Best way of testing battery

[Bobbybuttons]

I believe my 2014 phev battery is rapidly going down hill. I've heard people are using the charge cost setting on car to see what the car costs to charge. I've set mine to 10p per kwh and last night after a full charge it said it cost just 66p to charge. My predicted ev range this morning was 21 miles . I did a 5 mile round trip dropping kids to school, got back home predicted miles left was 7. Went back to collect 6 hours later started car up and predicted range was only 4! So it lost 3 miles just sitting there on the drive. Surely this can't be right. So after all that I only got 14 miles on ev. How can I further test my battery please I'm thinking there's something seriously up with the car battery.

 

[Hypermiler]

Hi
I also seem to have an issue of around 7.5kwh empty to full per charge cost screen...
Awaiting some advice or other figures for comparison. My car has done about 43k miles.
Cheers
H

 

[Hypermiler]

BobbyButtons - take a look at pages on “poor battery performance” a few threads below.... very interesting. We are not alone!
H

 

[Bobbybuttons]

BobbyButtons - take a look at pages on “poor battery performance” a few threads below.... very interesting. We are not alone!
H

Thanks will take a look

 

[Bert]

I've got a MY14.5 here in Australia, bought it end of 2015 from a dealer. Mid 2017 I lost range and could do only 35km (21mi) on a full charge. I complaint with another dealer and they did a battery cell smoothing procedure and a BMS reset. I've documented everything via my Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/unpluggedev (it explains the best what has happened). The capacity was down to 80% state of health already with no more then 58000km (36000mi) driven.

After the procedure I had my full capacity back with 50km+ on pure EV range, but... well other problems occured.

 

[elm70]

I believe my 2014 phev battery is rapidly going down hill. I've heard people are using the charge cost setting on car to see what the car costs to charge. I've set mine to 10p per kwh and last night after a full charge it said it cost just 66p to charge. My predicted ev range this morning was 21 miles . I did a 5 mile round trip dropping kids to school, got back home predicted miles left was 7. Went back to collect 6 hours later started car up and predicted range was only 4! So it lost 3 miles just sitting there on the drive. Surely this can't be right. So after all that I only got 14 miles on ev. How can I further test my battery please I'm thinking there's something seriously up with the car battery.

Unless you have an ODB2 adapter, using the MMCS is a good way to verify the state of health of your battery.

Also remember that battery does perform better in warm weather, 25C is the ideal temperature for have maximum battery capacity ... so now in winter we have less available capacity (both in charge and discharge)

As well ... when EV range is zero (or missing) on the car display, the battery could be between 30.5% till 26% capacity

Anyhow ... per your MMCS you have been able to charge only 6.6kwh ... that is quite a low value ... per my MMCS in winter last day I was able to charge 8.1kwh .. and my battery SOH is only 91%

You can try to ask battery smoothing to your dealer ... but don't expect miracles ... battery degradation is real in this PHEV and it is irreversible

If you poor battery condition is due to a single weak cell ... you may have an argument for have Mitsubishi to replace at least the weak battery cell .. for know this you would need an ODB2 adapter and on of the two Apps for Android (EvBatMon or PhevWatchDog)

 

[elm70]

I've got a MY14.5 here in Australia, bought it end of 2015 from a dealer. Mid 2017 I lost range and could do only 35km (21mi) on a full charge. I complaint with another dealer and they did a battery cell smoothing procedure and a BMS reset. I've documented everything via my Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/unpluggedev (it explains the best what has happened). The capacity was down to 80% state of health already with no more then 58000km (36000mi) driven.

After the procedure I had my full capacity back with 50km+ on pure EV range, but... well other problems occured.

Hi Bert,

You made very nice videos about the PHEV battery problems .. very informative .. and lot of information there

Having follow your videos, I'm quite sure you dealer did not execute properly the battery smoothing ... instead they just reset your car, to make it believe it has still 100% capacity.

As consequence you battery get over discharger, and it is quickly learning the real capacity and going back to the previous SOH of 80%

I will post soon my understanding of the logic behind this battery management in our PHEV

 

[Bobbybuttons]

I plugged it in today from an empty battery and my app said it would take 2 hours 45minutes to charge ( i have a chargemaster installed)
I checked app again after this time and battery was full with 21 miles estimate ev range car displayed charge complete and the charge cost was 74p.
So i plugged it back in again so i know it will be full for the morning and it clicks as it always does when you plug it in and green light comes on chargemaster again to say charging.
I check the app again and its now saying 1 hour to complete charge. It all seems a bit odd to me , i'm wondering if its maybe the chargemaster at fault possibly?

 

[anko]

I check the app again and its now saying 1 hour to complete charge. It all seems a bit odd to me , i'm wondering if its maybe the chargemaster at fault possibly?

Nothing wrong with the charger. This is what a PHEV does.

But please, stop expressing amount of charge in terms of 'p'. It is meaningless if we don't know your tariff. And we don't want to know KWh is the meaningful unit to use.

 

[PHEV07]

I plugged it in today from an empty battery and my app said it would take 2 hours 45minutes to charge ( i have a chargemaster installed)
I checked app again after this time and battery was full with 21 miles estimate ev range car displayed charge complete and the charge cost was 74p.
So i plugged it back in again so i know it will be full for the morning and it clicks as it always does when you plug it in and green light comes on chargemaster again to say charging.
I check the app again and its now saying 1 hour to complete charge. It all seems a bit odd to me , i'm wondering if its maybe the chargemaster at fault possibly?

Does your Chargemaster operate at 220/240 volts. What is the Amp rating?

Outlander PHEV apparently will only charges at 3.3kWh or 15 Amps at 240 volts, so if it charged for 2 hrs and 45 min. Drive Battery accepted 9 kWh of power.

You say when you plugged it in again it said 1 hr to charge. Did you check to see if it did in fact charge for 1 momore hr?

This is where the PHEV dog App could come in handy to check how much charge Battery actually took

 

[Bobbybuttons]

Sorry I'm not sure where I can find what kwh it is taking. My car just tells me the charge cost , I've read that putting your price per kwh to 1 will give me an indication on battery and a normal battery will display a cost of about 90 to £1. Mine was lower which to me indicated a poor battery or not enough charge going in. I'm sorry I don't know how to work out what kwh.

 

[PHEV07]

Sorry I'm not sure where I can find what kwh it is taking. My car just tells me the charge cost , I've read that putting your price per kwh to 1 will give me an indication on battery and a normal battery will display a cost of about 90 to £1. Mine was lower which to me indicated a poor battery or not enough charge going in. I'm sorry I don't know how to work out what kwh.

That is ok no problem.

Let me see if I have the English Currency correct. 100 Pence equals 1 Pound.

If you set the rate per kWh to 0.1 pounds or 10 Pence then 90p x 0.10/kWh would indicate 9kWh of Charge.

Make sense?

Please recheck the value you entered was it 1.0 or 10 or was it 0.10

 

[Bobbybuttons]

Thanks I set the cost to 0.10pence per kWh and my car on the last full charge said it cost 74pence to charge from empty so I'm assuming it's taken 7.4kWh to charge would this be correct? Everything I've read so far is saying it should take 9kWh if the battery is OK.

 

[PHEV07]

Thanks I set the cost to 0.10pence per kWh and my car on the last full charge said it cost 74pence to charge from empty so I'm assuming it's taken 7.4kWh to charge would this be correct? Everything I've read so far is saying it should take 9kWh if the battery is OK.

Yes that is correct.

Now that you can see how much power it is taking to charge currently, you can continue testing to see if the cell levelling improves the amount of charge the Battery is able to take in.

9kWh seems about right for normal Battery charge cause I believe Mitsubishi wants about 30% left as a reserve.

 

[anko]

A normal A/C charge at the fastest possible rate should take about 3.5 hours. When your car is full in 2 hrs 45, this already suggests capacity is a bit less. Mine is usually done within 2.5 hrs. That sounds nice, but it is in fact very bad.

We also have to be careful comparing kWh numbers from charge stations with numbers from MMCS. My charge station reports a near constant power of 3300 watts and a bit, where the battery is taking in only about 2900 watts. The rest is lost in converting AC to DC. Question is: what is MMCS reporting? Is that before or after the AC/DC converter? AFAIK we do not know this yet.