Battery Charge/Save Buttons

[maby]

...


PS: Both CHARGE and SAVE do nothing if the battery is over 80% fully charged ...

Mine will happily burn petrol continually in an attempt to get the battery up to 100% in CHARGE mode!

 

[anko]

When pressed while soc was still above 80%? Our when pressed when soc was already below 80%?

 

[maby]

When pressed while soc was still above 80%? Our when pressed when soc was already below 80%?

I'm not completely sure to tell you the truth - would you expect it to make any difference? I don't regularly drive in "Charge" mode - as you know, I drive in "save" to retain the charge that I put in from the mains. On a few occasions, I have allowed the SOC to drop low and have used Charge to bring it up to a reasonable level. I had heard suggestions here that Charge would not take the car over 80%, so I did run a couple of tests. I put the car into "Charge" mode and left it there - it took the battery up close to 100% but never cut the petrol engine - on one occasion I was stopped at traffic lights with the engine running reasonably fast and the battery stuck just below 100%. This was when the car was reasonably new, so I don't think it was a symptom of battery degradation.

 

[anko]

As I have mentioned once or twice, when towing my aim is to keep an as high as possible SOC. Typically, this means I will hit the Charge button as soon as I drive out of our street. I thought I had noticed a couple of times, pressing Charge would not (immediately) start the engine if I did it to quickly. I assumed it was because SOC was too high at that moment. For this reason, I was curious about your experiences.

Yesterday, we towed our caravan over approx. 80 km. Before I got a change to engage Charge mode then engine had already started because I had "floored" it (*). As soon as I heard the engine, I remembered to press Charge and I did. At that time, SOC was around 83%. The engine kept running in serial mode and produced just enough power to drive the car and increase SOC bit by bit. It kept running in serial mode even after we entered the motorway (doing 60+ MPH). Don't know why it does / did that, but it started doing this about a year ago. Either way, I like it, as it means I can maintain high SOC for when I need it.

Funny enough, presumable because SOC is that low, the car does not feel the need to increase SOC very fast. So, although RPM is not fixed with speed, the very high revving stays out. Not ideal, but much better than towing with low SOC, where the car switches between parallel mode and high revving serial mode every tow minutes or so.

(*) Due to the poor state of health of my battery, the battery will not release more then 45 kW unless it has to. Not nearly enough for towing.

 

[Bearhunter]

all of these hypothesizes on how much gas to charge the battery are pretty much irrelevant. Unless of course you are just asking if sitting my driveway, is it cheaper to use the grid to charge the battery or the ICE
You are presumably in the car to get some where. So to get there you need to, in our case, to use electric, gas or a combination. You can not simply say that it need X amount of gas to charge the battery to X % SOC.
The more accurate question would be, how MUCH extra gas do I use when charging the battery while driving ? The car uses X amount of gas to simply run the engine, then it uses X + ? to move the car down the road, THEN it uses X+?+? to move down the road AND charge the battery simultaneously.
Now assuming that you are not just driving to charge the battery X+? are not relevant because you wanted to go from where you were to where you wanted to be anyway ! So only the second ? is relevant
I think that makes sense, it does in my head anyway

 

[ThudnBlundr]

all of these hypothesizes on how much gas to charge the battery are pretty much irrelevant. Unless of course you are just asking if sitting my driveway, is it cheaper to use the grid to charge the battery or the ICE
You are presumably in the car to get some where. So to get there you need to, in our case, to use electric, gas or a combination. You can not simply say that it need X amount of gas to charge the battery to X % SOC.
The more accurate question would be, how MUCH extra gas do I use when charging the battery while driving ? The car uses X amount of gas to simply run the engine, then it uses X + ? to move the car down the road, THEN it uses X+?+? to move down the road AND charge the battery simultaneously.
Now assuming that you are not just driving to charge the battery X+? are not relevant because you wanted to go from where you were to where you wanted to be anyway ! So only the second ? is relevant
I think that makes sense, it does in my head anyway

That totally misses the point of how the car actually works. When you're outside of your EV range, the car WILL charge the battery way, way more than half the time whether you like it or not, going round the Hysteresis Loop in SAVE or with no buttons pressed. If the ICE is running, it WILL ALWAYS try to charge the drive battery whether you like it or not. It may not be able to do so if the power requirements are too high or the battery is nearing full. So it will basically use X amount of fuel (energy) to get from A to B, assuming you arrive with an empty battery. You can vary 'X' slightly by choosing when the car will charge the drive battery and trying to maximise efficiency. So in effect SAVE & CHRG timeshift when the car car charges, but not how much energy it needs to do the journey. Again, this assumes that you arrive at your destination with an empty battery.

Most people suggest that charging at higher speeds and using EV at lower speeds is the way to improve efficiency, though there are no real figures to back this up.

 

[Bearhunter]

I am not disputing any of the actual physics or science involved in any of the charging versus everything else discussions.
I am merely putting forward the notion that we bought a vehicle to get from A to B. So assuming that getting from A to B was the original goal, the rest needs to be thought about within that context.
I can see that Hybrid owners in general, on the most part are a weird breed and I doubt that many other kinds of car owners take a tape measure with them to see how many meters more they got out of a charge this time. Part of the fun !

 

[ThudnBlundr]

While I (think that I) see the point you are trying to make, people are interested in the cost of owning cars, especially these ones with vastly more options than a plain ICE. But I'm disagreeing with your earlier statement that it uses more fuel to use CHRG - it doesn't for the reasons in my previous post. In the process of getting from A to B, the car will use the energy it needs, but you can influence how that energy is deployed for environmental or cost reasons. So you can drive around town in EV because it's better for the local environment or because it could save you money.

