Just purchased my MIEV!

[rkarl89203]

Took it on its first 40 mile drive today.
Yayyy!
Great Car

 

[PV1]

Congrats. You'll love never going to the gas station again.

 

[JoeS]

rkarl89203, congratulations and welcome to the forum! Whereabouts are you located and tell us a bit about your car and how you plan to use it? Feel free to ask questions - we'll try to be of help.

 

[rkarl89203]

I am in rockford Illinois. This is my second electric car. My first was a 2009 Kandi ev....which is parked next to my miev in my driveway as we speak.
I will use the miev to go back and forth to work mostly. 3 miles from work so perfect! And it has the regular speeds,heat and Air conditioning that the Kandi doesn't. Kandi is now my car show vehicle....
I am mostly impressed by the regenerative braking and the impressive acceleration....and the fact that there is a national dealer/service network.

 

[JoeS]

Quite a step up! http://prosserrv.com/electric-vehicles.html Three miles to work? - the Kandi would be good for that, although my wife would make me walk or at most ride a bicycle. :roll:

 

[sandange]

Congratulations on your new Miev
Enjoy driving it and hope you have the same great experience we have had with ours so far -
2012 Miev more than
37,000 miles (60,000 km) and still very happy.

 

[rkarl89203]

Had an odd experience with progressive insurance last evening. I thought the $600 for 6 months with state farm was high....but progressive had me on hold for over half an hour because they couldn't even find the miev in their system. Hahaha! Their quote was just a bit less when they finally figured it out.

 

[beespeckled]

Congratulations! I'm starting week 4 of commuting with mine. I love the car so far

 

[PV1]

That's odd. I have Progressive and they had no problem finding the i-MiEV.

3 miles, that is at least a week and a half on one charge without other trips. If you park in the sun, you could do a solar roof and never plug in again.

 

[rkarl89203]

Enjoying my miev immensely.
I find it odd that they recommend against 'topping it off ' when its over half full though. I guess that's a lithium ion thing...right?

 

[JoeS]

...I find it odd that they recommend against 'topping it off ' when its over half full though. I guess that's a lithium ion thing...right?

Right! Lithiums are happiest sitting at around 50%SoC (State of Charge), somewhere around eight bars on the Fuel Gauge. What I do is typically charge up to about 13-14 bars just before driving off (use the Remote), and only fully-charge just before setting off on a longer trip.

With summer coming, what you do NOT want to do is fully charge and leave it sitting fully charged on a hot day.

By the same token, I very rarely let my i-MiEV drop below two bars on the fuel gauge. If you're ever down there, go easy on the accelerator pedal.

Glad to hear you're enjoying your little workhorse.

 

[Don]

I find it odd that they recommend against 'topping it off ' when its over half full though. I guess that's a lithium ion thing...right?

We almost never fully charge it . . . . well, not very often anyway - Once every couple of weeks or so

Fully recharging the pack entails a fairly lengthy cell balancing routine where the BMS charges the weakest cells up to the same amount as the strongest cells. While it's good to periodically do this (I think Mitsu recommends doing it every couple weeks) it's not really good for the pack to do it every day

While there's no 'great harm' to recharge it to 100% each time you recharge, the conventional thinking is that it's not good to do so more than necessary - Especially not if the battery is still more than 50% charged when you begin. We never charge at all unless the next trip requires more juice than is currently in the pack, so we're usually able to recharge every 3rd or 4th day . . . . and even then, we usually terminate charge at about 14 bars

Don

 

[Zelenec]

I recharge the battery almost every time to 100%. 38.000 km without noticeable changes in range or any other problems so far. The range of the vehicle meets our daily needs (70-100km), so it's charged almost every day. On the other hand, we rarely approach the 10% SOC.

I'm pretty sure that a regular full charging doesn't harm the battery if the car is used daily.

 

[sandange]

I'm with Zelenec on this one

We charge to full every day, sometimes twice in one day, but we go
70 km ( 45 miles) or more daily,
very rarely go under 2 bars,
almost always with Level 2 charging timed to stop just before we use the car
over 60,000 km (37,000 miles) and
no noticeable loss of range to date.

 

[MLucas]

I recharge the battery almost every time to 100%. 38.000 km without noticeable changes in range or any other problems so far. The range of the vehicle meets our daily needs (70-100km), so it's charged almost every day. On the other hand, we rarely approach the 10% SOC.

I'm pretty sure that a regular full charging doesn't harm the battery if the car is used daily.

Same here, I'm at 48k kilometers. I need the full range to make my commute and during the winter I'm charging using the supplied unmodified L1 EVSE to about 90% SOC during the day. I'm not purposefully stopping the charge at 90%, that is simply the amount of charge I get on L1 8A after 9 hours from approximately 50% that I used to get to work. So far I have not seen any degradation or decrease in range, I'm still able to do the same commute with the results everyday.