36,000 mi main battery check

I just had the 36,000mi battery check and the only thing, I got in the invoice was this:

Concern: Customer states 36,000 mile high voltage battery check
Correction: performed traction battery automatic measurement reset
Line Total... $105.95

I expected to get some idea of my battery health, but nothing.
Is this normal?
Why do I have to pay for it, if this check is required to keep the battery warranty?

The dealership is in MD and they only have 1 other MiEV, that goes there for service.

I have a 2012 MiEV that I bought new in 6/2013 and have lost quite some range over the last year, nothing noticeable in the 1st year. I drive the same route of 35mi each way to work every day and charge L2 at home and L1 at work. Last August/September I had regularly a range in the 80's (sometimes even 90's) and this August/September only low 70's.

Any advice is appreciated.
Carsten

Rip off. I'm also in Maryland; please name the dealer?

For slightly less money, you could buy an ODBLink, download Canion, and get a more detailed battery report than any dealer is likely to provide. But I don't know about the warranty situation.

Carsten said:

I just had the 36,000mi battery check and the only thing, I got in the invoice was this:

Concern: Customer states 36,000 mile high voltage battery check
Correction: performed traction battery automatic measurement reset
Line Total... $105.95

I expected to get some idea of my battery health, but nothing.
Is this normal?

I'm not surprised that you were charged $100 and got no report - I don't think the dealer is capable of producing the sort of report you were looking for. You basically got a 'Pass/Fail' report and your battery passed

Why do I have to pay for it, if this check is required to keep the battery warranty?

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Who told you this . . . . or where did you read it? First I've heard of this. I have no plans to pay any dealer to 'check' my battery and I seriously doubt it will affect my warranty

I have a 2012 MiEV that I bought new in 6/2013 and have lost quite some range over the last year, nothing noticeable in the 1st year.

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We have 2 iMiEV's and also noticed some of what you're mentioning, but I think it's due more to the way we're driving them than the cars. We bought our first one in 05/2012 and it now has 26,000 miles. The first 8 or 10 months we drove it like we had an eggshell on the accelerator pedal, trying to go the most miles on the least electricity and always recharging to 100% and looking closely at the magical RR number - Upper 80's, low 90's all the time

At some point, we realized we had way more range than we needed 90% of the time and we quit driving it quite so gingerly. Instead, we began concentrating on what was best for the battery. We quit recharging to 100% most of the time, we quit charging at all when the battery was warm, like after a long drive. We typically don't plug it in until we're at 4 bars or less and we quit charging at around 12 bars. We plan our trips so we never see the turtle or anything close to it. We only give it a 100% recharge when we're planning a trip which will need most of our max range

Mitsu had us sign an 'agreement' when we bought the car that we would likely see a 20% decrease in range as the battery ages and that this was normal and not grounds for a battery replacement. I see no reason not to believe them, so lately our efforts have been on trying to push that 20% decline as far into the future as we can, hence the changes in the way we use and recharge the car

But - If I full charge it, drive it like I have an eggshell on the accelerator tomorrow (which we still do when we make a 'longish' trip away from home - We have zero local recharging opportunities where we live, so all charging is done at home) we can still see higher 80's and an occasional 90 RR number on our 26,000 mile car. I don't *know* that our efforts are going to prolong the useful life of our battery packs, but from what I understand about the care and feeding of lithium cells, I think it's more likely than not, so we're doing all we can so the car will still have a useful range when it has 75,000 to 100K miles on it

Don

Carsten said:

I just had the 36,000mi battery check and the only thing, I got in the invoice was this:

Concern: Customer states 36,000 mile high voltage battery check
Correction: performed traction battery automatic measurement reset
Line Total... $105.95

I expected to get some idea of my battery health, but nothing.
Is this normal?
Why do I have to pay for it, if this check is required to keep the battery warranty?

The dealership is in MD and they only have 1 other MiEV, that goes there for service.

I have a 2012 MiEV that I bought new in 6/2013 and have lost quite some range over the last year, nothing noticeable in the 1st year. I drive the same route of 35mi each way to work every day and charge L2 at home and L1 at work. Last August/September I had regularly a range in the 80's (sometimes even 90's) and this August/September only low 70's.

Any advice is appreciated.
Carsten

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One value they can obtain in that test is the current battery capacity. In the last two annual checks they gave me the number, but only because I asked for it. A new one should have between 48 Ah to 45 Ah. Mine, bought in 4/2011, had 36,4 Ah in March 2014 and 35 Ah in June 2015. My range is now less then when it was new, I believe something close to 20 km in range. When it was new I could drive 85 miles at 37,5 miles/h (steady), going from 100% to 10% SoC. Now only 70 miles under the same conditions.

Carsten, I'm sorry to see your having been subjected to pretty-much an unnecessary expense.

Completely agree with Don's comments, and our own battery care and feeding habits are very similar to his. With 40,000 miles on our first i-MiEV, it's performance is indistinguishable from our other two i-MiEVs (one of which has a new battery).

Since I now leadfoot much of the time, if I charge fully then my RR can easily be around 50; however, I fully charge when I'm about to cover a long distance and I'm gratified to often see RR>40 at the 'fuel' gauge halfway mark during those trips as we revert to hypermiling mode.

Many of us received a letter from Mitsubishi in February 2012
http://myimiev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1031#p1031
"… this (software) eliminates every instance of Check Main Drive Lithium-ion Battery for Capacity from both the regular and severe maintenance schedules - reducing your overall cost of ownership and giving you more time to enjoy your i-MiEV!"

As has been pointed out in posts on this forum, unless a full-blown capacity test is performed (takes many hours), a battery 'check' is pretty meaningless. Even the capacity test consistency has been called into question, as the test entails running the heater and its intermittent operation (depending on ambient temperature) could also produce varying results.

The good news in all this is that, for many (most?) of us, the car is fully usable for most of our daily driving while operating between four bars and twelve bars, and thus we have plenty of reserve capacity to handle battery degradation in the future. Let's also not forget that 'opportunity' charging is available for many of our situations.

WMCBrine,
The dealer is RennKirby in Frederick. The problem is, that there are only 2 MiEV's in total, that this dealer services and they often have no idea, what I even ask for. I have the OBDLinkMX BT and the CanIon132 on my S4 and try to get familiar with it. The older versions showed all the previous readings but I can't see it anymore on this version.
I would like to meet up, just to see, what we can learn from each other and do to make this little car a bit better.
I have just bought Armaflex pipe insulation and flat sheets to get the heater & hose insulated. The cold is a bitch due to the windows fogging up.
I have a n EVSEupgraded brick on 240V, that tells me, it charges at 12A. The CanIon only reads 6.7A and 2.3kW. Is that due to the app being for Europe and they charge at 220V on one Line?
How would I know, that my battery is at 80% or below? Is there a set battery voltage?
I might be asking things, that have already been answered. I looked through some threads, but there are just too many.
Regards,