[sparkle]

My family loves our Spark EV. It's a very nice, fun-to-drive, affordable EV from Chevrolet. I've got a couple of requests for the Spark EV, though.

1. The range calculation seems to be based on the average performance over the last ~25 miles. That's not enough. When we drive down or up a large hill, the range gets inflated or deflated, respectively, to an unrealistic number. I think it should be averaged over a much larger number of miles--maybe 500 or 1000. Actually, I'd rather just have an odometer display option that shows me the % charge left on the battery since I consider the range value to be too unstable.

2. It would be nice to have access to a ~30 day log of miles driven per day and charge used per day, right on the front display of the car, in tabular form. I know I can supposedly get this from the chevy web portal, but those numbers do not quite match up with my actuals.

 

[2012volt_driver]

True, hills do skew range calcs. What is your best miles per charge?
On the Volt there is a readout of kWh, not on Spark?
Robert

 

[DonC]

It's way better than the Leaf but even with the Leaf, as time goes on, you'll stop noticing it. You'll have a good idea of how far you can go and won't bother too much with the estimator.

 

[macklin]

Hi,
Glad you are enjoying your Spark. We have a leaf, and it has the same problem. The way I think about it is like this: If I keep driving in the manner I am right now, this is how far I can go. If I'm going down a hill with the air on, the miles is what it will do, if I am driving on the freeway at 70 with the heat on, this is how far it will go. I think of the range estimator as a snap shot of how I'm driving right now. I usually don't even pay attention to it because I just go with the battery meter... Never had any range anxiety in the Leaf, but we never push it either, if we are going somewhere other than around town we take the Volt!

 

[Desert Volt]

Actually, I'd rather just have an odometer display option that shows me the % charge left on the battery since I consider the range value to be too unstable.

I thought the Spark has this, same as Volt. The battery graphic on the left of the driver's screen with the bars shows % of charge remaining. It's a graphic display rather than text %, which I like. When all bars are green I have about 50 miles range, with 50% of bars I have about 25 miles, etc.

 

[Ron in Omaha]

I agree with preferring the display to just show % charge remaining. Although, I really don't care if my charge is 3% or 93% when I need to drive somewhere. I just go where and when I please and plug it in when it's convenient. Yes, I end up burning some gas every now and then. No, I don't hyperventilate when it happens. In a pure EV car, I can see where knowing the actual state of charge would be more useful than a short-sighted range estimate that has no clue how you intend to operate the vehicle for the next 20 miles.

 

[sparkle]

True, hills do skew range calcs. What is your best miles per charge?
On the Volt there is a readout of kWh, not on Spark?
Robert

On the Spark EV, you can get a read-out of kWh consumed since the last full charge, but you have to press the "leaf" button, and it comes up on the radio display, not the odometer display. They do have the graphic battery charge level display with 10 rungs, but that only gives you +/-5% accuracy--if they'd just put the actual percentage as a number right below that graphic, it would be perfect. I've posted some info on my mileage in the charging efficiency thread. My best mileage for one charge is 4.9 mi/kWh. I've seen where others have gotten well into the 5's.

 

[SteveC5088]

On the Spark EV, you can get a read-out of kWh consumed since the last full charge, but you have to press the "leaf" button, and it comes up on the radio display, not the odometer display.

But they don't show miles driven since the last full charge. That one leaves me shaking my head in disbelief.

 

[nozferatu]

But they don't show miles driven since the last full charge. That one leaves me shaking my head in disbelief.

You can get that information from the phone app...

 

[nozferatu]

On the Spark EV, you can get a read-out of kWh consumed since the last full charge, but you have to press the "leaf" button, and it comes up on the radio display, not the odometer display. They do have the graphic battery charge level display with 10 rungs, but that only gives you +/-5% accuracy--if they'd just put the actual percentage as a number right below that graphic, it would be perfect. I've posted some info on my mileage in the charging efficiency thread. My best mileage for one charge is 4.9 mi/kWh. I've seen where others have gotten well into the 5's.

Yes I've been getting over 5.3 miles/kWh over the 5800 miles I have on it currently.