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Mievo

Active member
Joined
May 15, 2017
Messages
42
Location
Scotch Plains, NJ
I know the iMiev, I have been researching it for years. I knew what to expect. I have had mine for two weeks of surprises. It is a '12, used, with 33xxx mi on the odometer. I left the dealership with 14 of 16 bars. Range remaining indicated was 47, the quick charger I was going to leapfrog to was 41 miles away. Staying well within the Eco Grange oftentimes having the needle on the oh I was driving up the interstate at 55 miles an hour well under the speed limit, but keeping close to the other slow cars in the right lane. I made it 25 miles and had to pull over to try and get a little charge I had issues with the charging station and panicked the remaining range indicated after the issues was 8. The charging station after 10 15 or 20 minute intervals would drop to nearly zero; lower power than my cell phone charger will put out. I would wait and watch it and wouldn't wrap it back up after an hour of desperation I plugged in the level 1 on to the public charger, a charge Point Station. This wasn't adding enough fast enough and I didn't want to be out all night so I caved and got it towed the remaining 88miles to home.
Not long after that issue going back and forth to work I got a good feel for the car and how it works how to make the most out of its battery, meager as it is. Until one day; a solid week after getting the car I get home, plug it in to charge for two and a half hours from three or four bars starting. I did not think much of it at that time, but it had charged up to 12 or 13 bars. We (gf and I) set out to get Chinese food from a place that we have not gone to yet; all the others suck. It's a 30 mile round-trip I stick the county roads with a maximum speed of 45 miles per hour. Range remaining was about 40 when we left. It rained hard for 3 minutes I had wipers going and headlights on but upon the rain settling down turn the wipers off left on the parking lights. We could not make it home. We were two and a half miles from home in Turtle mode for two miles and I stopped at a Pep Boys who was kind enough to let me use a 120v outlet on the outside of the building for 15 to 20 minutes. That allowed us to limp home 2 miles, again hitting Turtle mode after the first mile and a half. The charging station at our apartment building is on the charge Point Network, so I can see how much power is being fed at a given time, and for how long. The graph religiously makes a nice V where the power tapers to almost nothing and then Ramps back up. The ramp down rarely lasts longer than 5 minutes. I noticed something odd over and over the car will only accept from nill to full, 12.x something kWh. Additionally it only takes four and a half hours to go from nothing to a full battery on the 240v. I can see you from chargepoint the car has not been modified it's only drawing 3 kilowatt hours at the peak. With internal charging losses accounted for you should only see 75 to 91% efficiency that would tell me that the full charge is anywhere from 9.15 to 11.1 kilowatt hours from nearly zero.

As I type this my car is at a Mitsubishi dealership having testing done and so far all their tests say the car is normal. They're going to check one more thing. I've got a mind to fight this and drag this out to Lemon Law if I have to, but I want to address the forums and ask the veterans; am I wrong?
 
To clarify some questions, the first drive home was pancake flat; I'm in Florida. No a/c was used, Windows cracked part of the way. I almost never use the AC.
The Chinese food trip had AC on for a minute to cool the vents and cabin before my girlfriend got in the car.
The car has twice only charged to 15/16 bars, refusing more. I have use dc quick chargers twice, first to 76% on purpose. The second time I went until it stopped, at again; 76%. It drew a peak of 108A.
 
Welcome to the forum.

From the sounds of it, your battery either has some serious degradation, or it is out of balance. My recommendation is to pick up an OBDLink LX bluetooth and an Android tablet (unless you already have an Android device). This will enable you to use the apps CaniOn and EVBatMon. CaniOn is very useful in showing how balanced the pack is or isn't. EVBatMon will query the car for battery capacity. CaniOn is a free app, EVBatMon costs $5.

If the pack is simply mis-balanced, then multiple complete charges from 2 bars or less will help bring it back in line.

You should've easily been able to make those trips. Hopefully the dealer can help figure out the issue.
 
Thanks for the obdii recommendation. I have canion and a chincy obdii that doesn't pull up the info. I am trying to get the warranty work done.
 
Congratulations and welcome to the forum Mievo
:D

A bit of a rough start so some tweaking might be needed .

PV1 has made some excellent suggestions - several uninterrupted full
charges to full from 1-2 bars.

So as not to overlook the obvious, a few points

Tires -
What Brand/model & what pressure, - I over inflate to 40 lbs

Driving style -
on acceleration do you peg the meter or keep it in the green zone?
Drive in D, Eco, B or do you shift?
On deceleration - are you hard on the brakes or do you let the
regeneration slow you down.

Suggestion -

Enter the charging stations that you have available along the roads you
travel most often and at the destinations you visit, into your gps for Plan B
(distance references) should you be running low and need a charge.

