Trying to understand the charging number on the PIP

It is an estimate, that includes past performance and present charge.
Obviously, if you start the car and then drive uphill until the battery is depleted, the start value is going to be way off.

 

I would really like it if there was an option for the display to show you the State of Charge instead of the Estimated EV Range. It should be percent of full charge to a hundredth of a percent.

Anyone agree?

 

You can see the actual SOC% with the Torque App. You can even see the voltage and amp going in and out of the PHV battery pack.

 

I've logged my trips to and from work about 8-10 times so far. Every time the battery is full, it always reads 85.1% SoC. My EV range fluctuates a bit (not as much as the first week). But now its kind of settled around 11.8 to 12.1 miles on a full charge.

 

Yes

 

Thanks...do you know if it is an Android only app or is it available for the iPhone as well? Also, it looks like you have to use a BT data collector that plugs in to the vehicle somewhere...does that work well or can it potentially cause issues? Sorry, I'm not really familiar with those tools -

Thanks.

 

More info is always good, but how many people would know what to do with a display in a conventional car that tells them how many gallons of fuel remain in the tank ? Or more analogous to your suggestion, how many people can reliably estimate miles remaining based on the meter that shows fraction of full ?

You might say "a lot, because I have an MPG meter, too." But the iMPG meter fluctuates all over the place (from 5 to infinity) and the average hardly is helpful for what you are driving *right now* or for the next 5,10,15 minutes.

All that said, I think available energy remaining and iPower are the most useful meters, more so as the driver learns what power levels are used in different conditions. Lots of people cannot perform sums in their head though, so I suggest the energy meter display kwh remaining, and the power meter display miles/kwh. Arithmetic is still required, but estimates would be easier.

 

Remaining KWH - I like that idea a lot!

 

Can you list a step-by-step of what's needed and how to get the Torque App on a phone with Bluetooth and how it works?

 

The Torque website is quite informative.

USBSeawolf has a thread that contains a .csv file of G3 Prius codes

 

I would like to see the 'electric fuel' quantities specified in terms analogous to what we see for the gas: We put in 'kWh' like we do gallons so I would like to have the 'kWh' optionally displayed (especially since this is generally how we are billed for our 'electric fuel'). Then, like miles / gallon, I would like to have 'miles / kWh', or something similar shown to me.

Now, I do understand that the miles / kWh value can vary all over the board so maybe having it blocked off into 5 minute increments (again, like miles/gallon) would be good. I think 'miles/kWh' could be useful because it could get the user to start thinking about their electrical energy consumption.

Was not a Prius one of the first cars to display the miles/gallon? I find it interesting that Toyota didn't display something similar for their first car with true 'electrical consumption'.

Who knows, they may have chosen not to because of how very poor their efficiency really is at speeds near 62 miles/hour.

 

FWIW, Leaf owners only have (included w/the car) a distance to empty estimate, aka GOM (Guess-O-Meter) and 12-segment battery gauge. At a recent SF Bay Area Leaf club meeting w/the Leaf's chief vehicle engineer (Kadota-san) + a bunch of senior Nissan folks and engineers from Japan, they got the message loud and clear that Leaf owners want a SOC % indicator and GOM improvements.

I think hundredths of a % is asking for too much. I'm no EE and unfortunately, I couldn't hear part of the Leaf CVE's explanation but I ran this by a friend of mine w/some EE background. Essentially, you really only know the SoC when the car's off (when there's no load on the battery). Once you put a load on it, it essentially becomes an estimate. Hopefully an EE w/some battery experience can chime on this.

He even put up a slide w/the some content along the lines of reasons for "mysterious moves" of the Leaf's 12-segment (not granular enough, according to Leaf owners) battery gauge. Unfortunately, since we were specifically asked to have no recording devices and make no recordings, I really didn't want to take a pic of a slide that said "Nissan strictly confidential".

 

The first 2 times that I charged my pip, the result on the display was a range of 12.9 miles. The 3rd and 4th were 12.6. The next 3 days were 12.3, then 2 days at 12.1 and tonight only 11.9. I've had my pip for 9 days and already, based on the display, the battery has lost 8% of it's capacity??? I generally have about 7-9 miles at night and it charges to 'full' starting at 2:00am as I leave typically by 5:00. I've only charged with 110 so far. It is a dedicated circuit.

 

Based on my study, the batteries perform above specs initially, then settle down after "break in". Talking about complicating matters of measure for EPA estimates.

Based on my observations, I'm seeing the same thing as you. Unfortunately, the temperature has dropped in accordance too. There's always so many variables at play...

To make matters even more confusing, the EV level climbs if you switch over HV while there's still some capacity remaining. So, it's really hard knowing how much you actually got out of the plug-provided portion. But with all the running around I had today, I was quite pleased how long those last few miles persisted.

Focus on the end result... because if you focus on how much electricity is consumed for accelerating verses steady cruising, you'll go bonkers trying to figure out "range" values.
.

 

Back to my discussion about the GOM on the Leaf, garygid over at MNL came up with SoC Meter (plenty of discussion at My Nissan Leaf Forum • View forum - Leaf CANBus) which is some value on the CAN bus. 281 apparently is the max. My Nissan Leaf Forum • View topic - What is a "Gid"? and My Nissan Leaf Forum • View topic - Gids/bars... has some discussion of the values, which people decided to name gid, in honor of garygid.

I should back up about my earlier comments. Leafers want a SoC meter in terms of % but not necessarily as a replacement for the GOM. They'd want it to be switchable or the SoC to be displayable somewhere else, like on the touchscreen LCD.

Bonkers? A Leafer (who I've met) came up w/this crazy range chart for the Leaf: My Nissan Leaf Forum • View topic - Range Chart.

 

So is my battery somehow defective or not as good as all of yours? I have charged under all sorts of circumstances between work and home, when just driven and after a long rest, and no matter what, all I ever see is 10.6 to 10.9 miles on the EV. I've never seen above 11... I see you all talk about 12, 13+ and I can't even break into 11. (And I'm in N.CA, not freezing temps...)

What gives? :-(