Running out of (HV) battery in an EV

[Lovemyev]

Many modern ICE cars are equipped with a feature that gives out the remaining distance the car can travel, before all of the remaining fuel in the tank has been used up.
Together with the old fashioned fuel gauge and a low fuel warning light.
And yet the rescue services are still attending customers who have run out of fuel ??.
I am puzzled why this is still happening, but it is !.
Only about six weeks ago a relative ran out of fuel after trying to set off for work one morning.
Paid for it by waiting nearly an hour for the rescue services to arrive ??.
I really just don’t get it myself, do they drive around without checking their instrument cluster and with the radio SO loud they miss the bongs produced by the car ???.
I mean come on !.

 

[tsedge]

Many modern ICE cars are equipped with a feature that gives out the remaining distance the car can travel, before all of the remaining fuel in the tank has been used up.
Together with the old fashioned fuel gauge and a low fuel warning light.
And yet the rescue services are still attending customers who have run out of fuel ??.
I am puzzled why this is still happening, but it is !.
Only about six weeks ago a relative ran out of fuel after trying to set off for work one morning.
Paid for it by waiting nearly an hour for the rescue services to arrive ??.
I really just don’t get it myself, do they drive around without checking their instrument cluster and with the radio SO loud they miss the bongs produced by the car ???.
I mean come on !.

Yes, they don't look. Many people don't look at their instruments. It baffles me too but an awful lot just eyeball the road and drift off into their own world.

Remember, most people aren't interested in cars or driving, they want to go places, so all this stuff just fades into the background.

 

[Gomev]

There were 8 7kw within about half a mile from the rapid he was using . He told me his GOM was giving him 5 mile range left . He only charged to 20% ( luckily for me ) so that he could get home to his home charger . Personally I think it was a bit foolhardy to run the battery that low , especially with a baby on board . I've never let mine go below 40% , hopefully to avoid such situations .

You must make frequent stops on longer journeys. Personally I work around distance rather than %, this usually ends up anywhere between 20 and 30% SOC remaining although as low as I dare on my way home.

 

[mg4mc]

4% (12 miles GoM) is my lowest so far. That was arriving home. (Motorway unexpectedly closed, and the Google maps alternative route took me to a closed A-road that I had a 20 mile diversion to get around. grrr)

 

[maskull]

Yes, they don't look. Many people don't look at their instruments. It baffles me too but an awful lot just eyeball the road and drift off into their own world.

Remember, most people aren't interested in cars or driving, they want to go places, so all this stuff just fades into the background.

Even on my previous hybrids ,which could achieve 700 miles range in the summer about 580 in winter, I would top up every week . That kind of brinkmanship is lunacy . Even when I was young and finances were tight I never ran out of fuel

You must make frequent stops on longer journeys. Personally I work around distance rather than %, this usually ends up anywhere between 20 and 30% SOC remaining although as low as I dare on my way home.

Haven't done any long trips in the 5 yet . Next month I'll be travelling to Manchester Airport ( about 240 miles or 170 dependant on the route ) . I could probably do it on a full charge , just ,but I'll make at least 1 stop

 

[Lovemyev]

Haven't done any long trips in the 5 yet . Next month I'll be travelling to Manchester Airport ( about 240 miles or 170 dependant on the route ) . I could probably do it on a full charge , just ,but I'll make at least 1 stop

Remember if you are going to be parked up at Manchester airport for a while, to leave the SOC at around 50 - 80% when you leave it.
Depending on your length of time away from the car that is, so a charge on route is a good idea.
Unless you can charge at the airport prior to your flight .
Bit risky if the chargers are full of course.

 

[maskull]

Remember if you are going to be parked up at Manchester airport for a while, to leave the SOC at around 50 - 80% when you leave it.
Depending on your length of time away from the car that is, so a charge on route is a good idea.
Unless you can charge at the airport prior to your flight .
Bit risky if the chargers are full of course.

I was planning to charge to 80% prior to booking into the hotel . Busy researching the charge points available.

 

[Rolfe]

There were 8 7kw within about half a mile from the rapid he was using . He told me his GOM was giving him 5 mile range left . He only charged to 20% ( luckily for me ) so that he could get home to his home charger . Personally I think it was a bit foolhardy to run the battery that low , especially with a baby on board . I've never let mine go below 40% , hopefully to avoid such situations .

I think that was foolhardy too. Nevertheless, if there were several type 2 chargers as close as that, he would merely have been delayed, not stranded if the rapid had been out of order. He could have got to a type 2, and sat there long enough to get enough charge to get to another rapid. That's sort of what I'm contemplating. That there are sufficient possibilities that actually bricking the car should be something that's very rare indeed.

It's interesting that the cases documented on YouTube all seem to involve a battery that seemed to have enough range, and then suddenly recalculated and dropped the range below what the driver needed to get to a charger. I'm wondering if this related to LFP batteries that had been cycled up and down with partial charges and not allowed to balance.

I've gone below 40% often enough, I think 20% is probably my comfort zone - but that's for a series of trips from home, and how low I'll let the car go before I charge routinely, assuming that regular trips are no more than 30 miles. On a long journey I'm not so keen on stopping too often, and I'll have a charger in mind I know I can get to, and a couple of reserve chargers nearby in case of problems. The day I ran the car down to 4% I was watching the SoC and the GOM like a hawk, and knew I had chargers I could head for if anything untoward happened. I had also been told (by the ChargePlace Scotland helpline) that the charger I was heading for after finding the Moffat one broken was definitely operational - and it wouldn't really have mattered if it hadn't been, because my own house and the granny charger were only 400 yards further on.