Take the time to visit these local charge stations even if
you don't need a charge, to familiarize yourself with them

Carry an appropriate extension cord for emergency charging in the wild.

Adapting to driving electric..
Once you drive your regular routes a few times in the next few weeks, you'll know
what to expect for power required for each destination and where the chargers
are on route.
Driving an EV requires a little bit of planning,
but this eventually becomes second nature.

Hope you enjoy Many electric mile with smiles
 
Sandage;
I've been planning and planning and planning how to work with an electric car for years. I finally got one. I'm very gentle on it tend to try and keep the needle on the sea or the back of the eye if I can do that, depending on the flow of traffic behind me. Not saying I don't nail it once in a while, but normal operation is entirely inside the green zone. Ordinarily I drive with E and when I'm slowing down I drop it back to B for the extra region and very gently apply the brakes to keep the Region High as needed very rarely ever do my friction brakes engage. I have pledged share on my phone I've had it on my phone for five years I have had a chargepoint card for 4 years. I also have blink and greenlots, I need to get evgo setup. I only have the top speed twice once when I was just testing it on a off day, and the other and I was hurrying to make my appointment at the dealer after work because somebody had to drive me home. Thanks for the reply any input is appreciated.
 
I want one more thing. As for the tires they are Factory they appear to be recently replaced and I have fluff them up to 40 PSI. Doesn't seem to do much of my drop the back to the 32 the car came with.
 
check that your AC is truly in the off position and not AUTO, with temperature setting at the mid line

check alignment--somebody put new tires on if the old ones were worn funny.

do a coast-down test in Neutral to see if the brakes are dragging all the time--may be some rust on the rotors that is catching the pad.

the biggest low-speed losses are from friction.

do a test run with a full 16-bar pack--drive 30 miles and see how much 'fuel' remains, should be ~8 bars left if driving in ECO as you described.

good luck and enjoy your fun car.
 
Hello Kiev. I had suspected all that you mentioned. I've been reassured again and again by the dealer that sold me the car, that the car had in fact past there whatever million point inspection. I assume this would include checking things like alignment, brakes, tire scrubbing, and the underbody. To be sure, there is very little rust if any; a little on the weld spots where the metal is weak and exposed anyway. I can on my off days and when I stick to the nearby commercial Highway top speed of 45 miles per hour and anywhere that I care to go, I have achieved an extra related 70 to 75 miles of range I had driven 40 miles with the range remaining indicating they only had some 50 odd and I watched the range remaining display stay at 30 something miles for 20 miles. That was a good day very calling driving whoever I feel that even under those conditions the car should have been able to go even further. It is the highway Jaunts where the battery problem becomes noticeable. Even that 50 or 55 miles per hour and trust me there are plenty of points on I-4 in Florida where you can get a long crawling well below average speed because Florida drivers. In those conditions you can watch heart-wrenchingly as the bars disappear and your range remaining declines 1 mile every half mile. As for Lyman make no mistake I am a car guy I hear every stupid little sound that I think my car should not be making, many people think I'm crazy but the sounds usually end up turning out to be something; even miniscule problems.

One key question I would like to have answered is; watching a chargepoint date feed, does the I leave charge to the full 16 or 16.5 kilowatt hours it is supposed to have, or is the 12.2 that I regularly see from nothing average? That is the most important question and that is why the car is at the dealership where I am arguing that they're testing must be flawed and that the battery should be replaced under warranty. Thank you all again for your input, and unexpectedly rapid responses.
 
Mievo, welcome to the forum. I re-read your posts and glad you clarified that you were using voice-to-text, as I was beginning to wonder…

All good suggestions by everyone, and it appears that you are 'tuned in' to efficient driving.

I worry about battery packs on our now-five-year-old cars, especially those that sat on dealers' lots in warm climates. Let's synthesize the two things I would do after I got the car back from the dealer:

1) Discharge to below two bars and then plug the car into L1 (120vac) and let it fully fully charge overnight until it stops charging completely by itself (the last hour or so is devoted to cell balancing even though it shows 16 bars). If it stops charging with 15 bars showing, there is a battery issue. Repeat this two or three times, driving gently in-between charges. It should go to the full 16 bars and an RR reading of >60. If it never gets to 16 bars, take it back to the dealer.

2) Get yourself both CaniOn and EVBatMon. EVBatMon will tell you what the capacity of your pack is and CaniOn will graphically show you just how well balanced the individual cells are.

Good luck!
 
Your first trip reminds me of a friends' wife who didn't make it home from the dealership with their new iMiEV and complained of low range for weeks, despite several coaching sessions by phone. Turns out she wasn't completely disengaging the parking brake... :oops: "I thought that BRAKE light was a good thing, just like READY".

