Battery pre conditioning

[upa]

" unequal power delivery delivered from the individual cells,": that's why you are supposed to slow charge (120 or 240 V) your battery. to 100% from time to time to make sure all the cells are matched. Fully charging is the only way to do this.

I appreciate your point about charge balancing your battery pack but extreme cold with affect individual cell output despite having an overall well balanced pack.

 

[harveye]

This is all good information but still a little confused. So if I'm going to charge using a DC fast charger on an extremely cold day, I should put the DC charger destination into the Nav and my battery will be pre-conditioned for charge by the time I get there? (10-15 minute ride) (GV60) Or is there something else I need to do to initiate pre-conditioning? Is pre-conditioning necessary or important charging Level 2 at home in garage where the temperature will rarely get below 20F? (in NJ)

 

[smartino]

Preconditioning is only used for DC charging and not Level 2. So putting in the DC charger into the navigation and having preconditioning turned on the car will precondition the battery if needed. This will allow DC charger to happen at the fastest rate.

 

[upa]

Well got my first opportunity to try out the pre conditioning today on a brief 240 km road trip in -7C ambient. Started with 95% SOC, coldest battery module was -4C and warmest was -1C prior to departure. Plugged into NAV my destination DC charger, a 200kW Petro Canada 118km away. The battery heater spooled up within about a minute to 5.3kWh and stayed on the the whole trip but tapered consumption to 4.8 kWh towards the end of the 70 minute leg. My average speed was around 110km/hr. With no appreciable headwind or precipitation on the road I averaged a not so great 3.1km/kW overall vehicle consumption vs 4.1km/kW on way back with heater off. By the time I arrived at the DC charger roughly 70 minutes later my SOC was 48% and battery temps were 20C in the coldest battery module and 32C in the warmest . Not quite the optimal 25C temperature on the coldest module but fairly reasonable.

The DC charger started at 38 kW and fairly quickly ramped up to a peak 137kW and held until 60% SOC where it started to ramp down to 93kW and I unplugged. 60% SOC is a known charge curve step down for e-gmp vehicles so I was not surprised. Its possible I may have got closer to 200kW peak if the coldest battery module starting temp was at least 25C, but since there was such a large temperature differential between coldest and warmest modules its possible the BMS would have been throttling charge down based on the warmest pack temp.

Another interesting observation on the 75 minute trip back and with battery heater off the coldest pack dropped from 25C to 14C. This would suggest the uninsulated battery pack looses thermal energy fairly quickly in winter highway temps . If travelling long distance in even relatively mild winter weather you kinda need to keep that battery heater on the boil most of the time. It will be interesting to see what -30C weather brings as the heating temperature differential will be relatively huge and may take 2 plus hours of preconditioning. I think if the battery pack is cold soaked there may be benefit to AC charging it before departure and hitting your first DC charger sooner than later to get the benefits of charge waste heating. Anyways I am generally happy with the results as I probably would have stayed 2-3 x longer and a least doubled my charging cost in my old Ionic 5 without battery preconditiong under the same conditions.

 

[Looney100]

Were you watching temps during the course of the trip? If so, did you see a slow ramp up to the 25C? I assumed that the heater would come on just a few minutes before your arrival, but perhaps that would require an unreasonably large element.
I had a similar experience with cooling a few days ago. It was ~-15C outside, batteries at 0C when I pulled out of the garage, and dropped to -5C after a 10 minute/10 km trip.

 

[upa]

Were you watching temps during the course of the trip? If so, did you see a slow ramp up to the 25C? I assumed that the heater would come on just a few minutes before your arrival, but perhaps that would require an unreasonably large element.
I had a similar experience with cooling a few days ago. It was ~-15C outside, batteries at 0C when I pulled out of the garage, and dropped to -5C after a 10 minute/10 km trip.

Yes, watched the coldest battery module temp slowly rise form -4 to 20C during the 70 minute drive. The 20-25C rise was during the subsequent 8 minute DC charge. The battery heater was on during the whole 70 minute drive to the DC charger. The other thing that could have been aggressively cooling down the battery on the return trip when the battery heater was not on could have been the actual heat pump recovering energy from the pack and dumping it into the cabin. I have seen that scavenging behavior before in my Kona EV, the GV60 likely does the same thing.

