PHEV Battery health

[Dewdogphev]

Hi all
New owner of a 2014 (2016 complied and delivered) outlander phev. 37000km.

So far seems to be a nice car and all going well.

Have ordered and just received an ODB so I can run the dog and get some information about the battery.

To my surprise it is showing up as 98.7 % soh 37.5Ah

Also surprising the age since manufacture shows as 82 days.

Concerned it has just been reset or something along them lines, I have managed to get out of my commute 59km on a charge before the ICE required to start helping out....

On a side note, my wife drove the car for a week and used half a tank of fuel so not sure what happened there..

I think some more driving and monitoring myself is required to confirm the current output, but doesn’t this sound kind of strange in terms of the SOH of the battery and age/km of car?

Thanks in advance.

 

[jaapv]

Battery deterioration is not so much determined by age as by use. At 37.000 km it is quite possible that the car is still in near-new condition. I'm jealous.... :roll:

 

[Trex]

Have ordered and just received an ODB so I can run the dog and get some information about the battery.

To my surprise it is showing up as 98.7 % soh 37.5Ah

Also surprising the age since manufacture shows as 82 days.

Concerned it has just been reset or something along them lines,..............

Hi Dewdogphev,

You also may have a new drive battery. What country are you in? Did you buy off a dealer or privately? Should not be hard to find out more information about the car's history from Mitsubishi or the previous owner, I would have thought, knowing what you know now.

If you look under the PHEV at the drive battery case I think you should see a date when the drive battery was made. This may help.

But it also may have had a BMU reset then a Auto Capacity Measured Procedure done on it as well to calibrate the BMU. Or just a BMU reset. :roll: You could also ask a dealer to print off the BMU data list from the MUT-III which also could give you or us something more to go on.

Regards Trex.

 

[Dewdogphev]

Thanks for the replies!
It’s nice to know that deterioration may not be that high at the low km!! I certainly have a bit more driving to do but so far it seems to live up to the km that appear on the screen!

I bought from a dealer but non Mitsubishi, was obviously bought through wholesalers along the way.

Will be having it in Mitsubishi soon so will ask them for a battery check (is there a special term for the test at all?). Otherwise if I keep driving and it gets the km it should and the readings on the dog are good then I can’t conplain.

In terms of date, there is a sticker of 14/5 with a serial/barcode on the battery case passender side. And the 14/5 matching the build date of vehicle.

If it’s just had a BMU reset would it seem as though the km you are getting are off the full battery, but when doing the travel you just wouldn’t end up getting the same amount of km as it doesn’t actually have the charge?

 

[Trex]

If it’s just had a BMU reset would it seem as though the km you are getting are off the full battery, but when doing the travel you just wouldn’t end up getting the same amount of km as it doesn’t actually have the charge?

Ok from what we have seen the drive battery on our PHEVs does not use it's full capacity under most circumstances ie approx 30% of the bottom capacity is reserved for helping reduce degradation it would appear. So when the battery gauge on the dash shows empty or close to it there is still approx 30% capacity still there not to be used normally.

Now by just resetting the BMU (Battery Management Unit) you could be accessing part of that approx 30%.

Lets look at it this way. Suppose you have real drive battery degradation of say 10% so you have 90% health. By just doing a BMU reset the BMU now thinks you have the approx full 8.4 kWh (approx 70% of a 12kWh drive battery when new) capacity available (that we normally can only use) and will now dig into some of that approx 30% reserve that should not normally be touched.

Now because the BMU is "guessing" the capacity of the drive battery mostly ie because if you never empty the drive battery under normal circumstances it can not work out the real health or degradation so Mitsubishi have given their dealers a procedure using the MUT-III to check real health or real degradation. That procedure on the MUT-III is called the Battery auto capacity measured function or under the service manuals section called Drive Battery Capacity Automatic Measurement which people have started calling DBCAM.

But the dealers I have used have never used that DBCAM acronym so be careful if talking to Mitsubishi and using DBCAM that they know what you are talking about.

Now the Battery auto capacity measured function on the MUT-III fully empties the drive battery (a special circumstance when that 30% reserve is accessed) and then measures the capacity it takes to charge it back up to work out the real health and real degradation and recalibrates the BMU with that information.

I hope you understand what I have written here because I am in a hurry to write this as its lunch time on a Friday here at work. But ask those questions if you not and I will try to help later if I can.

Got to go.

Regards Trex.

 

[Dewdogphev]

I think i get a rough understanding of what you are explaining.

So is it likely over a few weeks of charge and discharge it will end up identifying the true amount and degrading?

The dog is only pulling the information from the BMU correct? So its just reporting the same information.

Either way, i guess I just need to drive and see how it goes over a period of time!