WetEV wrote: ↑Fri Jan 25, 2019 11:07 pm
cwerdna wrote:If I were in the mild climate PNW, sure, I wouldn't find thermal management to be a big advantage.
You may not find thermal management much of an advantage in the Bay area as well.
Do you have LeafSpy? Is it linked to Dropbox?
If so, look at the battery temperatures you have had. A TMS should not be designed to cool the battery below dew point anywhere, and a dew point of 35 C (95 F) has been recorded. To cool the battery to 35 C, some parts would be cooler... So 40 C or 45 C cooling thresholds are more common. However, for USA only, 35 C isn't out of the question as a cooling threshold, and that is what GM seems to use.
I think, from various reports and a "Torque Pro" log of a Bolt from California, that the Bolt's cooling threshold is about 35C while charging or operating. The highest battery temperature in the log was 37C, over a summer.
I don't recall if we revisited this but
https://www.chevybolt.org/threads/batte ... ost-512173 talks about Bolt cooling the battery to 27 C (which would be 80.6 F) when plugged in.
Today I had to go out in the afternoon and are high temps were past 80 F... maybe 85 F or so. My car was in the garage all night but the places I went to had no covered parking. When I arrived back home, I set the charging target level to lower than my SoC (so that I wouldn't waste $ charging at home) and plugged in my L1 EVSE. Sure enough, the thermal management kicked on. (Green light on the dash was solid, indicating no charging). Radiator fan was running and I could feel the hot air being sucked into the engine compartment. The hose for the battery coolant reservoir (front passenger side, near the radiator) was getting cool to the touch, as it does when the battery thermal management turns on.
I had done 0 charging today. Last time it was plugged in to charge was Friday afternoon until the evening.
There no turbulence in the reservoir for the coolant loop that cools the OBC, DC to DC converter, etc. When the car's in READY mode you can hear that pump and see fluid being pumped into that reservoir at the top + see turbulence below.
From
https://www.chevybolt.org/threads/best- ... cfc.32809/, looking at the pink line, that guy in South Korea has observed battery being cooled down to about 26 C while DC FCing. Looks like the peak battery temp was 34 C before it started dropping.
I still need to get Torque and an appropriate OBD2 dongle for my Bolt.
OT: I've had this seat cover from Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B076XXDL38 (AirFlex 60-274005 Full Back Seat Cover with Fixed Air Compression, Black, full seat) for almost 2 weeks now. I don't drive the Bolt every day but I will say that it has solved my seat comfort issues w/the seat being too hard and the back hard and shaped oddly.
There are some downsides though. The back part allows me to pivot left and right too much in the seat. As some reviews put it, it almost feels like sitting on a balloon. There's no way to partly deflate it and I don't want to puncture as an experiment since it'd be permanent. I'm not clear if my bottom cushion of the cover has already leaked or ruptured as it's not as balloon-like as the back. But, whatever, it's ok as it is.
If I were to go driving in the twisties or knew I had such a route, I might actually remove the cover for that drive as the pivoting is annoying.
Also, due to the extra thickness, I feel my head is now too far from the head restraint. If I were to be in a collision, I think my head would end up snapping backwards and forwards more than w/o the cover. I'll need to look into a small pillow to attach to the head restraint.