 

[upa]

So wondering if anyone has figured out how precondition their cold battery while plugged into AC shore power before they leave on a longer winter trip? This would be helpful to reduce the amount of stored battery energy you need to use in order preheat itself on route to a DC charger on very cold days.

In my old Kona EV with winter mode on as long as you were plugged into an AC EVSE and charging it would also spool up the 3kW battery heater and incoming AC electrical load would be split between charging and heating the battery. So as long as I scheduled my battery recharges well before a trip I left with a relatively warm battery. With the GV60 even with the battery preconditioning selected it looks like the charging process has no effect on warming the battery outside of some very minor passive charging heat gains. I have tried a variety of things with ambient temps at -12C and battery temps -7C but it seems like the only way you can get the 6.2 kW battery PTC heater to heat up a cold battery before a trip is by turning the car on and selecting a nearby enroute DC charger, wait for it warm up with its own battery power while stationary and then try replace that lost power by AC charging for another hour or more and hope it won't cool down too much before you leave( it won't AC charge and battery preheat at the same time). Am I missing something because this seems dumb?

 

[ooliver]

So what will happen when my car sits outside for 10 hours in , say -40 while I am at work? There are no chargers at my office. I haven't gotten this far in the manual yet.

There are two departure settings in the EV menu. I set one for the morning and one for the afternoon 15mins before I leave. Also, I use the Climate Start in the app when I am leaving a little early or later than scheduled. It runs the Ac/Heat at 62F. I still have not figured out the PreConditioning or how to change the remote temperature, but it is better than nothing.

 

[fredf]

People have mentioned ‘winter mode’
Where do I find it to turn it one…and what does it actually do?

 

[upa]

People have mentioned ‘winter mode’
Where do I find it to turn it one…and what does it actually do?

Winter mode was replaced by battery preconditioning in the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Kia EV6, we never had winter mode in the GV60.

______________________________

Help support this site so it can continue supporting you!

 

[fredf]

Winter mode was replaced by battery preconditioning in the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Kia EV6, we never had winter mode in the GV60.

That explains why I can’t find it. Thanks

 

[trebor27]

<deleted as it didn’t address the question, sorry!>

 

[steveinarizona]

The GV60 manual is easily the worst of any vehicle I’ve owned in the last ~15 years.
The index is woefully inadequate, and -perhaps as a result - material isn’t where it should be.

That was my initial conclusion. Then, after further exploration, I realized that a good index wouldn't do any good as the material itself was useless. A good manual tells you what a feature is, shows you clearly how you activate it and deactivate it, and tells you what it does and doesn't do. The manual mostly tells you what happens if a feature fails.

 

[Jfyfe91]

If you scan the qr code..it takes you to an indexed online manual...and there is also a video manual. Not sure if you've used that yet or not?

 

[G-946987]

Yes, watched the coldest battery module temp slowly rise form -4 to 20C during the 70 minute drive. The 20-25C rise was during the subsequent 8 minute DC charge. The battery heater was on during the whole 70 minute drive to the DC charger. The other thing that could have been aggressively cooling down the battery on the return trip when the battery heater was not on could have been the actual heat pump recovering energy from the pack and dumping it into the cabin. I have seen that scavenging behavior before in my Kona EV, the GV60 likely does the same thing.

How were you watching different battery cell modules temp? Where is that view or setting ? How do I get to that feature?

 

[upa]

How were you watching different battery cell modules temp? Where is that view or setting ? How do I get to that feature?

Its a third party solution. You need a Bluetooth OBD device(they are usually around $15-$30 on amazon) and app for your phone such as "Car Scanner ELM OBD2".

 

[steveinarizona]

Its a third party solution. You need a Bluetooth OBD device(they are usually around $15-$30 on amazon) and app for your phone such as "Car Scanner ELM OBD2".

Is there an OBD port? OBD was setup for exhaust systems and we, of course, have none.

 

[upa]

Is there an OBD port? OBD was setup for exhaust systems and we, of course, have none.

yes it does

 

[steveinarizona]

yes it does

And where is it?

 

[upa]

And where is it?

In US/Canada its under the drivers lower dash panel.