BUT being a car guy, sounds like you've ruled out brakes, tire pressure, and right foot spasms...
My first car was misaligned from the factory, with toe-in tire feathering wear apparent within 5k miles. Fixing that scrubbing brought out a lot of range.

My RR gauge has always been spot on after considering terrain, driving style and the weather. Canion should shed some light, and here's hoping you win the case for a battery replacement...
 
UPDATE : I have gotten the car back from the dealership. No warranty, but the technician's fiddling fixed the problem. Made a long trip; all highway, ac, heavy rain, lights, and wipers. 51 miles, (made a 5 minute qc stop so I could have a for my GF) 17bars/kWh consumed. Not bad for a 60mph average. Thanks for the suggestion and warm welcome to the forum.

Deven/Mievo
 
Mievo, great news that your car's battery *appears* to be ok! Did the receipt you received from the dealer provide any details of what had been done to your car? Enquiring minds would like to know :geek: . Be sure to hang onto the paperwork just in case a problem develops in the future.

With a five-minute DCQC stop you could have probably averaged 80mph over the 51-mile trip. ;) (5/60*50kW=4.2kWh added)

17bars/kWh doesn't tell us anything. Did you perhaps mean that you used 17 bars to go the 51 miles? Typical metrics for consumption are, for example, miles driven on one charge, miles/kWh or Wh/mi (if you measure both distance driven and recharging kWh), and a good metric for judging how efficiently you are driving is the RR reading after fully charging the car. A reasonable rule of thumb is 4 miles/bar average.

In these early days, do continue paying attention to your battery, noting that it does go to 16 bars whenever you charge fully (but, especially in your Florida climate, never let it sit fully charged and be sure to drive it right away after charging fully).

In any case, don't worry about it and go enjoy your new car!
 
Mievo said:
No warranty, but the technician's fiddling fixed the problem.
It would be really interesting to know what 'fiddling' could have made such a difference
Made a long trip; all highway, ac, heavy rain, lights, and wipers. 51 miles, (made a 5 minute qc stop so I could have a for my GF) 17bars/kWh consumed. Not bad for a 60mph average.
Must be the 'speech to text' thing again - None of that makes any sense to me

Glad it all seems sorted out? More questions than answers at this point however

Don
 
Don; that wasn't speech to text. That was quick, crude, jotting down of details. It apparently is not back up to anywhere near the original 16 kilowatt-hours it was built with; it still retains the 12 it has degraded to. That does imply however that I can achieve in efficiency of 3.7 miles per kilowatt-hour at speeds of 60 to 65 miles per hour and 35 to 40 miles per hour in heavy rain. (Visibility under 100m) That's what I called the amazing feat. Drove 51 miles total, I had only used the quick charger for 7 minutes to ensure that I could have air conditioning for the return trip for my girlfriend. 17 bars of battery were consumed during the trip and with extrapolation, that would translate to approximately 13 kilowatt hours consumed.


New Update: nothing changed. Evidently, the imbalance fixed itself between scheduling maintenance, and dropping off the car. Charge after charge with chargepoint confirms the car only holds ~12kWh. The amazing feat was all me. I may need to resume the fight for a new battery. Warranty is warranty; ~25% degredation after 34,xxx miles is workmanship error. Even Nissan might replace that.

Meh. So tired of fighting.

I am meeting interesting people now, at my bank's quick charger. (First Green Bank in Winter Park, FL)
 
The "so I could have a for my GF" didn't make sense to me, nor the "17bars/kWh consumed" - I had no idea what energy measurement you were using . . . . and still don't

So . . . . 17 fuel gauge bars used for 51 miles at 100 kmh or thereabouts? It's really hard to tell how much energy 17 bars contains, especially with any recharging in the middle of it. A bar can last for 5 or 6 miles, or it can disappear after 100 yards, depending on how much of the bar was actually 'there' after a recharge

The good news appears to be that the pack recharges to 'full' (whatever number of KW's that represents) which means you probably don't have a bad cell. You'll know much more after you run EVBatMon

Don
 
Mievo, battery degradation, specifically, is not addressed by Mitsubishi. I wouldn't bother doing anything about it as it sounds as though there is no defective cell issue. If you are still unhappy with the car and you bought it at the beginning of May from a dealer, you might want to go back to that dealer and plead your case...

I'd stop worrying about it and just drive the car, as even a 25% drop in range (which I don't believe you have) has a negligible effect on most people's daily use of the car.

More to the point, how about demonstrating your hypermiling skills? How about showing us some numbers of distance covered and recharge kWh? This has nothing to do with battery capacity.

When your fuel gauge shows 8 bars, is your RR somewhere around 32 miles?
 
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