To consume old fuel, refuel 15L or more...

[STS134]

96 days and counting now...I wonder if there's some other trigger for putting the computer into the mode where it forces the ICE on, such as:
- Charge started
- Charge stopped
- Charge complete

i.e. maybe the computer doesn't actually evaluate the elapsed time whenever you put it into READY mode, but it actually just looks at whether the "burn off old fuel" bit is set, but does the evaluation of whether to set the bit or not when you start or stop charging the car. I haven't charged the car at all since the end of May, because I'm trying to make sure that when the ICE does start, the battery is empty and it has plenty of headroom for the ICE to dump energy into before it has to start running without the generator being used. For now, I'm just switching it on at least once a day to see if the ICE will start, but if it hasn't started by July 1, I'll charge it and see what happens.

Did anyone have the ICE come on with the message that the car is consuming old fuel after NOT charging it?

 

[jdsx]

Yep - charging started yesterday after about 92/3 days (haven't actually worked it out!). Haven't charged it up for several weeks. Ironically I went to B&Q without it starting, then I thought "I'll just pull the IOD fuse", after which I put it in 'ready' to see what the computer said, and the engine started immediately, with the warning! Ha! The tank looks like it's about two-thirds full, so I might have to visit a petrol station again....

 

[STS134]

Yep - charging started yesterday after about 92/3 days (haven't actually worked it out!). Haven't charged it up for several weeks. Ironically I went to B&Q without it starting, then I thought "I'll just pull the IOD fuse", after which I put it in 'ready' to see what the computer said, and the engine started immediately, with the warning! Ha! The tank looks like it's about two-thirds full, so I might have to visit a petrol station again....

1) What is B&Q?
2) What?!? You mean you pulled the fuse which was supposed to reset the timer to zero and that actually seems to have caused the engine to start?!? :shock:

 

[greendwarf]

1) UK equivalent of Home Depot

 

[jdsx]

2) What?!? You mean you pulled the fuse which was supposed to reset the timer to zero and that actually seems to have caused the engine to start?!? :shock:

Well, I can't say for sure that it caused the engine to start, but it certainly didn't prevent it from starting, in my case.....

 

[littlescrote]

I think that's similar to my experience of filling triggering it. I think the counter doesn't get checked correctly, but there are some bugs that mean it gets checked under other circumstances.

 

[STS134]

I think that's similar to my experience of filling triggering it. I think the counter doesn't get checked correctly, but there are some bugs that mean it gets checked under other circumstances.

The engine started after you filled the tank?!? If that is true, what was the initial fuel level and final fuel level when you did this?

 

[ChrisMiller]

I finally got this message after 101 days (last filled up 19th March). I'd done a 170 mile round trip last week, so the tank was down to ¼ full, and a quick trip to the filling station to put 30 litres in removed the message (and the continual engine running). So the car must be basing its calculations on the contents of the tank.

For those who love their stats: I'd travelled 653 miles and consumed 249 kWh of electricity (as well as 30 litres of petrol). The petrol cost £1.089 a litre and the last time it was that cheap was over four years ago.

 

[STS134]

I finally got this message after 101 days (last filled up 19th March). I'd done a 170 mile round trip last week, so the tank was down to ¼ full, and a quick trip to the filling station to put 30 litres in removed the message (and the continual engine running). So the car must be basing its calculations on the contents of the tank.

Not surprising. Wouldn't be the first time I've seen the manual not match what's actually in the product (most likely because the product was updated but the manual was not).

For those who love their stats: I'd travelled 653 miles and consumed 249 kWh of electricity (as well as 30 litres of petrol). The petrol cost £1.089 a litre and the last time it was that cheap was over four years ago.

That seems a bit low. 30L of gasoline, or about 8 US gallons, should have taken you about 200 miles. That leaves 453 miles on electricity, on 249 kWh. That's only 1.8 mi/kWh! I'll usually see values between 2.5 and 3.5 mi/kWh on my car, when in EV mode.

 

[ChrisMiller]

I live in a very hilly area - no mountains (this is England), but 15% grades for a mile or so every few miles - and my guessometer rarely shows a range much over 20 miles. I normally get about 2.5 miles/kWh (measured as the 'cost of charging' by the car) - for the last few months I've only been doing very short trips. The display in the car reliably shows 3.0 miles/kWh, I don't know if that's a difference between the number of kWh I put in from the mains and the amount actually stored in the battery?

 

[STS134]

I live in a very hilly area - no mountains (this is England), but 15% grades for a mile or so every few miles - and my guessometer rarely shows a range much over 20 miles. I normally get about 2.5 miles/kWh (measured as the 'cost of charging' by the car) - for the last few months I've only been doing very short trips. The display in the car reliably shows 3.0 miles/kWh, I don't know if that's a difference between the number of kWh I put in from the mains and the amount actually stored in the battery?

The difference isn't that much. The OBC should be at least 80% efficient, and is likely 85-90% efficient. If we take the lower end of that range, that puts you only up to 1.8 mi/kWh, which still seems rather low. Short trips shouldn't really make a difference in the efficiency of a vehicle operating in EV mode. It's not like it has to heat up an engine block and all of the coolant.

 

[ChrisMiller]

Except my short trips always involve returning via a mile of 15% grade (and going down doesn't allow me to do any charging if I've already got a full battery). My bad for choosing a house at the top of a hill.

