SuperBowl Sunday, I took my nephew skiing for his 15th birthday, then rushed to make a 6pm Super Bowl party!
I drove about 140miles roundtrip. Started with 58% SOC, ended up with 10%. Not bad efficiency considering the temps.
Unfortunately, the game dragged on, and I stayed until 10pm, before deciding the last quarter was going to take at least another hour! I got in my car, and it showed a blue snowflake and about 3.3%SOC! The SOC level had dropped about 6.7% as the battery cooled off for 4hrs.
I had 7.2miles to go with 3.3% left in the freezing cold at night! I should be able to make it.
Made it home with -1.2% SOC. I passed zero about 3 miles from home. Even though I went slow and didn't turn on any heat, except my seat was on 1-bar; apparently, the car battery needed to do some conditioning, which used 0.8%.
I did wonder if I drove hard, would the waste heat from the inverter help warm the battery and unlock some of the frozen electrons. I wasn't too keen on testing the idea! My consolation was, if my car ran out a few miles from home, I could walk home, get my small 45lb inverter generator, walk it back on a dolly, and charge my car for an hour. Not ideal, but theoretically possible.
Maybe only interesting to me, but even though the charge limit was 60%, the next morning it showed 68%, adding 51kWh, and that 68% represented 210 EPA miles. Since the car dropped to 67% while I was sitting in it, I'll assume the actual SOC was around 67.6%, which rounded to 68% but then quickly dropped to 67%. That works out to 310 EPA miles still! So, no damage from going below zero SOC. Whew!
I drove about 140miles roundtrip. Started with 58% SOC, ended up with 10%. Not bad efficiency considering the temps.
Unfortunately, the game dragged on, and I stayed until 10pm, before deciding the last quarter was going to take at least another hour! I got in my car, and it showed a blue snowflake and about 3.3%SOC! The SOC level had dropped about 6.7% as the battery cooled off for 4hrs.
I had 7.2miles to go with 3.3% left in the freezing cold at night! I should be able to make it.
Made it home with -1.2% SOC. I passed zero about 3 miles from home. Even though I went slow and didn't turn on any heat, except my seat was on 1-bar; apparently, the car battery needed to do some conditioning, which used 0.8%.
I did wonder if I drove hard, would the waste heat from the inverter help warm the battery and unlock some of the frozen electrons. I wasn't too keen on testing the idea! My consolation was, if my car ran out a few miles from home, I could walk home, get my small 45lb inverter generator, walk it back on a dolly, and charge my car for an hour. Not ideal, but theoretically possible.
Maybe only interesting to me, but even though the charge limit was 60%, the next morning it showed 68%, adding 51kWh, and that 68% represented 210 EPA miles. Since the car dropped to 67% while I was sitting in it, I'll assume the actual SOC was around 67.6%, which rounded to 68% but then quickly dropped to 67%. That works out to 310 EPA miles still! So, no damage from going below zero SOC. Whew!
