Any stories about being nearly stranded (out of battery)?

[muadib69]

I commute from South OC to Long Beach (42 miles each way). Fully charged the car says 85 miles. I drove to work at Long Beach with good driving habits and setting the cruise control at 62 mph most of the time and no A/C, just radio. I also turned off the headlamps. When I got to Long Beach car said I still have 56 miles left. We have level 2 chargers at work but all 4 spaces are taken. I wasn't worried because 56 miles seemed enough to go home with some slack. Well what I didn't take account is that once I exit the freeway, I live another 7 miles all going uphill.

When I exited, the Spark inidicated I had estimated 16 miles to go. This seemed ok since I was 7 miles away. I was about 2 miles away and the car now said I had 5 miles left. A message came up "Propulsion reduced" and basically the car slowly drove home and once I pulled into the garage I had 1 mile left. :shock:

Lesson learned for me: To get home going all uphill, the mileage on the spark must be at least double the actual miles to make it :lol:

 

[KingUltra]

It is very risky without charging at work. I saw another post where the Spark went for another 3 miles after Zero, then it just died on the road.

If you leave work fully charged, maybe it makes a difference as you may not generate much while full on the downhill from your house to the Fwy.

 

[solder]

Yeah, from my research the state of charge seems to go something like:

* Fully charged: 99% SoC (why not 100%? To preserve battery longetivity? dunno)
* Low battery: 20%? SoC? You will get 2 orange bars on the main display
* Very low battery: 10% SoC, you will get 1 flashing orange bar
* "Charge Battery Soon" nag message
* Extremely low battery: Unsure of exact SoC -- hard to test! -- but you will get a "Propulsion Limited" message, and max propulsion seems to be limited to 60 KW (vs 120 KW)

 

[Nashco]

* Extremely low battery: Unsure of exact SoC -- hard to test! -- but you will get a "Propulsion Limited" message, and max propulsion seems to be limited to 60 KW (vs 120 KW)

The maximum propulsion power allowed in "Propulsion Limited" mode is not fixed...as SOC drops, so does the allowed power. I've run the battery to empty/near empty while racing a few times, so I'm quite familiar with how it reacts in this condition.

One important note that I learned the hard way (in a controlled test) was that when the car says zero miles remaining, take it very seriously! While some other cars will let you drive for several miles after displaying zero range remaining, the Spark EV is not like that at all. When you have zero miles remaining, expect that you're done and be extremely thankful if you go any more than a half mile or so. The "kWh used" display in the center of the car isn't as accurate as the "guessometer" miles remaining, I've had my center display show that I had used 100% of the battery, but still had range remaining on the guessometer while I continued to drive. These are abnormal conditions, but a good reference anyway.

Bryce

 

[muadib69]

There is a video on youtube about some guys testing the spark ev range by driving around LA until they ran out of battery charge. I forgot exactly how many miles they were actually able to drive.

 

[Nashco]

There is a video on youtube about some guys testing the spark ev range by driving around LA until they ran out of battery charge. I forgot exactly how many miles they were actually able to drive.

You're probably talking about the range test around San Diego, and in that case they never drove to empty (only near-empty). Due to the variability in "empty" from one OEM to the next, I run all of my cars to completely stopped at least once to know how it acts in that scenario (not just my EVs, but my gas burners too). In the case of my old Leaf, I was able to skip intermediate charging stations because I knew when the car told me I had no range left I could still drive a few miles, which is a big time saver on long road trips with targeted fast chargers. In the case of the Spark EV, absolutely believe the car when it says you have 2, 1, then 0 miles of range remaining.

Bryce

 

[brunoylupe]

At the recommendation of the power management system, I turned off my display before I got home. The two times I really pushed my luck...

 

[ezryder]

I ran out of battery at 11 PM last weekend on the way home. I knew I was pushing it, but I was hoping for some downhill charge to get me what I needed to get home. I also was thinking all along that MAYBE the miles left didn't include a small buffer of a few miles - like you get with a gas car. Definitely not. I called Roadside Assistance and told them where the car was, and used Uber to get home. The tow truck delivered the car to my house at 3 AM, while I was asleep. I had enough juice in it to move in into position for charging in the morning.

 

[NorthernSpark]

Had a real white-knuckle ride tonight (hopefully my last). Started out with 143 km or so on the guessometer, knowing I was going to drive 110-120 km or so roundtrip, so I figured I should be OK. Unfortunately I don't think the cold (32 degrees F) and 60-70% highway (although I was driving at 90-100km/h) helped very much. Anyhow, drove 60km to my destination, had about 80 km left. Dropped off friends of ours at their place (we had picked them up on the way), and I was down to only around 38 km or so left. Had taken the highway up to that point, so from then on to home, decided to take local roads and stay around 40-45km/h to minimize energy usage. Actually had stopped at a train station close by thinking they may have a L2 charger but no dice. Got the low battery warning soon enough, warning to shut off the radio, "charge vehicle soon", last bar flashing and reduced propulsion power mode. Luckily made it home with 7km or so left, but with the Canadian winter upon us, no more longer trips (especially highway ones) with the Spark for the next several months!

My total for the day was 119km I think - which is exactly 25% less than the total typical range in summer (160 km). Is that what I can expect for winter range reduction - about 25% less?

 

[nikwax]

how much of your usage was for propulsion and how much for heating?

 

[NorthernSpark]

how much of your usage was for propulsion and how much for heating?

I wasn't able to lookup the exact stats on that, but I was being very frugal with the heating/defogger, turning it on just for very short periods at a time.

 

[SparkMoore]

I ran my car out of battery once. I was exactly one mile down the highway from the next charger. I forget the details, but I had driven around 72 highway miles in March when the temps were in the 40's or 50's. I had to use the defog on occasion. The one thing I remember that was an anomaly was that about five miles from the charger, the GOM read seven miles. At about three miles from the charger, the GOM read five miles. Then suddenly the amount of range went down to one and then zero. I coasted about a half a mile or so before coming to a stop on the side of the highway. Interestingly, the GM roadside assistance folks would only tow me to the nearest Chevy dealer, which was about six or seven miles behind me. They would not tow me to the charger a mile in front of me. So I called my insurance's road side assistance and they agreed to tow me to the charger. In hindsight, I probably could have pushed it that last mile faster than it took me to arrange for a tow.

 

[sensij]

A few weeks ago I pushed mine hard twice... got over 99 mi one day with "low" miles remaining, and figure it had less than a mile left at that point. A few days later, I tried again after less efficient driving and died at 93 miles, 3 mi away from the DC charger, but trying to go up one last hill. The tow was willing to bring me to the EvGo station, but I had to wait two hours for it. GM Roadside followed up and offered 1 year of XM or OnStar to make up for it, which was fine with me. My own damn fault for pushing it so hard.

Even when the battery dies, it retains some maneuvering capability, walking speed. It made it really easy to get it hooked up on the tow, and then positioned correctly at the charge station.