 

[kpetrov]

There are few postulates that we can consider:
Running on electricity is more efficient (otherwise you should not own the vehicle)
Running on electricity is cleaner for urban areas.
The efficiency of ICE is much better on constant highway speeds than in stop and go traffic.

All those postulates makes the question "you can drive around town in EV because it's better for the local environment or because it could save you money." irrelevant cause it's both at the same time - better for the local environment and saving you money.

The third postulate should answer the question when is better to top up the battery by pressing CHARGE for the stop and go traffic ahead if any.

 

[user 6024]

I like to hit charge if I am on a roadtrip and I know I need to stop in about 45 min to an hour because of a food break and I have more than 75 miles left on the gas tank. Since I am going to fill up the gas tank, I might as well charge up the battery to be full again on the next leg of the journey. I'd rather do this than stop for lunch with 50 miles left in the tank and 0 miles on battery. Who knows when I'll want to stop next and adding another 25 miles can't be a bad thing.

 

[mellobob]

You could add "The engineers at Mitsubishi know best" and leave the button pushing to the guys on this forum

 

[ThudnBlundr]

The efficiency of ICE is much better on constant highway speeds than in stop and go traffic.

Please show me a link to research that proves that this is true for our PHEV. I have still not seen any scientific proof in 3 years of ownership.

 

[kpetrov]

You could add "The engineers at Mitsubishi know best" and leave the button pushing to the guys on this forum

Yea, I agree "the engineers at Mitsubishi know best"... and they placed those buttons for a reason

 

[kpetrov]

The efficiency of ICE is much better on constant highway speeds than in stop and go traffic.

Please show me a link to research that proves that this is true for our PHEV. I have still not seen any scientific proof in 3 years of ownership.

It is true for any vehicle equipped with an ICE, no matter hybrid or not.

https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/all-about-drivetrains

Series vs Parallel vs Series/Parallel Drivetrains.
Series/parallel drivetrains
At lower speeds it operates more as a series vehicle, while at high speeds, where the series drivetrain is less efficient, the engine takes over and energy loss is minimized.

Comparative Analysis of Parallel vs Series Hybrid Electric Powertrains

4 Conclusion
According to the test cycle results, the parallel hybrid system performed better than the series hybrid system when driven around the same driving course that comprised a mixture of all driving conditions. As Zhao and Burke stipulated, the series hybrid system falls short of the parallel system because of double conversion of engine mechanical energy to electrical and then back to mechanical energy... At highway speeds, the engine can be mechanically linked to the drive wheels, thereby improving the efficiency of the system

 

[ThudnBlundr]

So no figures for the PHEV then :roll: Just saying, "It is always true" is not really a proof, is it? Did you actually read the articles? The first is a summary with no figures whatsoever, just bland statements. The second is a report on a test with a motorised chopper, which is obviously exactly like a 2-ton 4WD SUV in every way.

People did experiments on long straight roads and proved that using CHRG for a significant time followed normal running was indeed more efficient than leaving it in 'D'. But the difference was tiny, and certainly not worth doing just by itself. I've seen nothing where someone has actually done the scientific experiments on our PHEV to see how much fuel you save using one mode instead of the other. Even if your assertion is true, how much more efficient is one than the other? Is it worth bothering for a possible tiny saving?

 

[mellobob]

Interesting to debate things like the CHARGE/SAVE button and tiny fuel savings when large, proven savings can be had with simple methods: Drive slower, carry less weight, and eschew the use of climate control.

 

[kpetrov]

So no figures for the PHEV then :roll: Just saying, "It is always true" is not really a proof, is it? Did you actually read the articles? The first is a summary with no figures whatsoever, just bland statements. The second is a report on a test with a motorised chopper, which is obviously exactly like a 2-ton 4WD SUV in every way.

People did experiments on long straight roads and proved that using CHRG for a significant time followed normal running was indeed more efficient than leaving it in 'D'. But the difference was tiny, and certainly not worth doing just by itself. I've seen nothing where someone has actually done the scientific experiments on our PHEV to see how much fuel you save using one mode instead of the other. Even if your assertion is true, how much more efficient is one than the other? Is it worth bothering for a possible tiny saving?

Ohh now we came to no figures specifically for our PHEV! Summary with no figures... :?:
The laws of physics in Mitsu PHEV are universal. It is not an alien spaceship with unknown technology. The losses to convert energy are known. No need of specific numbers if you can't even accept the fact.

First you asked me to prove that "The efficiency of ICE is much better on constant highway speeds than in stop and go traffic." ridiculous thing to ask an prove for. Was sure you are going to argue just for the sport and skew my statement.
Then you compare it to driving using CHRG and leaving it on "D" on the same flat road with same speed. Totally different from ICE on constant highway speeds vs. stop and go traffic.

The minuscule saving you are talking about are not so minuscule for the case I am describing... better build some charge on the highway (if needed) instead of driving in series on the stop and go traffic.

Mellobob nobody said you can't implement both tiny fuel savings and proven simple methods.
Do you have any numbers proving PHEV saves when: drive slower, carry less weight, and eschew the use of climate control... just kidding

 

[mellobob]

Mellobob nobody said you can't implement both tiny fuel savings and proven simple methods.
Do you have any numbers proving PHEV saves when: drive slower, carry less weight, and eschew the use of climate control... just kidding

I have the numbers 7 and 12. So there! :roll:

 

[SilverD]

42

 

[greendwarf]

Unless, of course, you are in Infinite Improbability Drive :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: