MY19 SoH

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Ymer

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Joined
Apr 11, 2020
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2
Considering buying an Outlander PHEV to run mostly in EV mode.

Have been looking at two MY19 Exceeds and test-driven one of the two.

Both are dealer demos with just over 7000km on the clock.

In Australia the MY19 Outlander PHEV still has the 12kWh battery.

The Mitsubishi dealer said they could not measure the remaining traction battery capacity for me because they didn’t have the required machine!

I asked the used car salesperson whether I could measure SoH myself with PHEV Watchdog. No problem. Result: ~80% (~32Ah) for both cars. One of the cars had a nearly full battery (97% SoC) and 42km on the GoM. Apparently Mitsubishi Australia specified a 54km pure electric range for the MY19 PHEV. Interestingly, 54km x 0.97 Soc x 0.8 SoH = 41.9km. But I don’t think that is how the GoM works.

Anyway, now wondering how to interpret these figures and what conclusions to draw.

I work in the ebike industry and regularly test and repair LiIon batteries. The chemistries of the ebike and PHEV batteries differ somewhat, and usage differences also come into play, but I’m really surprised by a 20% capacity loss in one year with relatively few kilometres. Somehow I cannot believe that this apparent capacity loss is a real capacity loss of the battery. Not saying that my experience with ebike batteries is entirely relevant, but I feel this is more likely a calculated capacity loss than an actual capacity loss.

Question now is what rate of capacity drop can be expected from here on? And how soon will that lead to a pure EV range that would be better covered by an ebike than a 2-ton car? :) And also, what is a realistic value/price for a PHEV that already has lost 20% of its battery capacity in the first year and might be down to 50% capacity in another 1.5 years (assuming a constant rate of decline)?

Mitsubishi Australia does not give an official remaining battery capacity guarantee for the duration of the battery warranty (8 years/160,000km), but unofficially I was told that batteries have been replaced if less than 70% of original capacity was remaining at any time during the warranty period.

In many ways the Outlander PHEV is a really amazing car. But for me the PHEV only makes sense if 80% of the original battery capacity and pure EV range can be relied upon over the first 5 years. So I will probably not go ahead with buying one, but I wouldn’t mind being convinced otherwise if someone has a better insight in the MY19 performance. :)

By the way, the OBD2 dongle that I used is the current Jaycar OBD2 Bluetooth Engine Code Reader.
 
There are two schools of thought on the SOH drop.

One is that the Mitsubishi Battery Management System software is flawed, causing a steady unreal drop in reported SOH.

The cure is the Reset procedures you can find in the Technical section.

The other school denies the BMS problem and says the Reset will invalidate your battery guarantee ( probably true) and that the Reset is not a Good Idea, for instance it steals charge from the preserved Top and Bottom areas of the battery that are the secret of long battery life.

My 20k mile PHEV was already down to 32Ah, and the Reset took it back to 38Ah, but it hasn't stopped the steady SOH drop over time.
 
I'm new on the PHEV, got mine 20 days ago. It is an amazing car.

It is a 2016 Instyle model, 103k in the clock and has 86% SoH. I think this is quite OK SoH for such age but not for an 1 year old car.
Is this dealer an "authorized dealer"? If yes, run from it.

About the battery. As an electrical engineer experienced on Li-Ion batteries, I think the BMS behavior on my car is what I would expect. It tops the battery to 4.1V/cell and discharge it to 3.65V/cell. There is no magic or reset or anything else that can change this numbers. This is the useful range. On the other hand, the "number" the computers shows to you (32Ah, 38Ah, 100Ah) it is up to its internal calculation.
The BMS reset actually remove its database of charge /discharge curve and the software will have to learn again. That is the reason for a few weeks it will show you what it thinks it is correct (38Ah topped), but after some use it will learn and correct this value. The usable range of the battery (3.65V to 4.1V) cannot be change by a simple software reset.

Cheers.

Alex.
 
Thanks for your replies Alex and Michael.

I did buy one of the two Exceeds. The main reason being that I could find no other (PH)EV in my price range that can legally be fitted with a tow bar here in Australia. (E.g. the Ioniq EV can be fitted with a bike carrier towbar in the Netherlands but not in Oz.)

When I got the car last Saturday the Watchdog showed 78% SoH at 34.3Ah. The Watchdog specifies that the percentage calculation is based on 100% at 38Ah. So, to me, the 78% didn't make sense.

Then I attempted the D-quick procedure. This didn't change the Ah available, but from then on both the Watchdog and the EvBatMon showed a SoH of 90% at 34.2Ah. The fully charged EV range on the dashboard increased from 42km to 48km. On my first trip today I managed 46km in EV mode.

One of these days I will attempt another variation of the D-quick procedure to see if the indicated Ah capacity can be increased. Not that I think that it's possible to reverse any battery degradation. But it could be that the BMU artificially reduces the capacity that it allows to be taken from the battery. In other words, if the capacity is still there, I would like to be able to access it and for it to not be limited artificially by an algorithm. We'll see. :)
 
What Alex said makes sense - The usable range of the battery (3.65V to 4.1V) cannot be change by a simple software reset.

Might be interesting to see how many KWhs WatchDog reports for each charge.
 
Ymer said:
Thanks for your replies Alex and Michael.

I did buy one of the two Exceeds. The main reason being that I could find no other (PH)EV in my price range that can legally be fitted with a tow bar here in Australia. (E.g. the Ioniq EV can be fitted with a bike carrier towbar in the Netherlands but not in Oz.)

When I got the car last Saturday the Watchdog showed 78% SoH at 34.3Ah. The Watchdog specifies that the percentage calculation is based on 100% at 38Ah. So, to me, the 78% didn't make sense.

Then I attempted the D-quick procedure. This didn't change the Ah available, but from then on both the Watchdog and the EvBatMon showed a SoH of 90% at 34.2Ah. The fully charged EV range on the dashboard increased from 42km to 48km. On my first trip today I managed 46km in EV mode.

One of these days I will attempt another variation of the D-quick procedure to see if the indicated Ah capacity can be increased. Not that I think that it's possible to reverse any battery degradation. But it could be that the BMU artificially reduces the capacity that it allows to be taken from the battery. In other words, if the capacity is still there, I would like to be able to access it and for it to not be limited artificially by an algorithm. We'll see. :)
It is not limited to make life hard on you, but it is limited to preserve the health of the battery. The car is a PHEV, not a BEV. That means that it is a hybrid that can run a reasonable distance on the battery. The exact length of that distance is rather irrelevant to the concept of the car. What is relevant is that it will be able to run on the battery for the next 300.000 km. Tamper with that idea at your (or rather the next owner's) peril.
 
Ymer said:
But it could be that the BMU artificially reduces the capacity that it allows to be taken from the battery. In other words, if the capacity is still there, I would like to be able to access it and for it to not be limited artificially by an algorithm. We'll see. :)

The BMU does not limit it. You can perform this test:

1) full charge the battery. The cells will be at 4.1V.
2) drive until the battery got "depleted" (30% SoC) and the engine kicks in. Check the battery voltage: it will be around 3.65V/cell.

Unless the BMU is lying/mocking the voltage for some unknown reason, it is using all the battery. No matter how many resets you perform on the BMU, the system will always full charge to 4.1V/cell and drain down to 3.65V/cell.

The only thing the reset changes is the numbers displayed to the drivers, nothing else.

Cheers.

Alex.
 
AlexBorro said:
Ymer said:
But it could be that the BMU artificially reduces the capacity that it allows to be taken from the battery. In other words, if the capacity is still there, I would like to be able to access it and for it to not be limited artificially by an algorithm. We'll see. :)

The BMU does not limit it. You can perform this test:

1) full charge the battery. The cells will be at 4.1V.
2) drive until the battery got "depleted" (30% SoC) and the engine kicks in. Check the battery voltage: it will be around 3.65V/cell.

Unless the BMU is lying/mocking the voltage for some unknown reason, it is using all the battery. No matter how many resets you perform on the BMU, the system will always full charge to 4.1V/cell and drain down to 3.65V/cell.

The only thing the reset changes is the numbers displayed to the drivers, nothing else.

Cheers.

Alex.

Alex, you will find that the battery is actually not allowed to go much below 3.8V, I once measured a cell voltage of 3.79 and the SOC displayed was 25%. In fact at the 30% where the engine normally kicks in, the cell voltage is still well over 3.8V(3.84) in my car. It probably gets down to your figure with a decent load on it though.

In any case, all that resetting and stuffing around is just silly in my opinion. If one really needs to squeeze out those extra 5km, that car is probably not fit for the purpose.
 
HHL said:
[ If one really needs to squeeze out those extra 5km, that car is probably not fit for the purpose.

Quite agree, although putting that way sounds it is a fault with the car rather than actually expecting it to do something for which it was not designed - possibly fuelled by misleading advertising.
 
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