Triple Procedure & Setup (Costs around 80USD)

[MadTechNutter]

Got the dongle now and my battery SoH is 29Ah/76.3% which is a bit lower than I expected.
UnpluggedEV is messing around with a new replacement battery so what he says is irrelevant for those wlth older batteries. Maybe his problem is related to a software update, that others luckily don't have. I have always said if it ain't broke don't fix it.

Fact is that any readings that give you more than 38Ah after these magical 'resets' with a used battery is bogus. This figure might show up in the display and the likely reason why it drops relatively quickly again is that the system is identifying the true capacity in daily use and slowly correcting it again.

These % figures seem to be calculated and not actually measured.
There are from my experience 2 ways to test a battery's health.
1- measure it's internal resistance at a certain SoC which I don't think is done here
2- measure the amount of Ah from a slow full charge from 0% to 100% and this takes a fairly long time

The latter is basically done with every Laptop and most other mobile devices to calibrate the charge system and define those % points to get a proper reading.
The Lyndqvist hack looks similar and could actually make sense if it weren't for these imaginative values of up to 40Ah, unless it is a new battery.
It is also something that anybody could accidentally do but that does not mean that the system will be stabile after that.

If several users with an older car like me could confirm a realistic increase of the capacity (example from 76% to 85% SoH) and it stays like that more than a month then this could be a solution.

Another thing that concerns me a little is the max voltage of 4.10V.
Again from personal experience the best compromise for long service life and usable capacity is 4.05V max with prismatic, foil and cylindrical cells, except LiFePO4 of course.
One thing I have learned over the years, data sheets are one thing but real life performance is very different. Keeping a margin away from the max specs has always payed out.

 

[elm70]

Thanks for clearing up the smoothing/balancing myth if as you claim it is 100% reliable.
Just wonder why people say their battery is better after it has been done.

I do have a lot of experience with various types of Lithium batteries and battery balancers do not always work 100% when often heavily discharged/cycled or fast charged. The balance current is usually very low to reduce unnecessary discharge and it can take a long time to get all cells balanced.
I do not know anything about the balancing circuit in this car though that is why I believed what was said about the 'smoothing'.

Still waiting for my OBDII bluetooth and hopefully I can find a way to reliably read the actual cell voltages in comparison to the empty/full display.

Surely somebody could do this before and after these resets to see if it gets discharged deeper after the reset or charged higher.
There must be an explanation where these higher Ah ratings come from.

Generally in my experience discharge down to 10% SoC does not reduce cycle life, charging over 4V definitely does.

The DBCAM is possibly a proper procedure for "re-calibrate" the BMU
But the improvement seen by people have nothing to do with balancing, as said this happen all the time the car is charged.

The DBCAM make a more deep discharge and then based on the following amount of charge does set a new SOH in the BMU, which normally is a bigger SOH since the BMU in normal operation is pessimistic over SOH

Having a higher SOH make EV range longer and make people "happy"

About the balancing on the PHEV ... the car does not use a cheap Chinese lithium balancer like some cheap "chinese toays", clearly the amount of discharge current used in the balance process in the PHEV is still not big, but the charging process get on pause if the battery pack in the car is too much out of balance, (that is normally above 0.005v max difference) ... so definitely the "smoothing/balancing" of the DBCAM procedure has no role on improve the battery , the only help is to set a new SOH value in the BMU

BTW .. a battery is properly balanced when all the cells have the same voltage when the battery is fully charged ... when the battery is 50% SOC, the pack does not need to be balanced .. neither should be for have maximum efficiency .. still for speed up the charging process, the balancing happen all the time while the car is charged, even if this could lead to a waste of energy

PS: If there would not be any pause in the charging process, and if would be quite a dummy one, yes a badly unbalanced pack could lead to overcharge some cells .. but ... Mitsubishi has not done such amateur mistake

 

[jaapv]

If you follow my suggestion and look at the You Tube videos you will find that the people involved have had communication with Mitsubishi Japan via their dealers and at no time have Mitsubishi suggested anything that is being suggested in the two previous posts but they did approve the triple procedure being carried out. Would they have done that if they knew what you are saying would occur with the prospect of large warranty claims for wrecked batteries?

I.E. smoothing is not a legend and does not automatically happen after every charge, the battery underlying parameters are not changed and remain the same so there is no risk of overcharging or discharging (the BMU is reset to original parameters as part of the process), a pure BMU reset has been tried and does not work.

I will readily confess to knowing nothing about battery technology and would not attempt a DIY cure and if people are happy with the performance of their PHEV Outlander good luck to them but do not belittle those of us who are not happy with this aspect of the vehicle and want Mitsubishi and the dealers to face up and be honest with us. I might be old, I might not know anything about batteries but I do know when I am being patronised and lied to by Mitsubishi and the dealers.

I rather doubt whether there would be a valid legal claim for warranty after DIY fiddling with the battery management

 

[MadTechNutter]

[
BTW .. a battery is properly balanced when all the cells have the same voltage when the battery is fully charged ... when the battery is 50% SOC, the pack does not need to be balanced ...

