[Electric Tire Shredder]

Mine is now almost 2,5 years and it seems that the battery capacity is going downhill.

!!! Mine is now almost TEN years old and it seems that the battery capacity is going strong! Only 24kWh battery & it's still good for 154 km on a fresh charge when I tested it recently with 50,000 km.

Many 1st-gen users have thought their battery capacity was going down, but they were just being fooled by the car's % gauge going out of calibration, reading lower than it really is at the bottom. One user's gauge showed 0% when there was still 20% left, so he thought his range was 20% less, since he had no idea the car was fooling him by hiding the range from view.

 

[EV-Travellers]

Well - maybe I am wrong. I am just referring to the km range which is displayed when it is charged to 100%. It is 40 - 50 km less than it was a year ago. I have an appointment at Fiat before we go on the big tour. Just to check breaks, tyres etc. They can have a look at the battery as well I suppose.

 

[Electric Tire Shredder]

OH! Whew! Your battery is fine.

You can't base actual range on the range gauge. It is very well-named "Guess-O-Meter" ("GOM") since it is SO inaccurate. Without even trying I can accidentally make mine read 60 miles lower than it did an hour ago. All I have to do is top it off at sea level, drive 10 miles to my friend's at the top of a hill & top off there. Instant 60 miles lower range on that gauge, even though absolutely nothing happened to the battery pack capacity.

The gauge assumes you're going to continue driving exactly the same, all the way until the battery is dead. So when I drive downhill to charge by the ocean it assumes I'm going to continue driving downhill, which would of course give enormous range except for the fact that it would be under water! Then when I charge at the top of the hill it assumes I will get low range by continuing to drive uphill, except again that's impossible since there's nowhere to go uphill from the top.

 

[Electric Tire Shredder]

I have an appointment at Fiat... They can have a look at the battery as well I suppose.

Don't be too alarmed if its computer readout looks really bad. The 1st gen data for battery State Of Health (SOH) is wildly inaccurate. Some old cars show 100%, which is of course impossible since there has to be at least a tiny bit of degradation. Some owners have seen the numbers going up, which is also impossible: Mine showed 39.61% on Nov 29 & 79.61% on Dec 27, all without any noticeable range loss.