Spark trip, efficiency, and range logs

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scotte

Well-known member
Joined
Jul 4, 2013
Messages
46
Thought it would be interesting to post about battery life and general performance on some real world drives. Feel free to add to this thread if anyone else has any data from drives, or any questions to ask.

Today I took a fun and scenic 38 mile drive through the coastal mountains. This drive includes a steep, winding climb from near sea-level to about 3200 feet and back down again, so I was really curious how well the car would perform and how battery life would be. Much of the drive was at 30-45 MPH, except for the last 10 miles or so which was freeway. During the climbing part, about 15 miles into the drive, the estimated range dropped to about 40 miles - it's pretty disconcerting to see the range steadily drop quickly, but totally expected due to the energy required to make it up the hills. The performance of regeneration on the downhill side totally blew me away - at times I was seeing 30KW of power generation as I hit the brakes around the curves, and the battery meter even went up a couple of bars during the descent. I drove fairly conservatively overall, but did punch it a couple of times to pass slower traffic in turnouts on the uphill leg - this thing is like a rocket when you need it. When I got home, the estimated range left was still 75 miles - that's after 38 miles of driving, and the last 10 or so miles on the freeway, at freeway speeds, so the bracket/estimate had time to adjust after the descent. The whole trip was with climate control off, front windows open, and radio on (though I lost satellite through a good portion of the mountains and trees). I only enabled Sport mode for a few minutes on the uphill part, but decided to turn it off for the rest of the trip just to see how well it performed in regular mode. End of trip average was 5.6 miles/KWh.

In the end, I have to say I'm really impressed all around with how it went. I thought this would be a bad scenario for battery life, but it really wasn't aside from the uphill climb, which still exceeded my expectations. The car is really fun to drive through curvy roads and handles well considering it's not built for performance.
 
scotte said:
Thought it would be interesting to post about battery life and general performance on some real world drives. Feel free to add to this thread if anyone else has any data from drives, or any questions to ask.

Today I took a fun and scenic 38 mile drive through the coastal mountains. This drive includes a steep, winding climb from near sea-level to about 3200 feet and back down again, so I was really curious how well the car would perform and how battery life would be. Much of the drive was at 30-45 MPH, except for the last 10 miles or so which was freeway. During the climbing part, about 15 miles into the drive, the estimated range dropped to about 40 miles - it's pretty disconcerting to see the range steadily drop quickly, but totally expected due to the energy required to make it up the hills. The performance of regeneration on the downhill side totally blew me away - at times I was seeing 30KW of power generation as I hit the brakes around the curves, and the battery meter even went up a couple of bars during the descent. I drove fairly conservatively overall, but did punch it a couple of times to pass slower traffic in turnouts on the uphill leg - this thing is like a rocket when you need it. When I got home, the estimated range left was still 75 miles - that's after 38 miles of driving, and the last 10 or so miles on the freeway, at freeway speeds, so the bracket/estimate had time to adjust after the descent. The whole trip was with climate control off, front windows open, and radio on (though I lost satellite through a good portion of the mountains and trees). I only enabled Sport mode for a few minutes on the uphill part, but decided to turn it off for the rest of the trip just to see how well it performed in regular mode. End of trip average was 5.6 miles/KWh.

In the end, I have to say I'm really impressed all around with how it went. I thought this would be a bad scenario for battery life, but it really wasn't aside from the uphill climb, which still exceeded my expectations. The car is really fun to drive through curvy roads and handles well considering it's not built for performance.

Scotte,

Just curious, on the downhill decent, did you have the unit in 'D' drive mode or 'L' mode?

On my trip to Studio City from Simi Valley on Saturday (mostly freeway), which was just shy of 25 miles each way, I drove at approximately 70 miles per hour with the XM Radio on, A/C set at 70 degrees (fan on low) and the iPhone plugged in with the BringGo app running. Once I returned home (including a test drive with my buddy and a side trip to get ice cream for the family), I had driven about 60 miles and still had 37% battery remaining with a mile estimate of 42 miles remaining. So I am pleasantly surprised with the range of this little car.
 
markcmann said:
Just curious, on the downhill decent, did you have the unit in 'D' drive mode or 'L' mode?

It was in Drive. I tried Low once or twice on the way down, but it was too slow for this particular road - I had to keep adding some slight acceleration to keep my speed up for the straight sections, since the car doesn't coast in Low.
 
We just got our Spark EV on Friday. My wife drove to work today which is 9.3 miles. She left with an 82 mile range and arrived at work with an 84 mile range. Most of her drive to work is slightly down hill and there are quite a few traffic lights. We'll see what she gets on the way home.
 
wutangmo15 said:
We just got our Spark EV on Friday. My wife drove to work today which is 9.3 miles. She left with an 82 mile range and arrived at work with an 84 mile range. Most of her drive to work is slightly down hill and there are quite a few traffic lights. We'll see what she gets on the way home.
How many test drive miles were on it before you bought it? The first thing most people do when they get into an EV is floor it to see what it's got. The car's computer "learns" the driver's habits and the range indicator's guess will reflect that.
 
There were 53 test drive miles. We're at 191 miles now. Lifetime MPGe right now is 82. It was at 60-something when we first got it. So, yes, people probably did floor it.
 