Sorry but I have to disagree.
This is exactly the problem I have with off-grid battery installations and those "cheap" Chinese BMUs you are talking about, they are Chinese but cost $300, cheap is relative here.
Their problem is that the balancing current is only around 100mA, so just trying to get things right when the battery is at 100% SoC is clearly impossible unless I leave it standing for several days at this state of charge. When the battery ages, and the weakest cell reaches over 4.1V the others will not be fully charged but the charge is terminated.
Worse is the opposite end when the weakest cell reaches 0% and that happens much faster in the discharge curve, then the BMU cuts the power prematurely. I terminate any load at 10%.

So it is vital to keep the balance currents active and cell voltages balanced as good as possible at all states of charge. If all batteries were perfectly identical you would not need balancing but they are not.
I am assuming the BMU balancing in the PHEV is far more powerful and maintains these cell differences much better and of course the large unused reserve kept above 25% helps a lot too.

Another reason is that both with the house batteries and depending on the use of the PHEV, 99- 100% might be rarely achieved as not everybody plugs it into the EVSE everyday to top it up.
I certainly won't because I know that keeping Li_Ion at a fully charged state degrades the battery.
Now that I see that it uses the max specified 4.1V I might terminate charge around 90% if I notice it and only charge to 99% when I know I will drive soon.

 

[Katmandu]

It would appear that the problem is experienced by post 2016 updated vehicles and Andy on UnpluggedEV has such a vehicle and when he originally complained about it they eventually fitted a new battery under warranty and it immediately displayed the same degradation so you can't blame him for suspecting that it wasn't battery degradation but some other cause.

It would appear that MY19 vehicles suffer an even worse problem.

Incidentally Mitsubishi have stated in correspondence that appears in one Andy's videos, yes they are difficult to watch and he is very repetitive but very thorough and, I believe, honest,that the batteries have 40AH capacity but they choose to release the vehicles with only 38AH although they also say they were supposed to reset to 40AH after delivery but that doesn't appear to have happened for anybody to date. It is perfectly possible therefore for the triple procedure to be able to reset to 40AH.

 

[jaapv]

This is bordering on ridiculous. A battery that has 40 Ah nominally will never have more than something like 37.5 Ah effective. We all know the phenomenon: the more strident the voice on the Internet the more the audience will dumb down their critical thinking. Politicians like Donald Tweet use this to great effect. This guy is using the same technique.

 

[Mitch]

This is bordering on ridiculous. A battery that has 40 Ah nominally will never have more than something like 37.5 Ah effective. We all know the phenomenon: the more strident the voice on the Internet the more the audience will dumb down their critical thinking. Politicians like Donald Tweet use this to great effect. This guy is using the same technique.

Thanks, I was always thinking the same

 

[Katmandu]

So he or the third party that supplied him with the copy documents fabricated them.

Sorry but what has he to gain from all the time, effort etc he puts in to them. He may not be the best video producer in the world but he certainly is no copy in any way of Donald Trump for one thing he is totally consistent.

If you can't support those of us who have a problem with the Outlander at least be constructive with you comments and not destructive.

Do you think it reasonable for a motor manufacturer to advertise features of a vehicle, the EV range, without also informing potential buyers that immediately you put the vehicle on the road that range will regularly, incrementally decrease and yes we know the advertised range was under "laboratory" conditions and we would never achieve it. What we would achieve is a range based on our personal situation however high or low and that is being regularly decreased by what you suggest is perfectly reasonable battery degradation.

Sorry but that is essential information when making a buying decision and Mitsubishi should have declared it and should now be admitting it and people who belittle the attempts of those who are trying in their own way to resolve the issue should be supported not denigrated.

Incidentally you are also suggesting that Mitsubishi had not considered your hypothesis when stating their 40AH capacity by your reasoning it's probably something in the 42.5 -45AH range.

 

[karl]

I don't get this whole idea about "artificially" decreased energy estimates.

It's not possible to measure really, it's just the voltage and current that's possible to measure. There's a good measure of magic involved to map the fluctuating voltage and current to a SoC since it depends on the last hours of measured (wildly fluctuating while driving) voltages, currents and temperature. There is probably some sort of multidimensional map to compare against, and this map is probably constantly updated to reconcile the actual outcome.

I'm suspecting that this map can be restored to original defaults, but is that more correct? It's possible that the "magic" is too conservative, but I'm not sure it's possible to tell without some advanced mathematics.

It's a small battery compared to an EV, although it's one of the bigger PHEV batteries. That's the essence I think. It gets me to work and back and seems to do that for many years.

 

[Mitch]

There is a new video from the "BMU God" :lol:

Maybe before complaining all the time about the car, he should read his manual, so he understand how the heating is working. I already posted this here and on some other forum, please don't do the pure reset, it doesn't help in any way. More than this, you can rune your battery by over- and/or undercharging.

 

[greendwarf]

Do you think it reasonable for a motor manufacturer to advertise features of a vehicle, the EV range, without also informing potential buyers that immediately you put the vehicle on the road that range will regularly, incrementally decrease and yes we know the advertised range was under "laboratory" conditions and we would never achieve it. What we would achieve is a range based on our personal situation however high or low and that is being regularly decreased by what you suggest is perfectly reasonable battery degradation.