4% (12 miles GoM) is my lowest so far. That was arriving home. (Motorway unexpectedly closed, and the Google maps alternative route took me to a closed A-road that I had a 20 mile diversion to get around. grrr)

Mine too, but as I said, I was watching the SoC like a hawk, and prepared to divert to a closer charger if things looked dicy.

 

[Ruislip Resident]

I was planning to charge to 80% prior to booking into the hotel . Busy researching the charge points available.

If you need any last minute stuff, the retail park ( massive Next, M&S, Tesco etc) at Handforth Dean ( not far-away down the new by pass) has some chargepoints.

 

[Rolfe]

Yes, they don't look. Many people don't look at their instruments. It baffles me too but an awful lot just eyeball the road and drift off into their own world.

Remember, most people aren't interested in cars or driving, they want to go places, so all this stuff just fades into the background.

It's not as simple as that. I always looked. But I also knew that I had 20 miles of normal driving (at least) between the GOM showing zero range, and actually running out. So I did play with fire sometimes.

 

[Rolfe]

Well well. I discovered this morning that a group of friends of mine borrowed an electric minibus yesterday, and managed to run out of juice on the way home. I do not have the full details yet, but the words "blithering idiots" spring to mind. I will inquire further.

 

[tsedge]

There's a phrase for that... "bus w....." ?

 

[Rolfe]

Well, trying to winkle out the details is proving difficult. Mainly the wife of the driver, who had never driven that minibus before, was dementing on about how if the GOM says 50 miles it should do 50 miles. The thing she doesn't get is that we live at 800 feet up. The bus sees excellent fuel economy on the outward journey towards sea level and doesn't know you're going back up on the way back. But to be fair it does appear that they experienced the sudden drop in GOM estimated range that others have reported.

I don't know if anyone involved has any actual experience with EVs, and if not, it's hard to blame them too much. One friend said that the driver stopped to charge the bus and the passengers all went for a cup of tea, but he didn't get much charge because he was on a type 2 charger. I don't know if he thought there was a rapid charger there but when they arrived there was only a type 2 or whether he connected to the type 2 in error.

However the killer is that the event they were attending was less than 50 miles away. Regardless of the elevation thing, they should have been able to get there and back on one charge with absolute ease. It appears that whoever was in charge of charging that bus didn't give it to them with a full charge, which is absolute negligence in my view, if you're handing over a community asset to a bunch of people who know bugger-all about EVs.

The bus apparently gave up on a steep hill on the A702 as it climbs into the Pentlands. All the passengers got lifts home after phoning for help, and the Low Loader of Shame collected the bus this morning.

 

[tsedge]

Oh dear, well this is like the old days then of follow the needle into the red zone and cross your fingers when the fuel warning light comes on.

Never did understand why so many people enjoyed playing that game!

That said, I can understand that maybe they didn't really feel confident with charging and wanted to hope that the GOM was accurate. EVs can be a baffling complexity to the uninitiated.

 

[Rolfe]

I can't make out if anyone on the bus was an EV driver. I wonder if I'd been there if I could have headed off the disaster? (I found out about it from another EV driver who thought I must have been there and was wondering what the hell happened, but actually nobody asked me to go along, probably because they know I can't stand the guy who was driving.)

There was a lot of criticism of the GOM and people insisting that if it says 50 miles it should do 50 miles, but the GOM on my old ICE car was a congenital liar too, and I knew it. It would change its mind in a minute if I started up that climb into the Pentlands too. I said, well you have to know your own car, and got snorted at.

I've seen ever so many videos of people driving EVs to empty, and them crawling along for 10 or 15 miles in turtle mode. That would have got my friends home. But I'm also coming across stories like this of sudden reductions in estimated range and cars just dying. I don't quite understand what governs this.

I've had Caliban down to 4% and the GOM behaved itself. I was doing 80 overtaking someone at 5%, two miles from home. I didn't even experience any power restriction. But would I trust a car I'd never been in before? I don't think so.

I think if I'd been there I'd have done my nut about the bus not being fully charged when I picked it up. I'd certainly have insisted that someone take the bus away and give it at least half an hour on a rapid charger while everyone was at the event - not trust to luck on picking something up on the way back. But if nobody in the party had any EV experience, they probably didn't think it through.

The trouble is, that's now an entire busload of people who have had a negative EV experience, and that's not good for future adoption.

 

[maskull]

Oh dear, well this is like the old days then of follow the needle into the red zone and cross your fingers when the fuel warning light comes on.

Never did understand why so many people enjoyed playing that game!

That said, I can understand that maybe they didn't really feel confident with charging and wanted to hope that the GOM was accurate. EVs can be a baffling complexity to the uninitiated.

I had a mate that used to play the red zone game back in the sixties . I really got fed up of walking miles carrying a petrol can in my hand . In all fairness we were kids then and could just about afford to buy a car , but couldn't really afford to run it .
Personally I've always topped up my cars when half full and rarely let my EV fall below 50% charge , 100% if I've got a long trip coming up

 

[Rolfe]

I've been a running-on-fumes addict all my driving life. I always wanted to minimise my visits to a petrol station. But I always carried a 5-litre can of the stuff in the boot.

Interestingly I ran out (with no backup can) while my MG4 was on order, because the GOM on my Golf went absolutely doolally after having spent a week in the garage that decided not to repair it. I don't know what happened but I suspect they drained the tank thinking the car was going to be picked up for scrap, then replaced it when I indicated that I was coming to retrieve the car, which fatally confused the GOM. It returned to normal after I refilled the tank, but thanks to the MG4 becoming available the following week I'd only used about half of that when the Golf actually did go for scrap.

I am a reformed character now. I top the car up on the granny charger at home whenever I get to 60% on local trips and whenever I return from a long trip. Out on the motorway I'm looking for a charger if I'm getting under 20%, just to be safe. It's a different way of life.