Same thing with mine - even though most of the miles on it now were driven by me (at 4.0 - 5.6 M/KWh), the lifetime MPGe seems to still reflect the 50 or so miles it was test driven, apparently at full throttle. ;)
 
wutangmo15 said:
We just got our Spark EV on Friday. My wife drove to work today which is 9.3 miles. She left with an 82 mile range and arrived at work with an 84 mile range. Most of her drive to work is slightly down hill and there are quite a few traffic lights. We'll see what she gets on the way home.

So on the way home, it reduced quite a bit. She got home with a 69 mile range. So over the 18.6 miles, she used up 15 miles of electricity according to the computer.
 
scotte said:
Same thing with mine - even though most of the miles on it now were driven by me (at 4.0 - 5.6 M/KWh), the lifetime MPGe seems to still reflect the 50 or so miles it was test driven, apparently at full throttle. ;)

Yeah, one of the employees admitted to flooring it. I guess they all want to test the 400lb-ft.
 
I drove about 12 miles along the coast from Manhattan Beach CA to the Chevy dealer (Bunnin) in Culver City with a passenger and a dog. Having topped off at the free charger in the MB City Hall parking structure, we went from 83 to 81 indicated miles. This was over fairly flat terrain, no air conditioning.

On the way back home about the same distance with A/C running, the indicated remaining miles dropped by about 10. So running the A/C as well as possible differences in the terrain on the return trip made a difference.

Driving in L works great for me since acceleration, either normal or sport remains the same while you can do most of your slowing and braking by just easing off on the accelerator. The aggressive regeneration in L will slow you down quickly and you only need to apply brake to come to a stop.

This car is really fun to drive.
 
I just drove the Spark EV to work today. Started with an 89 mile range full charge. Got to work with a 97 mile range. Total drive was 9.68 miles and computer reported 9.1m/kwh. Drive was slightly downhill with many stop lights. Will update after my drive home.
 
Drove to work for the first time today, which is 64 miles round-trip, all highway. It was 79 degrees in the morning and about 86 on the way home. I had my A/C and radio on almost the entire trip. Moderate amount of traffic, with speeds ranging from 50-70, with a couple of times down to about 10 mph for a minute or two. Subtle starts and stops, no gunning it. Mostly flat with one big hill about 2 miles long.

Left in the morning with a full charge. When I got home, it said I still had 41% of my battery remaining with 40 miles of range. Very happy with the results. Now I can start enjoying the sport mode a little more often.
 
Unless you are driving constantly at freeway speeds, or running the climate control full blast, exceeding the 82 mile advertised range isn't hard at all.

Here's a picture after my drive from Saturday plus a couple of days of round-town driving. 56.8 miles since full charge, and between 41-48 in the remaining bracket (sorry, dark garage and didn't realize the actual mileage got washed out, but I think it was 45 or 46).

 
Drove about 44 miles around the Palos Verdes Peninsula from Manhattan Beach. On a cloudy cool day, no air conditioning was needed.

I took the surface streets to the Forrestal nature preserve, drove around the neighborhood and got about 20 road miles on 15 charge miles. On the return home, I got 24 road miles on 22 charge miles as most of the mileage was on the freeway.

The car does very well in recovering charge on down grade runs and I like to drive it in L gear and modulate speed and braking with the throttle pedal.

So far am averaging about 4.6 miles/kw of electricity
 
I'm currently at 611 total miles, showing 105 MPGe and averaging 4.1 miles / kWh. This is about 80% freeway driving with the A/C set at 70 degrees, the fan set to 1 or 2 and the XM radio playing. Also, sometimes when running around town I'll put it in Sport mode and have a little fun. :D
 
Here's your chance to compare you Spark "on par" with a Nissan LEAF for freeway range. I would like to do a range test on a San Diego area Spark EV. It is a very simple course that you can view here. We drive the 80 mile loop at 100km/hr ground speed, or about 65 mph indicated on your dash.

Here's a previous test with a Nissan LEAF:

http://insideevs.com/real-world-test-2013-nissan-leaf-range-vs-2012-nissan-leaf-range/

Please email me at [email protected] if you are interested.
 
I'm at 834 miles now with 108 MPGe and averaging 4.5 miles / kwh. I'm about 50/50 between highway and city lately. Radio is always on and A/C is on 50% of the time.
 
Hi, I posted most of this on another thread, but I'll cut and paste some of it here because it fits this thread.

I had to go 77 miles away from my home to buy my Spark EV which meant I tested its range on day one. I drove 80 actual miles and used 73 range miles of the Spark. Of course I was driving like a snail and taking my foot off the gas on downhills. Thank goodness I was on 4-lane highways so no one had to get stuck behind me. Love the car! When I did have to merge, the Spark EV was full of pep. I was lucky I was able to get behind two slow moving CalTrans trucks to help me pace myself or I would have been flying down that highway. The Spark EV's slow recharging is definitely going to limit its driving range; but for 90% of the type of driving I do, it will be the perfect car.

As far as the Sparks being floored in test drives, I know that's what I did when I test drove the one I got. I wanted to be sure it had the get up and go and fun-driving factor when I needed it. I drove it back to the dealership more conservatively to test for range. I had tested a Prius C similarly the previous day and was so disappointed.
 
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