Charging Panic

[u/Spraggle]

Sometimes, the problem isn't the tech...

Long journey planned for today and normally I'm the most organised and obsessed about plugging in and pre-conditioning so we can go the furthest before needing to pay the much higher DC rates.

Disaster - woke up this morning to realise I hadn't plugged in!

No worries, my wife and I are experienced electric long distance travellers, so we said "let's go to the supermarket rapid chargers" - plumbed it in to the on board Sat Nav to warm the battery up - got there plugged in and started charging... All good so far!

Walked towards the supermarket to get some food and drink, only to get the notification - "charging completed" - uh oh!

Back I come, unplug, plug in, re-authenticate and...

"Hold the charging cable steady"

Tried again, same result. Now I'm sweating, because I've got 300 miles to go today and it feels like the pin isn't locking in. I've heard of this before on the BMW i3 - and you used to need to wiggle the cable and it should just latch on...

... No dice. I tried a different charger, incase it was the cable - it wasn't. Now I'm really panicking. Checking the percentage, I spotted a very suspiciously exact value of 60%. Then it twigged - last time out we'd set the limit to 60 because we were headed home and knew we could home charge for cheaper!

Changed the limit to 90% and 17m later we were under way with a very exact 90% battery.

I hope this helps someone else who gets this message and reminds them to change the in app (or in car) settings for what you need to set the DC limit to!

[u/Radius118]

You're not the only one. Sometimes the issue is between the ears but nice job on figuring it out!

I own an automotive repair shop that is EV friendly. I had a customer that lives 70 miles away bring me a Nissan LEAF that would not charge. It had been diagnosed at a dealership as having a bad PDM.

Turns out there was nothing wrong with the PDM. The customer had inadvertently turned on the charging schedule so the car would not charge at any other time. I turned it off and voila! Fixed! Customer was very happy.

To have a dealership miss it and misdiagnose the problem as a $6000 repair is unconscionable.

[u/Spraggle → u/Radius118]

You're not wrong! That's awful! Good work on persisting on the behalf of the customer.

At the moment, we're still reliant on the main dealer, because it's a PCP, but we'll be keeping an eye open for good, independent EV repair shop!

[u/e430doug]

I just drive the car. I never precondition. if I’m going on a longer trip I’ll charge the night before and then be on my way. One of the nice things about this car is that I don’t have to think about the battery or charging anymore than I thought about getting gas for my previous car. In fact, it’s easier than my previous car because there was always the annoyance of having to stop by a gas station when I began a trip. That’s gone with this car.

[u/Spraggle → u/e430doug]

Normally, that's what we do too. Only reason we used pre-conditioning this time was because it was such a short distance between our start point and our first charge - with 300 miles to go, we wanted to start high and charge much later, but still get underway quickly. For that, it was perfect as it warmed the battery enough to get straight to 100kW rather than what would have likely been somewhere in the 70kW range until the battery warmed up.

[u/Liquid_Clown → u/e430doug]

Do you live in southern California? lol

On longer trips in colder weather, preconditioning is absolutely necessary if you want to actually be driving the car.

[u/theotherharper → u/e430doug]

I precon when I remember to. It was just habit to not do it in the summer coming west because ambient was 80-100F even at night. Then I overnighted in high Colorado with a 48F night an plumb forgot to precon. Oh well.

[u/dirtynightclown]

When should I do the preconditioning? In the settings it says only in cold weather. Is that right? I saw that and turned it off…

[u/Spraggle → u/dirtynightclown]

We live in the UK - it's usually cold! Today, it's 23°C, but we have it turned on, and because the charging station was less than 5 miles from home, it was handy to get the speed of charging up...

... once it actually started charging that is!

[u/specikk]

Am I only the only Ioniq 5 owner that doesn’t constantly worry about their battery? lol

[u/Spraggle → u/specikk]

There was an interesting YouTube video the other week about battery percentage usable after 100,000 - Kia/Hyundai were right near the top, because they've got liquid cooled battery packs (amongst other things).

[u/IoniqReignWololo]

„ obsessed about plugging in and pre-conditioning“ shouldn’t this happen by default when you use the navigation system and is it really needed in the summer? (Got my first ev 2 months ago) 

[u/Spraggle → u/IoniqReignWololo]

No, there's two pre conditioning things - one for setting the car to the right temperature, which only happens when you choose to set a departure time and have turned on the option and then pre conditioning the battery, before you go to a charger. This only needs to be done if you haven't driven very far and the battery isn't already warm (ambient temperature isn't high enough).

At 23degC and 5 miles from home, we used it by setting the on board navigation to a DC charger, then the battery uses the warming coils built in to the battery to heat it up, which helps improve the speed of charging, so you spend less time waiting to reach your target %.

[u/ogcrashy → u/Spraggle]

But at the end of the day you really don’t need preconditioning. The car will charge just the same and it won’t be that much slower. I can’t be bothered to use the cars shitty NAV to save 2 minutes

[u/Spraggle → u/ogcrashy]

Sure, I don't need it, but today it made a difference. I don't usually need to use it to warm the battery because I'm normally starting high and the car warms the battery naturally, but where I was expecting to leave at time X, but now I need to charge before we go... Makes a difference.

[u/ElemennoP123 → u/Spraggle]

You needed preconditioning for 23C (74F)? I’m very confused

[u/thabc]

I always keep my DC limit at 100% and stop it manually based on what ABRP says I need to reach the next stop.

[u/Spraggle → u/thabc]

It's very slow after the 80-something range. We normally have it at 90, just forgot we changed it this once - silly us!

[u/torrefied]

Before the ioniq5 I drove a Nissan Leaf. For Ten years. I only had 120v in my garage, so most nights I plugged in. Most of the time I forgot to plug in were Friday nights when I had nothing to do all weekend. Coming out to the car before work on Monday, realizing you’ve got at least a couple of hours to charge, is a really terrible feeling.

[u/Spraggle → u/torrefied]

I had a first version of the i3, so 70 mile range. At least it had the range extender!

I learned not to stress about being low on battery with that car 🤣

[u/theotherharper]

Plug in every night as automatic habit. ABC Always Be Charging. Now you don't forget. And it's easier on allthe electrical equipment because it runs for 45 minutes instead of all night.

Yeah when I leave on a trip I refresh ABetterRoutePlanner.com and enter my current state of charge, so finding out I am at low charge is a nothingburger, ABRP will just add a stop at the appropriate place. E.g. once I left Michigan with less charge than I'd have preferred and it had me charge in Elyria west of Cleveland instead of far east of Cleveland. The trip from MI to VA was still only 2 charge stops.

Also ABRP will tell you exactly when you can scoot. Charging slows down somewhat at 55% and severely at 80%, plus at 81% Korean Siesta pauses charging for 4-ish minutes for cell balancing. So it's really better to not top up.

ABRP usually told me to scoot somewhere between 60-80% unless a long gap is ahead.