[GRing40]

Thanks; looks like a go in flat, chilly, lakeside IL.

 

[GRing40]

The 500e I’m looking at has these magnetic disks (one is now missing) on the dash; any idea how to buy them, who makes them, what they’re called, etc?
Seller claims that the car (2017) did not come with a tire inflator kit; was it an option?

 

[Electric Tire Shredder]

Bullsh!t:

• The 500e definitely came standard with a tire inflator kit (12V compressor & aerosol sealant) as shown* in the 2017 manual page 225 (pdf 227). Click for link.
• The 500e did not come with any magnetic discs that I know of. My first guess would be they're a user-added phone mount.

Thanks; looks like a go in flat, chilly, lakeside IL.

Keep in mind that when it's as "chilly" as the middle of winter can be there, in the US Midwest, 500e range can drop all the way to only the US average daily round-trip commute of about 40 miles, & to fully recharge from the OEM cord plugged into a stove or dryer outlet would take 8 hours of sleep PLUS an hour dinner AND an hour breakfast:

*

 

[GRing40]

Keep in mind that when it's as "chilly" as the middle of winter can be there, in the US Midwest, 500e range can drop all the way to only the US average daily round-trip commute of about 40 miles, & to fully recharge from the OEM cord plugged into a stove or dryer outlet would take 8 hours of sleep PLUS an hour dinner AND an hour breakfast:

Thanks for your comment in the inflator kit; will pass that along.

I’ll be doing L2 charging at a public lot nearby; doesn’t the battery thermal system try to warm it then, to keep charge times reasonable?

 

[Kiesling]

Thanks for your comment in the inflator kit; will pass that along.

I’ll be doing L2 charging at a public lot nearby; doesn’t the battery thermal system try to warm it then, to keep charge times reasonable?

The OEM cord is level 1 when plugged into a 120 volt outlet. In cold conditions, it will take longer to charge on level 1 or level 2 since energy from the charger will go into conditioning the battery. I'm not sure how much time it will add in cold conditions. I've read if you are preheating the cabin + battery conditioning, the Level 2 power doesn't have much left for actual charging. On level 1 you will actually lose power.

 

[Electric Tire Shredder]

That's all true, but my point was that cold weather uses more of the battery per mile, so in the winter it takes longer to recharge the same driving distance as in the summer...:

Let's say you get:

• 4 miles per kWh in the summer & a total range of 80 miles.
• 2 miles per kWh in the winter & a total range of 40 miles.

Then driving 40 miles:

• In summer it uses only 50%, so a recharge is about 2 hours on full 6.6kW L2*
• In winter it uses 100%, so a recharge takes about 4 hours on full L2, PLUS as @Kiesling noted, a bit more time to heat up the battery first unless it's still warm from driving.

Heating the tiny cabin reportedly doesn't make much difference, taking only about 5 minutes right before unplugging, especially if you leave the back seat up & the hatch shelf in, so you're not even heating the very back.

* I forgot that @GRing40 is only using public plugs, & I also just remembered that ONE of my local public plugs is only about 4.4kW, so @GRing40 should check the local plug, maybe at PlugShare.com or maybe if it has a meter it will show real-time KW when someone else is plugged in there.

 

[GRing40]

That's all true, but my point was that cold weather uses more of the battery per mile, so in the winter it takes longer to recharge the same driving distance as in the summer...:

Let's say you get:

• 4 miles per kWh in the summer & a total range of 80 miles.
• 2 miles per kWh in the winter & a total range of 40 miles.

Then driving 40 miles:

• In summer it uses only 50%, so a recharge is about 2 hours on full 6.6kW L2*
• In winter it uses 100%, so a recharge takes about 4 hours on full L2, PLUS as @Kiesling noted, a bit more time to heat up the battery first unless it's still warm from driving.

Maybe not quite that bad. Found a useful chart of range% vs Temp, and average lows in Jan and Feb are 25F, so I should see 75% range, optimistically.

 

[Electric Tire Shredder]

Well I was trying to make the math easy & sort of a worst case scenario. I saw on Youtube a guy driving on the freeway in the winter. I think it was something like -15F & 45 mile drive with 5 miles left out of a full charge.

One more factor I thought of while driving in Santa Ana winds today: A Windy City like yours kills range if you're going against it.

For example, compared to my overall city average 20mph stop & go I get significantly better range in 55mph freeway traffic, but if there's just a 5mph headwind I get significantly worse range than in the city.

Of course a tailwind is an equally big bonus, but it's not as if you have a choice, except maybe to choose city streets if there's a headwind & freeway if there's a tailwind.

However you said "short local errands" so maybe you won't even have to worry about it, except maybe to conserve power so you won't need the public charger available for as long as if you just floored it all the time.

 

[GRing40]

The 500e definitely came standard with a tire inflator kit (12V compressor & aerosol sealant) as shown* in the 2017 manual page 225 (pdf 227). Click for link.

Afraid that seller has some wiggle room here, as that link mentions the tire inflator kit as “if equipped”. Even so, how much allowance might I ask for, since it is missing?
As for Range vs Temp, will a “full” charge at, say, 25F display as a reduced range, or display as a higher ( but not actual) range?

 

[Electric Tire Shredder]

The gauge nearly never shows actual range, since it assumes the entire remaining range will be exactly like the last 10 miles. If it was 25F for the last 10 miles, it will only be as wrong as usual. If the temperature drops compared to the last 10 miles I don't know if it recalibrates itself or not.

That sounds bad, but I quickly got used to just going by the % remaining, & how fast it's dropping per mile. I don't even pay much attention to that for my normal drives, now that I know I always have plenty to spare.

It DID come with that inflation kit, since there's no spare tire, but I just searched Amazon & found a well-reviewed one that's also a brand I like, for only $40. Click here or search "flat tire repair kit with air compressor" & scroll down till you see this:

However the original kit was more like these $63-$69 ones, with aerosol sealant, although I think the non-aerosol above doesn't expire like these do:

 

[GRing40]

Thanks, inflator not a big deal, and I already have a great one (Nulksen cordless, CZK-3671). Restating the range vs temp issue issue, how do I know when the car thinks it’s fully charged (on a cold day), to get a handle on the cold-temp range?

 

[Electric Tire Shredder]

You can always know when the car thinks it's fully charged because it will say 100%.

That's as long as you set it to display the %: It can be turned on/off in the main menu.

If you're ever waiting for it to fully charge, it takes an extra 10 minutes or so to go from 99 to 100. So it's not worth waiting unless you really need the 1 extra mile, or if it has been 6 months since you took it to 100: The extra time is to "balance" the cells so they're all at as close a voltage as possible, which is supposedly important to do every quarter or so.

 

[Kiesling]

I would recommend not only charging to 100% once a quarter. If all your cells are not well matched you run the risk of damaging one if you don't keep them reasonably well balanced.

If you drive every day and use 80% of the battery every day, but only charge from 0 to 80% - balancing only every quarter would mean 90 days for a cell to get way out of balance and you run the risk of accelerating degradation by working the out of balance cell hard at the lower charge states.

It would be nice if the BMS would allow you to set the percent charge and balance the cells at that level, but it doesn't, so to get the cells balanced, you have to charge to 100%. Personally, I wouldn't go more than two weeks without fully charging/balancing the pack.

 

[Electric Tire Shredder]

Or just check voltage periodically with a $17 OBD dongle.

By checking mine I learned that it goes several months before getting imbalanced, but I suppose that might not be the case if you had a bad cell or two. So it's a good idea to check, & then go to 100 whenever the imbalance gets a bit high.