Driving with Low Battery?

[Gu$ G]

I purchased and shipped a 2015 70D MS to myself. While the battery was almost full when it left, the shipping took over a month and now the app claims the battery is below 10 miles. I am picking the car up this evening and imaging arriving to a host of problems! I knew the risks and was unable to charge it further while it traveled. We'll see how it turns out...

Any suggestions on extending range while driving on the last few KWh of battery...? I'm planning to go straight to the nearest Level 2 charger I can find. I estimate it will be about 5 miles and 20 minutes, depending on traffic. Its also very hot where I'm at, but I'll plan to go windows open, AC off, screen brightness way down.

Any other ideas? Maybe just bite the bullet and get a tow?

My biggest fear is actually the screens having melted if overheat protection became unavailable.

 

[GtiMart]

AC and the whole cabin air off including fans in your specific situation. Drive SLOW, very slow. I think the rest is not as important. If you have access to an air pump you could verify tire pressure but for the distance you'll drive it might not be significant.

EDIT: No one around you have a portable battery big enough to give it a small top-up before driving? Like an Ecoflow with a couple kWh...

 

[ucmndd]

The screens didn’t melt.

Drive slow. Easy on the accelerator. AC off.

Turning the screen brightness down is like trying to minimize wind damage during a hurricane by not farting, so I’d not get too concerned with that.

 

[Tam]

I purchased and shipped a 2015 70D MS to myself. While the battery was almost full when it left, the shipping took over a month and now the app claims the battery is below 10 miles. I am picking the car up this evening and imaging arriving to a host of problems! I knew the risks and was unable to charge it further while it traveled. We'll see how it turns out...

Any suggestions on extending range while driving on the last few KWh of battery...? I'm planning to go straight to the nearest Level 2 charger I can find. I estimate it will be about 5 miles and 20 minutes, depending on traffic. Its also very hot where I'm at, but I'll plan to go windows open, AC off, screen brightness way down.

Any other ideas? Maybe just bite the bullet and get a tow?

My biggest fear is actually the screens having melted if overheat protection became unavailable.

I would tow rather than risk driving the last few miles.

Hopefully your 12v battery will still be alive to allow a tow and a charge.

 

[Rocky_H]

the shipping took over a month and now the app claims

First off, let's talk about this part. So for the last month, you have been nervously opening up the app on the phone, contacting the car probably every day, maybe more than once a day, to have it report back to you to amount of energy it has left, correct? That's the worst thing you could have done. Every time you open up the app to have it contact the car, the car has to wake up out of low power sleep mode, which increases its idle energy consumption. And then it's going to stay in that higher power mode for another few hours before going to sleep again. You needed to leave it alone to sleep and not keep pinging it with the app. It doesn't help you now, after the fact, but for the future of the car needing to sit for a month without charging, don't do that!

the battery is below 10 miles. [...] I estimate it will be about 5 miles and 20 minutes, depending on traffic.

Oof. How below is it? If it were at 10, and I had to go 5 real miles, I might do that, but if it's 6 or 7, and you had to go 5 through traffic, I don't think I would risk that. But to possibly avoid a tow, I might see if there is a place very nearby where I could get access to a regular outlet somewhere for a few hours. Other than that, yeah, probably just tow.

Also, in the future for transport, there are a couple of other things that should have been done. This should have been fine for a month, but with it running down that much, it's obvious that these high power energy hog settings were not turned off:

Sentry
Summon standby
Cabin overheat protection

At least one or two of those were left on clearly.

 

[Lasttoy]

Question is. How far to any charger? Any charger. Hotel, dealer. Anything. But. U can get on rollback , take to supercharger. The distance is key.

 

[swt2c]

Out of curiosity, what did you end up doing?