Equalisation charge - reminder by car

[steve748]

The manual states on page 180:
If an equalisation charge has not been carried out for some time, the message centre in the instrument pack will display 'Please Slow-charge the Vehicle'.
My question to you all is:
Is it important to carry out equalisation charges once a month or wait until the message appears?

 

[gus]

Mine was almost a year between 100% charges and I never got a message, I do have a sneaky feeling it does a calibration after an 80% charge but cannot prove it. most folks on here suggest once a month to a 100% leaving it connected to do the balance charge.

 

[Gadget Geek]

I do have a sneaky feeling it does a calibration after an 80% charge but cannot prove it.

Actually, I was thinking the same. I've seen the current drop right down when it gets to 80% and it keeps going for a while before ending the charge.

 

[Lovemyev]

What ZS EV model do your have ?.
Is it LFP or NMC battery type as charging advice differs depending on a standard range or long range model.
To give you an idea of how our car performs, it goes a little like this.
We have a Trophy LR and always charge to a set level of 80% SOC.
We charge exclusively from home address on a 7 Kw wall box on a off peak tariff.
The car is now almost 18 months old and has covered around 14,000 miles.
It has only been charged to 100% on two occasions over that time scale and only twice to about 90%.
80% SOC is our “Go To” charging percentage after running the car down to about 50 miles ( ish ) of range remaining.
Some describe this as a “Sweet Spot” for our type of chemistry.
NO - D/C Rapid charger use necessary.
I also prefer to reset the trips before every charging session and when the car has completed charging, it consistently returns an estimated range of 212 miles in the default driving settings of normal / Regen level 3.
I have consistently done this from day one.
So, as you can clearly see the performed balance cycles are pretty much zero.
No slow charge warnings from the car as of yet.
These warnings tend to be triggered when the car has been receiving a number of D/C rapid charges, as this type of charging behaviour is not practical to 100% and does not allow balancing of the traction battery anyway via the large CCS gun.
Our present Trophy LR is very unlike the previous Gen1 ZS EV we once owned, where I would be charging and balancing a LOT after the BMS update it received.
Although the car functioned perfectly post BMS update, I always had the feeling that the software update altered the car in regards to its reporting of estimated range etc.
Hard to put my finger on what had changed, but it had in some odd way ???.
I thought the SOH figures from the battery where a little low for a car that had been papered from new.
I am not suggesting that you follow this pattern, as everybody has their chosen methods on looking after their batteries.
I think we are all still learning with regards to this subject ??.

 

[steve748]

What ZS EV model do your have ?.
Is it LFP or NMC battery type as charging advice differs depending on a standard range or long range model.
To give you an idea of how our car performs, it goes a little like this.
We have a Trophy LR and always charge to a set level of 80% SOC.
We charge exclusively from home address on a 7 Kw wall box on a off peak tariff.
The car is now almost 18 months old and has covered around 14,000 miles.
It has only been charged to 100% on two occasions over that time scale and only twice to about 90%.
80% SOC is our “Go To” charging percentage after running the car down to about 50 miles ( ish ) of range remaining.
Some describe this as a “Sweet Spot” for our type of chemistry.
NO - D/C Rapid charger use necessary.
I also prefer to reset the trips before every charging session and when the car has completed charging, it consistently returns an estimated range of 212 miles in the default driving settings of normal / Regen level 3.
I have consistently done this from day one.
So, as you can clearly see the performed balance cycles are pretty much zero.
No slow charge warnings from the car as of yet.
These warnings tend to be triggered when the car has been receiving a number of D/C rapid charges, as this type of charging behaviour is not practical to 100% and does not allow balancing of the traction battery anyway via the large CCS gun.
Our present Trophy LR is very unlike the previous Gen1 ZS EV we once owned, where I would be charging and balancing a LOT after the BMS update it received.
Although the car functioned perfectly post BMS update, I always had the feeling that the software update altered the car in regards to its reporting of estimated range etc.
Hard to put my finger on what had changed, but it had in some odd way ???.
I thought the SOH figures from the battery where a little low for a car that had been papered from new.
I am not suggesting that you follow this pattern, as everybody has their chosen methods on looking after their batteries.
I think we are all still learning with regards to this subject ??.

