Cold weather observations

Faults and Technical chat for the Honda E
Trykpaa
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Joined: Mon Jul 20, 2020 9:18 pm

Post by Trykpaa »

Since we got proper winter in Denmark, I have noted some new behaviour of our little city runner.

When (battery?) cold, the performance is reduced noticeably. I can only really tell the difference when applying throttle suddenly. Normally in a roundabout tail will come out, but then cold it will just push the front into understeer. For a while I thought Honda had made the TC more restrictive, so I am pleased to realise that 10min on the motorway makes everything like they used to be.

When parking the car at freezing temperatures regardless of charge, the car suggests plugging in the charger to prevent drainage of low voltage battery. Never had an issue, charging or not.

Cameras take some cleaning in winter weather. Front and rear easily get unusable.

Side 'mirrors' are more than excellent. Always clear and much less affected by dimness, snow and dirt than normal mirrors.

Car is super easy to drive in snow. Heavy and not much feedback, but easy enough.

Winter consumption is about 250wh/km for us. Range 180-300wh/km.

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Left4Cookies
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Post by Left4Cookies »

I have almost the exact same observations.

With the roads being as dirty as they are now, especially the window at the rear view mirror requires a little cleaning before taking off. Haven't had issues with the other cameras yet (not a lot of snowing in Copenhagen anyway so haven't experienced issue with the radar or anything yet). Agree 100% on the side camera 'cams' - they're amazing. I see people every morning cleaning their mirrors, but the camera lenses are spotless every day.

Almost every time I start it I get a System Message Indicator with the turtle, which I assume is the car's way of telling performance is lowered like you said (p. 138 of the UK manual I guess).

Consumption is in the same ballpark. Right now it's at 50% with 76km left (yeah right) and consumption of 258wh/km but I'm also using heating most of the time now as it's become a little too cold for the seat heating alone to make my wife happy..
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Sousaphone
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Location: Denmark

Post by Sousaphone »

As the third Dane, I guess I should chip in as well.

Turtle and cameras obscured by a layer of road salt aside, the only real change here is that running the heating obviously takes more energy. Haven’t seen enough snow to properly test that part yet.

At -3 to -11C I’m seeing real world range drop to between 100 and 125 km with full climate, heated windows on, and both seats and steering wheel heated. Better than I’d feared, particularly given the nature of my driving (5-10 km trips, mostly from dark and cold).
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Minky92
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Post by Minky92 »

Gonna chip in as I've just had a pretty catastrophic experience heading home on the motorway... Relatively late at night with the outside temperature reading at -1°. Journey was 30 miles, had 47% left, with the heater off the car was giving me a range of over 50 miles. Seemed fine, plenty of overhead, only had the heater on for the first 5 minutes...
... About 10 minutes into being on the motorway, the range completely evaporated. I barely managed 25 miles before crawling off the M6 with 2% left. Somehow managed to reach a CCS charger to top up a bit before heading home.
I've never seen it do this before. I'm absolutely astounded at how quickly I lost range, despite going at 60 and not having the heater on. I've driven in colder than this with no such issues. Concerned that something deeper is wrong.
enesix
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Joined: Sat Jan 30, 2021 12:27 pm

Post by enesix »

This morning at -13° at full charge 99% the range shows just 86 km.
2021 Advance in Premium Crystal Blue on 16`s Winter and 17`s Summer
1991 NSX
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londiniumperson
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Post by londiniumperson »

Minky92 wrote: Fri Feb 12, 2021 1:26 am ...
Relatively late at night with the outside temperature reading at -1°. Journey was 30 miles, had 47% left, with the heater off the car was giving me a range of over 50 miles. Seemed fine, plenty of overhead, only had the heater on for the first 5 minutes...
...
That's not good.
Even at -3°C in the UK these past few weeks I've been getting around 2.7m/kWh on my commute, driving at 60-70mph a lot of the time.
What's your efficiency showing on the trip meters?
Also do you use ACC on the motorway?
2022 Advance in Crystal Black Pearl on 17's - 08/2020-Current
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1991 Honda Beat PP1 (Festival Red) - 11/2022-Current
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keithr
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Location: Dorset, UK

Post by keithr »

