[ckl]

Hello fellow Volt owners.

Recently, during this winter, I have noticed that my commute home (about 70km) is barely making it on battery. This is esp. true during temps < 0 celsius or thereabouts. I know much of this is due to driving style and cabin heating. But what concerns me is that regardless of those factors, should I not be getting kWh used of > 13? I have been monitoring this daily and my max kWh used is about 12.4... sometimes 12.1.

Car is a 2016 Volt with about 90,000km's. Cabin temp set to 21 celsius. Climate controls full auto.

I got myself a bluetooth obd dongle and downloaded the mygreenvolt app. I haven't used it for long. The following screenshots are when the car is fully charged with the charge cord still plugged in inside the garage

Other than I have no idea what I'm looking at (normal vs. abnormal), what concerns me is that the cell graph only goes to #95? What happened to #96-100? Is this normal?

If there is any other information you would like to know, please post the question and I'll try to do my best to accommodate.

Thanks.

 

[jayoldschool]

Cabin temp set to 21 celsius. Climate controls full auto.

You know this already, but that temp, and mainly the full auto is costing you a lot of range.

 

[bentbiker]

. . . what concerns me is that the cell graph only goes to #95? What happened to #96-100? Is this normal?

The cell configuration is 96S 3P, so your graph actually shows 96 values. Whether each value is the average of all 3 cells that are in parallel, I'm not sure but the graph doesn't go to 100. Whether a variation of 13 mV is excessive or not, I'll leave to those who've monitored their cell balancing.

As for the low (12.1-12.4 kWh) usage reported, it has been explained in other threads that this is an estimated calculation as opposed to a measured number.

 

[wordptom]

You should also get a screen shot of the cell voltages at the "switch to gas" state of charge. The transition to gas is related to cell voltages, not to any metered measurement of kWh usage. It could be your cell voltage max/min spread is much greater at that state of charge, triggering an early switch to gas.

The SoC: 100% (13.8kWh) reading on the bottom left of the mygreenvolt dashboard is supposedly an estimate of the existing power in the "usable window" (the portion of the battery’s full charge that is used for driving in Electric Mode). As you see, that’s fairly close to the expected ~14.0 kWh usable for a Gen 2 Volt. You could check that reading after you drive far enough to deplete the battery (technically, you would think it should be down to 0% at that point). Does the change you see there equal the kWh Used on the car’s energy usage display on the center console screen?

The new version of the android mygreenvolt app no longer includes the raw SOC readings, which I find helpful for observing whether or not my Volt is giving me the "usable window" I expect (Wikipedia tells me my 2012 Volt uses 65% of the full battery capacity in Electric Mode, and when I drive from full charge to full depletion, the older version of the android mygreenvolt app tells me the raw SOC drops from ~87% to ~22%, i.e., 65% usable window).

 

[JuneBug]

The difference between your highest and lowest cell groups is 13mV. This is perfectly acceptable according to the resident FB Volt expert:

Jaryd Carvell
Hi friendly neighborhood volt tech here! Each of the 96 cell groups should always be between 3.45v - 4.05v, and all cell groups should be within 0.121v (121mv) of each other. However if any voltages go outside of the acceptable range for even a millisecond, it will set a DTC and the check engine light will illuminate. If your light isn't on, then everything is within range.

 

[gmmastertech1]

I doubt you have anything wrong. As stated, you are running the HVAC in auto. Your 5kw heater will eat away your mileage. Perfectly normal. These Volts hate cold weather. Where you can establish 60+ miles in summer, you'll be lucky to get 40+ miles in a cold winter.

 

[ckl]

Thanks for all your replies. I really appreciate it. I will try to provide another screenshot of the cell voltages when the car switches to gas. I'm still learning the app. I connected it this morning and started my drive. I found that the screen didn't turn off and was worried that a cop might see and think I was using the phone and hence get a distracted driving ticket, so I manually turned it off. Then later I found out that turning off the screen prevented the app from running because I see nothing in the Statistics tab. I've since disabled the screen timeout option in settings and modified the setting in Android that optimizes the battery life for the app. Hopefully, it will continue to run while the screen is off from now on.

I have adjusted my climate settings now. It's no longer an full auto. The temp is set to 20 celsius and manual fan.

 

[supchrgamx]

thats my range at -35 celcius
went down a lot after i fixed the heater