The reported range is from the “guess o meter” which is based on the average efficiency of the last several trips along with a guestimate of the battery’s health. It is almost all a software guess, there is very little hard data from the battery that goes into this estimate.

I would be surprised if the battery was still at 100%, although test again this comes from the internal software. The only real way to figure this out is to actually see how many miles you can drive before it dies, and it depends upon how brave you are. Keep an eye on your miles per kilowatt, which I think should be close to 4. I don’t know what screens they had back then but if you can reset your miles per kilowatt average and then drive, you can see how many kilowatts you used and compare that to the battery percentage from full. You can find accurate procedures for testing battery health on the internet.

 

GOM numbers are irrelevant.
SOH degradation is provided in %.

 

Hi to both of you, and thanks for replying.

What is the relationship between the number of miles in range and percent of charge?

I've attached a few images from my car.Looking at, as a for instance, 'Send 3' the range left is 66 miles at 92% charge.

Which would make 100% charge @ 72Miles.

is 72 miles the GOM? SO, 72 MILES MORE OR LESS?

Is it possible that an 8 year old car still has 100% SOH?

THANKS IN ADVANCE FOR YOUR RESPONSE.

 

Have a read of the first post on this thread.. it uses the EV6 as an example, but all things relating to range are relevant to your situation.

I guess your Soul has a 27kwh or 30kwh battery so a range of 90 miles would be about right in coldish weather..

If the range dropped dramatically there are probably 3 reasons.

• It was a long uphill drive back home from the dealer
• It got colder
• You spanked it (quite normal as most EV owners want to test the "instant torque")

These will cause the range "estimate" to drop. Regular calm driving at 40-50mph will bring your range estimate back up, but don't expect miracles in cold weather.

If you have a 30kWh battery and achieve 3mi/kWh driving efficiency, your range would be 90 miles. If you achieve 4mi/kWh, your range would be 120 miles, which I think would be achievable in summer 75 degrees plus.

In cold wet weather, driving at 70mph+ you might only achieve 2.5 mi/kwh which would give 75 miles.

Regarding degradation, the car is old, but low milage and therefore the battery hasn't received anywhere close to it's rated number of cycles, so the SoH is probably still quite high. Batteries degrade with age and number of charges.

You may find the range estimate better above 50% charge as a battery holds voltage well at the higher level of charge and it drops off in the bottom 20-30%. I won't get too technical but there are plenty of sites to research on.

 

Post #5 has all you need.

 

Good Folk, thank you for all you have offered.

What it comes down to is this:

Is it possible for a 2016 KIA SOUL EV, with 30K miles, to still have a range of 93 miles at 100% charge?

When looking at the images I sent, what is the relationship between the range indicated and the % of charged battery.

Give or take a few miles here and there, I thought that the range indicated at any given percent is a good if not necessarily perfect indicator. I know that all sorts of things effect range, but if at 100% the range is 72 miles, I would expect not to go to much further than that....

In a nutshell, if a dealer has sold me a 2016 KIA SOUL, has advertised it as Range=93, salesman confirms that the 44 miles range shown on the dash is only 50% of charge (Full charge would be at least 88).. Was I sold a horrid bill of goods?
I have been in contact with the dealer, he absolutely refuses to take any responsibility for what was w=either a straight up lie, or was just ignorance and lack of due diligence.

I look forward to your responses and, of course, any opinions you wish to offer.

Thanks in advance

Buff Medb

 

Here's my perspective based on me looking up the specifications and EPA ratings of a 2016 Kia Soul and your situation.

• It's a 27kWh battery pack
• The EPA rating is 93 mi range
• The EPA efficiency estimate is 3.2 mi/kwh

The salesman sold you the EPA rating, not an actual number from the car. Did he ever show you a picture of the supposed 44 mi range at 50%?

We know many factors affect range, and it may just be the driving conditions of where you live compared to the EPA test are much different. I am not sure how the EPA got that range at that efficiency (3.2 * 27 = 86.4 miles max if we believe their efficiency). Edmunds got 2.5 mi/kwh efficiency during real world testing which would be 68 miles max range, closer to what you are seeing. Range in any EV is always going to be best in the summer and your testing is from October and November. You'd probably be in the 80 mi range bracket in summer

A quick search shows a wide variance of range numbers at 100% for Kia Soul EV's. Some folks said they can see over 100 miles when doing trips mostly in town who weren't complaining about their battery. Some others complained that driving on the highway dramatically depleted their battery and they suspected something wrong. I think with older battery tech, the range hit on the highway is probably greater.

We can also see there is a non-linear relationship between a given % of battery and the range. At higher charges, your average 1 mile uses 1.3ish percent of battery. At a lower charge (you had 10 miles at 21%) your 1 mile uses 2.1% of battery. I believe Ian Mac addressed the lower cell voltages affecting this and it's probably a more pronounced effect on older EV's.

Does your car track efficiency statistics in mi/kwh? You can do your own degradation test by using your real driving numbers. Charge to 100% and drive it a full charge down to 0% and see what many miles you drive and what your efficiency is. Take miles traveled and divide by the efficiency number and see how many kWh was consumed. You hope to see close to 27kWh, slightly less due to inevitable degradation. You can also do some similar testing of efficiency numbers you achieve when mainly freeway driving vs mainly city driving. It may be VASTLY different and your car has no idea which one you might lean towards when it's calculating its estimates. This would be pertinent information for you to know since you have the best idea of what your drives will be like. You can also buy an OBD dongle and see how many kWh are left in the battery of the original 27 kWh since the dealer is probably not giving you a truthful answer.

 

I went through this with my Lightning, despite owning three EVs it was hard to convince myself that there wasn’t some problem because the range showed was always less than the EPA rating.

You have to tell your self over and over that the range showed on the car has no relationship to battery health. Your battery may be defective and the guess-o-meter won’t know it. Your battery may be stellar, superb, above average and the guess-o-meter won’t know it. It doesn’t have the sensors to tell you. All it knows is an informed guess about how many kilowatts are left in the battery, your average miles per kilowatt, and the current miles per kilowatt that you are achieving. Some cars use elevation information from the map if a route is enabled. Determining the kilowatts actually left even in a perfect battery is surprisingly difficult and depends on a large number of factors.

When you think about it as a programmer, the task of the GOM is to tell the average customer in a car working to specification how long they can go without recharging. You are certainly not going to spend time trying to program “how far can the car go at 80% charge if cells A4 and C6 are shorted and B7 is sulphated” if you could even get that information from the battery. Batteries are physical objects that can fail in a nearly infinite number of ways with unpredictable results. Ultimately no CEO is going to say “hey, let’s give the customer accurate information when their car is broken”.

You need to find a screen that shows you the miles per kilowatt that you are using. I don‘t have to tell you that Portland is quite hilly so that will affect your real range and confuse the heck out of the guess o meter. You should also look for a review of this car on “Out of Spec Reviews” (youtube) with Kyle. He runs the cars to absolute dead zero in fairly controlled conditions which gives you an idea of the actual range, how the car performs when the battery is nearly dead, and some confidence that you can run the battery way down without destroying the car.

Good Luck and happy motoring!