Titanium48
Well-known member
My new-to-me 2016 SL arrived two weeks ago, I programmed the charge and climate control timers, and for the first week I woke up to a warm car with a nearly full charge, which gave more or less the range I expected in warm winter conditions (near 0°C). I didn't drain it completely, but an 80 km, mixed city and highway trip took it from 90% to 35%.
Then it got cold (between -20°C and -30°C this week). Using the charge timer no longer seemed to work and the car seemed to be unable to correctly determine the SOC - it would say 70-something % when I got in, but driving just a few km would drop it by 30%. The battery temperature gauge was down to one bar, so I figured that might have something to do with the electronic confusion and the failure to charge. Parked the car underground for a while to try to warm it up (got it up to two bars), then brought it home, turned off the charge timer and plugged it in. SOC was at 100% the next day, and there was no weird rapid drop (though as expected the range is down significantly), and since then I have been plugging in immediately after returning home and it seems to charge OK. The battery temperature has stayed at 2 bars, sometimes 3 immediately after driving.
Not using the charge timer seems to result in SOC in the high 80s after preconditioning though. I expected some loss of charge because I only have a 16A 240V EVSE, but 30 minutes at 4.5 kW is only 2.25 kWh, suggesting that no power was being pulled from the EVSE at all if that caused a 12% drop in SOC. I also manually preheated the car one day (plugged it in, turned it on, set the heat to 24°C and the fan on high), and after 20 minutes of that the SOC only dropped 2%.
Are these behaviors normal? Should I be doing anything differently?
Then it got cold (between -20°C and -30°C this week). Using the charge timer no longer seemed to work and the car seemed to be unable to correctly determine the SOC - it would say 70-something % when I got in, but driving just a few km would drop it by 30%. The battery temperature gauge was down to one bar, so I figured that might have something to do with the electronic confusion and the failure to charge. Parked the car underground for a while to try to warm it up (got it up to two bars), then brought it home, turned off the charge timer and plugged it in. SOC was at 100% the next day, and there was no weird rapid drop (though as expected the range is down significantly), and since then I have been plugging in immediately after returning home and it seems to charge OK. The battery temperature has stayed at 2 bars, sometimes 3 immediately after driving.
Not using the charge timer seems to result in SOC in the high 80s after preconditioning though. I expected some loss of charge because I only have a 16A 240V EVSE, but 30 minutes at 4.5 kW is only 2.25 kWh, suggesting that no power was being pulled from the EVSE at all if that caused a 12% drop in SOC. I also manually preheated the car one day (plugged it in, turned it on, set the heat to 24°C and the fan on high), and after 20 minutes of that the SOC only dropped 2%.
Are these behaviors normal? Should I be doing anything differently?