Jarviss84 said:
Hi All,
I had a question for the current EV owners out there, does your charge level change dramatically when your vehicle is parked overnight? I wanted to know if anyone has experienced this at all? I know there might be battery degradation over time but does this degradation affect the car while it is idle and turned off?
Second question, are the batteries air cooled? Or do they use a liquid cooled setup? I know the Tesla's use a liquid cooled setup and i have noticed in some of the pictures i have seen of the car there is a reservoir for some sort of coolant what is this used for?
Last question I have read a few posts stating the A/C and Heating would have an detrimental effect on the performance of the battery. How does running the A/C for a sort period affect this range?
OK really, last question is Carnet required to use the pre-cooling\ Heating features?
1: I left car parked for two weeks at 55% battery. It was at 55% when I got back to it.
2. Batteries are passively cooled. Whether there's air cooling or no cooling I'm not exactly certain, though I think there might be no fan at all. Note that the battery is much smaller than any Tesla, so there's less mass to hold the heat. Additionally, Teslas can draw far more current from the battery than an e-Golf so they will be expected to handle much higher heat generation. There is coolant in a reservoir but I'm unsure precisely what it is used for. Supposedly Tesla uses a battery chemistry that has better energy performance at the trade off of being more volatile and thus requiring very intensive battery thermal management. The e-Golf does not seem to have these same requirements, and the 2015/2016 e-Golves seem to still be holding up pretty well in terms of battery degradation compared to the horror stories coming from LEAF owners. So long as you're not expecting to use DCFC fast charging frequently and back-to-back I don't think the battery thermal management in the e-Golf is a concern at all.
3. A/C has similar impact as it would on a gasoline vehicle. I would say that having A/C running probably drops range about 5-10% for me depending on ambient temperatures. On a real scorcher of a day if I had the AC running full blast it might be a little bit more of a hit than that, but unless you're planning a long road trip on the hottest days of the year this should be ok. 99% of the time I'm driving WELL within the range of the vehicle so I can drive it as if it were a car with unlimited battery range. Heating will be a much bigger impact than AC if you live in a cold climate and have the SE model.
SE has a standard resistive heater only which will cut range by about 40% when activated. Combine that will lithium batteries producing less power at low temperatures and it quickly chains the e-Golf down to a much shorter range. The SEL Premium comes with the heat pump as standard which apparently will move heat from the drivetrain to the cabin (via some sort of magic, for all the information I can find about the specific implementation in the e-Golf) without firing up the resistive heater, and in that case its pretty similar to running the AC. Of course, if you're in a cold climate the heat pump probably won't cut it in frigid temperatures, but for 'standard' chilly weather its great and quite efficient. Also, the heated seats are extremely efficient and mean you can get away without running the heat in a wider range of temperatures than you would expect. Preheating/precooling the car while plugged in before you leave makes a BIG range difference in the more extreme weather conditions. Likewise a pop in windshield reflector in summer. Seriously.
4. You can set charge timers from the infotainment unit with departure settings to have the AC/heat run automatically ready for you, but you do need a car-net subscription if you want to do it through the app or web browser. (2015 models do not have any ability to set this from within the vehicle, as an exception)
Edit: Just noticed you're in Toledo. I used to live in Columbus! So yes, you will be dealing with winter, though thankfully not quite Minnesota winter. Is your e-Golf the 24 or 36kWh variety? (MY15/16, or MY17+) and does it have fast charge?
