Perpetual motion machine!

[AmandaC]

With the cool mornings and warmer afternoons this week in Toronto, it’s been fun driving home. The “locked” capacity of the cold battery seems to get released as the battery warms, so my 30 km commute home has used 7, 5, and 3 km the last 3 days. This doesn’t show the whole drive since I changed the navigation, but it’s 19 km of it... I can drive forever!

 

[Lon12]

Would it be possible to see more than 100% state of charge in this scenario if you started with 100% and cold battery?

 

[bijan]

Would it be possible to see more than 100% state of charge in this scenario if you started with 100% and cold battery?

I don't think so. The cold battery/snow flake situation reduces your usable SOC to a lower level.

For example you have 80% state of charge but only 75% usable so it shows 75% on the GUI (and shows 5% in blue on the app) and it increases as battery heats up.

So for your example actual SOC would have to be over 100% for usable SOC when limited by cold to show as 100%.

 

[AmandaC]

bijan is correct, I didn’t mention that the range remaining “dropped” 20 km overnight each time (and the snowflake came on) so it was just gaining back that inaccessible 20 km. I’m in a less common situation in that I can’t charge every night, so I get to gather interesting data like these.

I’ve seen the range drop up to 50 km sitting at the office on a cold day (on a morning where I started with a warm and full battery). Not vampire loss, just the cold. I’ve seen the range increase while driving as it warms again.