How low have you gone?

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Verbruggan

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Joined
Mar 12, 2019
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92
Location
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From reading these forums, there are a couple of folks who pride themselves as being ultra efficient & would never go too far/ low with SoC. However there are a few out there :lol: who would poke the bear... :twisted:

How many have made the "turtle" appear? By accident? Situation, just happened? Lack of planning? General stupidity/temporary bout of insanity?

Did you strand yourself? Did you walk close to the fire, only to arrive in time for an ev fire hose of electrons?

Did you learn from your first attempt to kill your car? or is this something you often do?


Basically looking to see if there are some who have a story to share?
 
I saw the turtle, on purpose, in my 2015 e-Golf. I got home just fine, with a 2 miles of range left. I wanted to verify the car forced ECO+ mode and I found out that's exactly what happens below about 11 miles of range. I don't plan to do it again, nor do I need to do it again as I now have a "big" pack in my 2017 LE.
 
I’m not sure what summons the turtle, but I’m pretty sure I came really close. I ran through all the warnings before getting to a charger. I was coming off a roll down hill, so my guess-o-meter had a deceiving 5 miles left. When I plugged in, the charger indicated that the battery has 2% left. I’m not sure if the reserves are part of the 100% oR if the turtle pops out at 0%.
 
On a cold, rainy day of March last year, I got down to 0 miles with my 2016 SE. I drove about 4 more miles before I made it to my destination and plugged in. I'm glad there was a hidden reserve.

I was certain I was going to get stranded in the rain, and I had a 4-year-old in the back seat. Yeah, I didn't plan that one too well. I had started with a full charge and figured that was plenty to drive the ~60 miles, but I underestimated the toll of the cold and rain. I was even trying to draft off semis during most of the trip. Lesson learned.
 
I’ve seen the turtle twice in one day D: drove from San Jose to Sacramento in the 2016 shortly after getting it, and the drive out was fine, but I miscalculated the return trip and tried to take the route via I-5.

I-5 needs a lot more energy..... believe me it’s also not a fun place to meet the turtle. Rolled up to an EVgo and charged to 100%, then saw the turtle again just as I got back home.

Haven’t seen it in the 2019 yet.
 
I've seen the turtle 3 or 4 x. Each time was when reading the Owner's Manual, right after I bought the e-Golf.

That's the only place I've seen it, and I hope it stays there.

VW put's that red on the gauges for a reason, doesn't matter which VW you own, red means stop what you are doing and fix the problem, before continuing driving. Red means stop, in general, in everything in life. It's the universal "Stop" color on any form of machinery.

If your hobbies include building RC cars and planes that are LiPo battery powered, you'll have experience with the affects on battery life running LiPo batteries all the way down. The results aren't good. Internal heat from resistance, shortened life, shortened run times and a dead battery much sooner. Just the nature of battery chemistry. Running deep into the charge cycle of any battery isn't good for it.

Poke the bear if you want, but a replacement VW battery will never be cheap. You'll be putting your e-Golf into the recycle bin a whole lot sooner, rather than later. Something to think about if you're green and trying to save the planet.

There's one exception that comes to mind, though, NiCd, only because it experiences memory loss, so it needs to be run all the way down from time to time.
 
No turtle yet. Surprising because my wife is the primary driver and she always used to run our ICE cars down to fumes. A few miles (less than 10) remaining with the fuel pump icon is the lowest we have seen.
 
3 left. Long story. First day. Had 21 left. 114 degree day in Phoenix. Made target run that was round trip 15 miles. So yeah I met turtle. Wife wasn’t happy. Lol
 
I find the "guess-o-meter" in the car very accurate especially at the minimum charge end of things. With the iphone map projected on the screen, you can compare the actual miles to go with the guess-o-meter. I plan a 20 mile hedge on the guess-o-meter.
Speaking of planning, a friend turned me onto a EV route planning app: www.abetterrouteplanner.com
It was initially devised for Teslas, but they now have "beta" settings for many EV's and enough granularity to include both the "26kwh" and "36kwh" egolf battery packs.
It takes into account terrain elevation, the wind direction and temperature you specify, and your state of charge at the origination, and based on that, plans charger stops on route with minimum time on charger, which is the chief benefit.
It works automatically and perfectly when you leave with car charge > 80% and have a destination that exceeds max range and it plans a stop and you don't edit the plan. But if you enter your own charger waypoint, you are deviating from the norm, and this "confuses" the software because it doesn't understand the logic. An example of this is inserting a level 2 charge stop in between level 3 charge stops, (if like me you have a protocol to never use level 3 "consecutively and repetitively" for maximum battery life.) You are making a strategic decision for software that is making logistic decisions. So it will try to max the charge at the inserted level 2 charger, which takes hours. The good news is is you can manually adjust the charge stop settings. You can change the desired charge level from "SoC" to a percent you like, and reduce the time on charger.
I find it works well, that is: the time on charger specified for the specific route gives me the battery percent at the destination I set. Any tool to reduce battery anxiety and time enroute is of enormous benefit.
 
spinner85j said:
I find the "guess-o-meter" in the car very accurate especially at the minimum charge end of things. With the iphone map projected on the screen, you can compare the actual miles to go with the guess-o-meter. I plan a 20 mile hedge on the guess-o-meter.
Speaking of planning, a friend turned me onto a EV route planning app: www.abetterrouteplanner.com
It was initially devised for Teslas, but they now have "beta" settings for many EV's and enough granularity to include both the "26kwh" and "36kwh" egolf battery packs.
It takes into account terrain elevation, the wind direction and temperature you specify, and your state of charge at the origination, and based on that, plans charger stops on route with minimum time on charger, which is the chief benefit.
It works automatically and perfectly when you leave with car charge > 80% and have a destination that exceeds max range and it plans a stop and you don't edit the plan. But if you enter your own charger waypoint, you are deviating from the norm, and this "confuses" the software because it doesn't understand the logic. An example of this is inserting a level 2 charge stop in between level 3 charge stops, (if like me you have a protocol to never use level 3 "consecutively and repetitively" for maximum battery life.) You are making a strategic decision for software that is making logistic decisions. So it will try to max the charge at the inserted level 2 charger, which takes hours. The good news is is you can manually adjust the charge stop settings. You can change the desired charge level from "SoC" to a percent you like, and reduce the time on charger.
I find it works well, that is: the time on charger specified for the specific route gives me the battery percent at the destination I set. Any tool to reduce battery anxiety and time enroute is of enormous benefit.
Click to expand...

Indeed spinner, a better route planner is excellent. Found it earlier this summer & have used it for some long range trips where I used back to back DC charges (GASP!). However with the best laid plans, there is that stop where the charger is occupied OR out of service. And then what... You leave enough buffer (sure) & have an alternative. But then there is driving in the Badlands of say New Hampshire where the only charger is the Level 1 in the trunk. You end up poking that turtle to appear....
 
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