If you do the calculation properly (as I explained, my trip was 170 miles, and 15-20 miles of that were on electric power) it's just a whisker over 2 miles/kWh. And before you explain to me that I'm using too much petrol, that was a motorway trip at 80 mph most of the way.

I'm by no means convinced that the on-board charger is very efficient (rather than the cheapest design the manufacturer can get away with). Indeed a 2016 study carried out in Denmark (PDF) testing popular BEVs found the OBC to have a loss of between 15 and 40(!)% - which would be consistent with my observed difference between the energy I put in from the mains and the electrical energy the car claims to be using from the battery.

 

[littlescrote]

Except my short trips always involve returning via a mile of 15% grade (and going down doesn't allow me to do any charging if I've already got a full battery). My bad for choosing a house at the top of a hill.

Why don't you routinely just stop your charging at 80%? Then on days when you know you will do a longer journey you can top it up.

 

[ChrisMiller]

I can't see a way of doing so automatically, and I've better things to do than sit for hours watching a progress bar. Anyway, it's second order stuff, I'm already very happy with the money the car has saved me.

 

[STS134]

Except my short trips always involve returning via a mile of 15% grade (and going down doesn't allow me to do any charging if I've already got a full battery). My bad for choosing a house at the top of a hill.

Mitsubishi's design really sucks. It will top off the batteries to 4.10V/cell when you're charging, unless you interrupt it manually. Once the batteries are at 4.10V/cell, the regenerative braking doesn't work, and it causes unnecessary wear to the friction brakes. They really need to introduce an automated charge limit of say 80-100% of the maximum possible, similar to what Tesla does. If you push a Tesla all the way to 100%, the regenerative brakes don't work either, but you also aren't forced to top off the batteries to 100% all the time and in fact they recommend that you don't.

Protip: if you have a EVSE with a timer on it, and you can estimate kWh per bar on the battery gauge, you can get a rough estimate of how many kWh you'll need to get from wherever the gauge was when you pulled into your garage up to say 12-14 bars. Then you can set the timer to charge for that amount of time before cutting off. I only push my batteries to 100% about once every 2-4 weeks, both to increase longevity of the batteries and because I don't like the way the car behaves with the batteries full (have to hit the brakes a lot harder to stop).

If you do the calculation properly (as I explained, my trip was 170 miles, and 15-20 miles of that were on electric power) it's just a whisker over 2 miles/kWh. And before you explain to me that I'm using too much petrol, that was a motorway trip at 80 mph most of the way.

I'm by no means convinced that the on-board charger is very efficient (rather than the cheapest design the manufacturer can get away with). Indeed a 2016 study carried out in Denmark (PDF) testing popular BEVs found the OBC to have a loss of between 15 and 40(!)% - which would be consistent with my observed difference between the energy I put in from the mains and the electrical energy the car claims to be using from the battery.

653 mi total - 155 miles on gasoline = 498 electric miles. You consumed 249 kWh of electricity so that's 2.0 mi/kWh. Now, I'm assuming that this was kWh from the mains right? What is your estimate of the losses through the OBC + the roundtrip through the battery itself, in percent of power consumed from the mains?

Also, back to main topic: after you did this trip, how long did it take before you saw the message that the car was consuming old fuel? Was it literally the next time you started the car?

 

[ChrisMiller]

I made the 170 mile trip on 17th June, which was 2/3 days before the 91-day (if that's what it is) timer was due to expire. I wanted to see if it was possible the message wouldn't be triggered if a significant amount of fuel had been used, even though the tank hadn't been topped up. And I thought this had worked when no message had appeared after a week.

I got the 'consume old fuel' message 11 days after my trip.

 

[UKBoB]

I too have just had the ICE running continuously after start-up with the same message as above. The tank is full and hardly been in use thanks to lockdown so, after reading the posts here, I knew what it was all about and decided to just run it down to 1/4 full then put in 15 litres. Then I realised it was booked in for a service at the dealers in 5 days time. As I wanted it to go in with nothing unusual displaying and there was no chance of running the tank down to the appropriate level before then I decided on the battery terminal temporary fix.
It worked nicely but I would like to caution anyone going down the same route that afterwards the boot lid (which was open) would not close or the doors lock from the key fob. I had to close the boot manually, start the car, switch off then everything responded normally to all functions from the key fob.
I'm now going to run mostly on the ICE until I can put some fuel into the tank. At which stage I will not fill it past 30 litres unless I'm planning a long drive.

Thank you to all who posted above, you put me on the right track and saved me a bucket load of worrying.

 

[littlescrote]

I can't see a way of doing so automatically, and I've better things to do than sit for hours watching a progress bar. Anyway, it's second order stuff, I'm already very happy with the money the car has saved me.

yes, it's a pity that the timer option doesn't have an option to say charge until x%, rather than just timed charge until hh:mm or charge to full.

 

[STS134]

I too have just had the ICE running continuously after start-up with the same message as above. The tank is full and hardly been in use thanks to lockdown so, after reading the posts here, I knew what it was all about and decided to just run it down to 1/4 full then put in 15 litres.

When was the last time you refueled the vehicle? And when did the ICE start up automatically the first time?

 

[UKBoB]

When was the last time you refueled the vehicle? And when did the ICE start up automatically the first time?

15th Feb filled up, ICE started on 28th June. Car had been stood unused for 6 days before start up.