I posed the question because we drive a Trophy LR in Cyprus. Each evening we plug into our Zappi charger. When the sun comes up in the morning (it does that a lot here! ?) the car automatically starts charging using only the energy from our solar panels. It will be charged to 80% by lunchtime if we don't use the car till later. Chances are we won't ever use any of the limited number of AC public fast chargers and I don't think there are any DC rapid chargers here. Maybe we'll never see the equalisation charge message!

 

[Alb]

I've asked this question before and to the best of my knowledge, this message has never been seen by any owner.

 

[Jorisss]

I've asked this question before and to the best of my knowledge, this message has never been seen by any owner.

Incorrect. We did had the message when we got the ZS (mk 1, second hand) delivered.
It took us about 7 months with a weekly charge to 100% to get the battery pack completely equalised.
So if you get the message, you are way too late with balancing.

 

[steve748]

I posed the question because we drive a Trophy LR in Cyprus. Each evening we plug into our Zappi charger. When the sun comes up in the morning (it does that a lot here! ?) the car automatically starts charging using only the energy from our solar panels. It will be charged to 80% by lunchtime if we don't use the car till later. Chances are we won't ever use any of the limited number of AC public fast chargers and I don't think there are any DC rapid chargers here. Maybe we'll never see the equalisation charge message!

Do you think I should charge to 100% on regular basis even though I'll never rapid charge, and rarely charge even at 7kW on my home charger?

 

[chowbenter]

We don't use the 2020 ZS EV every day & it usually sits with around 70-80% of charge, The only time I charge it to 100% is to do the balance which is usually every two months. The Min to Max cell is nearly always 4.2 to 4.23. I've never seen that 'Please slow charge the vehicle' message on the dashboard either.

 

[Lovemyev]

Incorrect. We did had the message when we got the ZS (mk 1, second hand) delivered.
It took us about 7 months with a weekly charge to 100% to get the battery pack completely equalised.
So if you get the message, you are way too late with balancing.

When buying second hand, it is hard to tell ( unless you have the necessary equipment) to tell what type of charging protocol / type of charging, that the car has been subjected too.
Some may have conducted a lot of D/C rapid charges in its previous life and little A/C charging ?.
As we know, rapid charging is unlikely to produce any / no balancing of the cells.
A number of rapid cycles followed by no A/C cycles COULD have induced the warning message.
A large number of A/C balance cycles suggests that the pack was indeed n a state of unbalance.
It’s worth remembering that some of the early models of the Gen1 ZS EV were affected by a software bug that entered the system when certain updates were done.
This affected the pack by reducing the range of car and cells became unbalanced.
D/C rapid charging just made matters worse !.
The BMS update addressed the problem, but customers were advised strongly, to carry out A/C balance cycles more frequently in an attempt to rebalance the pack and therefore recover the battery.
Owners that exclusively charge from a A/C supply, never appear to receive the warning, which is to be expected I guess ?.
Unless you try to manually “Part Charge” the pack by stopping the charge on a regular basis, which could trigger a warning.
We owned a Gen 1 for over two years and covered about 20,000 miles, it was always charged from home on our 7Kw wall box and I had the ability to roughly charge to around 80% SOC fairly often.
Unless we required a full 100% charge, for a longer trip, then the pack would balance cycle of course.
We never received the warning message on our car.

 

[peterseddon]

We've done 15,000 miles in our gen 2 EV and have never seen a message telling me to do an equalization charge. The vast majority of charges are on our home AC box, only DC rapid charges are when on holiday.

 

[Lovemyev]

We've done 15,000 miles in our gen 2 EV and have never seen a message telling me to do an equalization charge. The vast majority of charges are on our home AC box, only DC rapid charges are when on holiday.

Very similar here.
All charing carried out at home for our Trophy LR and covered about 13,500 miles.
No rapid D/C rapid charging conducted and no warning message seen to-date.