Sorry but that is essential information when making a buying decision and Mitsubishi should have declared it and should now be admitting it and people who belittle the attempts of those who are trying in their own way to resolve the issue should be supported not denigrated.

And why should motor manufacturers have to adhere to a higher ethical standard than any other business selling rechargeable battery products? I don't recall hearing any laptop or mobile 'phone firm ever warning about degradation in their marketing material.

My laptop now only has a few minutes life from a fully charged battery but, as I rarely use it "on the go", this is not a real problem - I just leave it plugging in all the time - which is, of course, part of the reason for the decline. :lol:

 

[Katmandu]

If they paid £40,000 for them and expected them to provide reasonable used values they probably would but as they treat them as disposable commodities and would buy a new one in 12 months anyway they don't.

Compare like with like and not chalk with cheese if you want to make a point.

Given contributions others make calling Andy the "BMU God" is a fitting tribute for the amount of time he spends trying, in his own way, to help owners including continuing to believe in the vehicle and not wanting to change to an alternative if only MItsubishi would provide support with the same conviction.

Incidentally if you had seen any of his earlier videos you would know he was well aware of the functioning of the heater but had devised a test that demonstrates it and would enable anybody who was concerned about whether it was working could carry out. But if all you want to do is pour scorn of his efforts carry on but it would be better if you came up with something better.

 

[jaapv]

Sheesh - I'm four and a half years late throwing mine in the rubbish bin... :roll:
5 1/2 years old, 130.000 on the clock and over 85% of the original range... And that goes for virtually all older cars bar one or two exceptions. I would pay attention to your twisted knickers instead of your BMU if I were you.
My test for a working heater is the temperature of my toes.

 

[greendwarf]

Yep - got exactly 25 miles (40 km) out of my almost 5 year old car on Saturday before ICE kicked in

 

[richr]

My 60,000 mile 2015 GX4h manages 24-25 miles of sensible driving before the battery is depleted too, just leaving it in D (no changing regen settings) or anything other than not flooring it at junctions. Maybe just driving it and not worrying so much is the key?

 

[greendwarf]

I seem to remember in 2014 the "early adopters" were worrying about life of battery and cost of replacement rather than current degradation. But, of course, these pioneers would have spent several months researching the new technology before taking the plunge.

We now seem to be hearing from the early majority who won't have done the research and will be relying more (as above :lol: ) on marketing material. Unfortunately, they are also likely to be more vocal than the "late majority" (still to come) on social media - so patience with them is needed. :idea:

 

[AndyInOz]

I've got to say, mine seems to be working fine too...

 

[fprigge]

Canadian 2018 model here:

Finaly got some time to play around with the car today. Here are my conclusions of the 'triple procedure'. I used the Mitsubishi MUT-III SE software and a non-mitsubishi J2534 adapter.

1) BMU reset takes about 2 seconds to execute. Not clear to me what it does
2) Cell smothing is just a balancing. Since my cells were within 0.005V, it ran for maybe 10 seconds
3) DBCAM: looked at the numbers, MUT-III confirmed my 32.8Ah capacity I was getting from the dog. (43 000km, 17 months old). I ran the thing and it complained about not charging. Plugged the car in (was down to about 2 bars of battery), re-clicked the item and after 10 seconds it said 'done'. Whaaaat? This is not working? So I shut down the car and as soon as I hit the power button and the dash went dark, the fans started running full blast. The car was running the A/C and the heating at the same time! The radiator fans kicked in quite a bit. I was worried that the car would get too hot in my garage (32*C day), so I sparayed the radiator with my garden hose every 3-4 minutes. The car discharged it's 2 bars in about 20 minutes and continued a good half-hour. Visibly, it is discharging the battery way lower than when driving. Once this madness stopped, it started charging. Took about 5h. Now the dog shows 35.9Ah!

So it did measure 10% more capacity that the calculated degradation. I'll confirm tomorrow on my way to work if this translated to real usable range, as my engine kicks in at the very same spot everyday.

EDIT: Did the same trip as everyday this morning, the engine kicked in 4km later (next highway exit). This is directly inline with the raised capacity. This Ah reported in the dog is no bullshit, this is really what the car uses to determine the "30%" SOC to start the engine.

 

[luispcorreia]

This triple procedure seems much more secure and robust..

It may be a lot harder to setup but it does seems to payoff...

 

[fprigge]

Update: 2 days after my DBCAM and 140km, the dog shows 2x 0.1Ah capacity reduction! Wow, that was fast! The worst part is that in the morning when I start the car it shows 102% charge... This BMS software is really strange!

Re-update: I decided to run a DBCAM with the dog running. Here are the numbers:

- DBCAM discharge is at 7.9kW (heater + A/C compressor running full blast!)
- discharge is down to 2.875V on the lowest cell! So it really does a complete discharge.
- cell voltage imbalance at such a low SOC is high (0.308V!!!) while the cells where within 4mV at 29% SOC...

I'll try to add screenshots of the dog to the other active thread of the forum!