E-208 Range vs Battery Oddities

jules_2998 said:

I'm curious about whether anyone has spent any time digging into charging / range characteristics of the e-208.

I've had mine a few months now, and it seems to behave very oddly.

The first thing we noticed is that the range estimate always seems to be much higher than the reality. As a rule of thumb it we're working with 50% greater reduction in range than we actually cover, so if we do 30 miles the range estimate will come down by maybe 45. I feel like we drive fairly consistently and the car ought to be able to do a pretty good job of estimating mileage, but it's terrible.

The second oddity is the battery percentage vs range. You'd expect the relationship to be pretty linear for any given conditions, so 0% battery = 0 miles. 100% battery = 190 miles. The 50% battery would be 95 miles. But this doesn't appear to be the case. I've started noting down % and miles, and it seems like 50% is closer to 75 miles, and the graph I'm building looks very non-linear.

I'm actually beginning wonder if Peugeot are deliberately exaggerating the range estimate and overegging it more the higher the % charged. This would explain the over-estimate of range and the non-linear charging.

What is other people's experience?

J

Click to expand...

Think of a coffee mug with a straight edge.

Percentages are easy to visualise.

Now think of some weird Clarice Cliff mug which is like the middle section of two cones stuck together at the base.

The linear percentage lines of the straight mug can be copied across to the other one but the volumes in each section will differ.

Batteries both charge and drain in a non linear way and none of the stallantis cars do a particularly good job at giving you any decent estimates.

A cup of coffee is one thing but the batteries also suffer from changing temperatures too.

All batteries have the same sort of characteristics, some cope better than others but it's not an additional fault with the car it is however something to get used to.

It would be interesting to see your graphs and if you have taken into account heating and aircon and other bits people take for granted before driving a BEV.

Gaz

jules_2998 said:

I'm curious about whether anyone has spent any time digging into charging / range characteristics of the e-208.

I've had mine a few months now, and it seems to behave very oddly.

The first thing we noticed is that the range estimate always seems to be much higher than the reality. As a rule of thumb it we're working with 50% greater reduction in range than we actually cover, so if we do 30 miles the range estimate will come down by maybe 45. I feel like we drive fairly consistently and the car ought to be able to do a pretty good job of estimating mileage, but it's terrible.

The second oddity is the battery percentage vs range. You'd expect the relationship to be pretty linear for any given conditions, so 0% battery = 0 miles. 100% battery = 190 miles. The 50% battery would be 95 miles. But this doesn't appear to be the case. I've started noting down % and miles, and it seems like 50% is closer to 75 miles, and the graph I'm building looks very non-linear.

I'm actually beginning wonder if Peugeot are deliberately exaggerating the range estimate and overegging it more the higher the % charged. This would explain the over-estimate of range and the non-linear charging.

What is other people's experience?

J

Click to expand...

It's definitely not linear, but I haven't plotted any data to confirm that.

You're also going to use a significantly larger portion of the battery on non-traction stuff during short journeys - cabin heat, battery heat, air conditioning etc. The cabin heater especially is a huge power hog (it can draw about 7 kW), so every time you set off the power use is going to be higher earlier and then settle.

The range meter is not very sophisticated and it can't see the future, so it bases the range estimate on the average mi/kWh over the past few minutes, so this will fluctuate considerably depending on the type of roads you use. I'm always amused by the sudden jump in range I can get when coming off a long motorway stint into some urban driving.

I tend to base my range estimates now on the displayed battery percentage and an overall average use rate of around 3.6 to 3.7 mi/kWh for urban and about 2.5 for motorway speeds. This is based on the car's reported 3.7 mi/kWh over 2500 miles of driving.

In terms of how I use it, I completely ignore range for commuting purposes and only charge every few days, and when planning long trips I'll usually put in 80 to 100 mile motorway stints. This means I sometimes don't bother fully charging the car overnight before setting off, since I know I can easily make my primary and backup charge stops with something like 15 to 20% battery and benefit from a shorter rapid charge.

Cptn_penguin said:

In terms of how I use it, I completely ignore range for commuting purposes and only charge every few days, and when planning long trips I'll usually put in 80 to 100 mile motorway stints. This means I sometimes don't bother fully charging the car overnight before setting off, since I know I can easily make my primary and backup charge stops with something like 15 to 20% battery and benefit from a shorter rapid charge.

Click to expand...

