold weather and use of the heater will impact your range. My numbers are similar since the weather changed.


BTW, I started out this morning with 69 miles and a full charge, arrived home with 44 miles and 50% charge. So the 69 mile estimate was very low.

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I have been looking into this same issue. See my postings under the thread titled "First Real Cold in MD" for the details of my tests. How you use your heater will have a big impact on your range. Are the miles values from the odometer, trip meter or guess-o-meter? 25 miles driven and 9 kWh capacity used (~50%) after a full charge would give you about 2.8 mi / kWh assuming an 18 kWh battery capacity. Current morning temperatures where I live are about 40 deg. F. If I start out with a cold car which has been sitting out all night but is fully charged, set my heater to AUTO and 74 deg. F and reset my trip meter to zero, I have seen as low as 2.8 mi / kWh which is about 45 miles of range. Fortunately, as the cabin warms up, than number goes up but not significantly. I might see 3.5 mi / kWh after 4 miles of driving and eventually it will get up to 4.3 after about 20 miles of driving. At 4.3 mi / kWh I would expect about 77 miles of range. The length of your cold-weather trip will determine how fast you recover some range. Expect even worse values if you run your heater in the manual mode.

The best way to overcome this is to pre-heat the cabin using remote start followed by turning down the cabin temp and making use of the heated seats. Right now I use 3.5 mi / kWh [ maximum of 63 miles of range] as a guide of what I can expect in cold weather. My warm weather range usually runs around 107 miles. Obviously, if the weather drops into the 30s, the estimated range will drop too. Personally, I like a warm cabin so I pay the price in range but enjoy the warmth.

Be sure to use the trip meter and the kWh used value found in Energy Details - push the leaf button - to get accurate data. The guess-o-meter will not give you an accurate value. Also, a full charge is required to reset the Energy Detail values all to zero. I find the trip meter to be quite accurate for both mileage and mi / kWh.

You will see the guess-o-meter range go back up as you minimize use of the heater and the outside temperature warms up.

It took me awhile to understand how the cold affects the range of the car. Turns out that the overall battery capacity drops with the cold (in addition to the extra load of heating the occupants).

http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/discharging_at_high_and_low_temperatures

Echofive said:

It took me awhile to understand how the cold affects the range of the car. Turns out that the overall battery capacity drops with the cold (in addition to the extra load of heating the occupants).

http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/discharging_at_high_and_low_temperatures

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Yes - there is some effect there. But the Spark can heat (or cool) the battery to minimize this - "Battery Conditioning".

The main reason range drops is that it takes more power to propel the car in the cold:

- The aerodynamic losses are proportional to the mass of the air which increases at low temperature
- The viscosity of the oil in the transmission is higher at low temperatures
- Tire losses increase at low temperature
- Tire drag increases if the road is wet

During the summer my consumption is in the region of 6.5mi/kWh but this has increased to ~5.1mi/kWh in the cold weather. This is in addition to any extra consumption by heating or battery conditioning.

kevin

I get about 3.5 to 3.7 mi/kwhr

How do you people get stupid high numbers like that? oh thats right. i should slow down!!!!!

Started the day at 35 degrees F with a full battery and a warmed up car. Drove on an off throughout the day, with the temp control set on auto at 68 degrees, until the car and the weather warmed up enough to not need it, then turned it off. The outside temperature reached a high of 47 degrees. I drove a mix of city and highway driving and averaged 4.5 mi/kWh. Drove 73.4 miles before getting back home and plugging in again. The GOM indicated I still had seven miles left. So even on a relatively cold day, with mixed city/highway driving, I drove 73+ miles and still had some small amount of range left.

Also, at the end of the day, the energy details were as follows: 83% - Driving and Accessories; 10% - Climate Setting; 1% - Battery Conditioning. I guess that means I still had 6% remaining.

SparkMoore said:

Started the day at 35 degrees F with a full battery and a warmed up car. Drove on an off throughout the day, with the temp control set on auto at 68 degrees, until the car and the weather warmed up enough to not need it, then turned it off. The outside temperature reached a high of 47 degrees. I drove a mix of city and highway driving and averaged 4.5 mi/kWh. Drove 73.4 miles before getting back home and plugging in again. The GOM indicated I still had seven miles left. So even on a relatively cold day, with mixed city/highway driving, I drove 73+ miles and still had some small amount of range left.

Also, at the end of the day, the energy details were as follows: 83% - Driving and Accessories; 10% - Climate Setting; 1% - Battery Conditioning. I guess that means I still had 6% remaining.

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Good information. You confirmed that warming up the car before removing the car from the EVSE minimizes the impact the heater has on range. I too saw about 4.3 - 4.5 mi / kWh at the end of my test trips when I preheated the car's cabin before disconnecting from the EVSE to drive off into cold weather.