Minky92 wrote: Fri Feb 12, 2021 1:26 am Relatively late at night with the outside temperature reading at -1°. Journey was 30 miles, had 47% left, with the heater off the car was giving me a range of over 50 miles. Seemed fine, plenty of overhead, only had the heater on for the first 5 minutes...
... About 10 minutes into being on the motorway, the range completely evaporated. I barely managed 25 miles before crawling off the M6 with 2% left.
I would assume that it was all due to a cold battery - the battery heater can suck quite a lot of power. In the recent cold weather I have been charging my car for 10 - 20 minutes before each journey, so that it will heat up the battery using power from the charge point rather than from the battery. I've only been driving short trips around town (no more than 3 miles from home) but I've been getting over 4 miles/kWh (I went shopping today, at 3°C, and got an average of 4.1miles/kWh). Without the short charge before driving I was getting around 2miles/kWh, or about 1.2 if I used the heater. In this cold weather it seems to charge the car at about two thirds the normal (warmer weather) rate, implying it uses an average of about 2.2kW for battery heating while charging for 20 minutes in cold weather.

It's not just the Honda e. I watched a YouTube video a short while ago where somebody was claiming to only be getting a range of about 75km (46 miles!) from a VW ID.3, with its 58kWh battery pack. It also has a battery heater, and the owner was also preheating the car before driving (not plugged in, at least not at his place of work for the homeward journey), and had the climate control set to 24°C. It is what it is in very cold weather, but charging and preheating before driving should improve the economy.
d11
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Joined: Thu Dec 17, 2020 3:46 pm

Post by d11 »

I join your conversation from Estonia, and luckily we have huge amount of snow this year.
- My advance (since 30 dec 2020) shows 135km with 100% full, and as I use climate all the time, it cuts the range to 90 km-s, but real range is around 70km.
- One night I came from countryside and made a crazy experiment and drove last 10,8km to home with 0 %, I did shut down all the screens, heating, music, wipers, big mirrior etc. Later I charged 31kw-s at home. It means like the car used some extra power for these final kilometers really efficiently. All the time the car begged me to stop right away and pull over sign was flashing on dashboard. The experiment was not planned, but when I started, I had 100% full with 141km range and 126km distance to cover, and i drove without climate (occationally heating front window, when too foggy). Temperature that night was -5C.
- Handling in snow is super fun. Also the snowy parking lots at night are fun with TC swithced off.
- the automatic pariking robot fails to park and steer in too snowy conditions, but he really tries:)
- Does the radar have heating? I have experienced that radar fails when its snowing, but in 10-15 minutes starts working again, like its heating itself to get rid of snow.
- I also transported my 169cm snowboard gear with it, and totally got rid of booth space anxiety:D
- the cute little turtle is my everyday guest. the car sometimes also shows the white charging sign even when 60% battery etc, when i park. i have no idea why.
- I really miss the app to start preheating from the distance, because my car parks in back yard where I have no windows, so I can't start the preheating from the apartement with the key.
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advance2020
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Post by advance2020 »

Not in the same league of cold in the UK, but a noticeable difference this week.
Set off today with outside temp 10°C increasing to 12°C and my AVG m/kWh was 3.9 overall over 21 miles. Achieved 4.9 on outward leg, due to dropping down in height. No heating, or aircon though.

Whereas last week 1-2°C AVG m/kWh was typically 2.6 on various short journeys, using some heating, but not much. Big difference due to car needing to warm battery, I suspect.

I reset my Trip A every 1000 miles approx, so this shows how Summer, Autumn, Winter compares overall

Prompted by Keith's comment above, here is a link to a recent ID3 Cold Weather test video. This might cheer you up, in case you think Honda e is poor in cold weather 1m/kWh ! I have NEVER had less than 2.4 even on a very short journey in cold(ish) weather.

2022F1EB-52D4-4E0D-8531-A314A7F76F3A.jpeg

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turntoport
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Post by turntoport »

Minky (et al), re battery performance in lower temperatures and your frighty moment. [Sorry to be 18 months late to the 'winter party', but as my e won't be arriving until November ('21, hopefully) i've an interest in the topic.] Maybe bare in-mind that if the battery chemisery is optimised for (say) +20C, then driving at any temperature below/above that will result in cooling/heating at an exponential function of the airspeed across the battery's surfaces. The whole issue is a barrel of thermodynamics fun occupying the 'forced convection' field, and i assume the battery-pack has no esoteric airflow control systems, but if you're travelling at 100km/h then very very approximately you'll have approaching four times the cooling effect that you'd have at half that speed. Hence a greater heating demand from the battery to self-regulate it's temperature. Same as 'wind-chill' for us warm-blooded creatures.
The gist is that, per Londiniumperson/et al, if at-all possible, give the battery a warm-up charging session immediately before firing-up (sorry). And go real easy on the power demands when it is cold, as big flow when sub-temp is a chemistry decline accelerator.
:cry:
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