I also completely ignore the range and now have from experience a good feel for how much SOC I need for the next few days trips scheduled.
I cannot comment on how other cars calculate the GOM (guess o meter) but the mercedes is pretty accurate and is based on a mix of recent and longer term efficiency achieved. So the figure you really need to concentrate on is your m per kw you achieve as that will be the basis for the range shown.
It is not a matter of 100% SOC means x miles everytime at all. When you charge you are not putting in guaranteed x miles of range For x SOC. You are putting in energy which will deliver x miles depending on a myriad of conditions, temp, terrain, driving style, additional power usage, weight carried, wind conditions, traffic conditions the list is long.
So when preparing a longer trip I will work out a conservative kwh/100km in my case and then I can calculate an approx SOC on various points of the journey and what charge I may or may not need and this is obviously what all the various planners do which is why they ask for the vehicle details.
Frankly I feel the way the advertising people sold BEV with all the talk of range has caused a huge problem with people totally misunderstanding the concept. People seem to think range is a fixed thing in electric vehicles where with ICE they understood that a gallon of fuel would take them a longer or shorter distance depending on all the conditions listed above. They also seem less concerned with efficiency than they were with MPG but as time passes I think it will change.
For what it is worth I am very lucky to use a high quality road system normally bereft of lots of other traffic so I roll along at a fixed speed for reasonable distance with few roundabouts and traffic lights. My efficiency on some of my journeys is way way better the WLTP figures so to me my car is far more economical than the stats suggest however on another forum someone was complaining about the dreadful consumption of the same car. He uses it mainly in cities where hauling the 2.5 tonne car in stop start traffic will be far less efficient than my driving which can maximise gliding and regen as much as possible. His range on his 100% SOC will always be less than mine which is enhanced by the days I see very high efficiency.
Rereading your intial post I may be off with my answer and you may indeed be including this in your consideration. Apologies if that is the case.
Is the car new or secondhand new to you? If secondhand new to you it might be new owners diff driving style or it could be maybe Peugeot use some standard flat calculation at the start of every journey which is then adapted to the consumption of that journey🤷‍♀️
I am quite impressed with Mercedes first electric car and not least as the EQ element as they call it works well though occasionally the app looses contact with Mercedes’ servers but that has been an issue since my first Mercedes’ me car in 2015 and is overall better as time passes. Am off on a trip next week I will actually take note of what happens with the range but on the long coast down from my nearest village I have seen km added with the drop in consumption.

Interesting thread this, and although I don't have an e208 what is being said by the OP has a familiar ring to it.

When I had a Leaf, it's GOM was infuriatingly bad when the SOC was high. The miles would seem to just drop off within minutes. Then as the SOC dropped lower, the GOM seemed to be a bit more accurate. At the bottom end, with very low charge remaining it would would improve further still - if it said you had 20 miles remaining, you would invariably get at least 20 miles.

Then on the eNiro I had next, the GOM was astonishingly good. It didn't seem to vary over winter or summer too much, if it said your range was 270 miles, you'd pretty much get that. Some of this is due I believe to the much better efficiency of the heater in this car (a heat pump), you just didn't see the wild swings in power usage that I did when using the heater in the Leaf.

Current car is pretty similar, but doesn't have a heat pump, and although its GOM is nowhere near as bad as the Leaf, the lack of heat pump means the GOM is not quite as good as the eNiro in terms of consistency over the seasons.

I think @Cptn_penguin is on the money - try to minimise the number of variables by not using the heater/air conditioning and see how you go with actual miles travelled. Your mi/kWh then is what you should go on to predict your range - i.e. if you are getting 3.6 mi/kWh (sounds low for such a small car) at 50% SOC you should be able to go:

3.6 x 0.5 x 45 = 81 miles

Or another way to look at it, is 1% of battery should take you 1.62 miles

I'm a BeliEVer said:

I think @Cptn_penguin is on the money - try to minimise the number of variables by not using the heater/air conditioning and see how you go with actual miles travelled. Your mi/kWh then is what you should go on to predict your range - i.e. if you are getting 3.6 mi/kWh (sounds low for such a small car) at 50% SOC you should be able to go:

3.6 x 0.5 x 45 = 81 miles

Or another way to look at it, is 1% of battery should take you 1.62 miles

Click to expand...

3.6 to 3.7 is about right in my experience with the e208.

With a mix of autumn and winter driving over 6500 miles I got 3.6 mi/kWh, then over the following 2500 miles of spring/summer driving I got 3.7 mi/kWh. I drive in high regen mode (B) in town and standard low-regen (D) on motorways and try to minimise my use of the mechanical brakes as much as possible, but I never drive the car in Eco mode at all.

I think given the design of the e208 as an adapted design based on an ICE platform I am pretty pleased with it. It's definitely nowhere near as efficient as some of the Korean ground-up EV cars like the EV6 and it seriously suffers in range in the winter, which I think is due to the heat pump Stellantis uses in the 208.

Simon..Hewison said:

Difficult to say. My e208 doesn't readily display an actual state of charge percentage (some of them do apparently on the trip computer screens), all I know is that I have yet to even see any low-battery warning on any of my drives in the 5 months I've had the car. I never trust any guessometer.

Click to expand...

The right hand display with the range meter does have a visual display of battery percentage with markers for 100, 75, 50 and 25 so you can sort of see how much you have, but it's a request that many 208 owners have been making for a while - the ability to display the numerical percentage while driving. I'd personally swap it out for the numeric range display which is less useful. I mostly ignore the number range and look at the side gauge.

My personal wish is that you could edit the way the range meter works, for example, by using a setting where you could enter a user-supplied energy use figure. So, I could manually put in 3.7 mi/kWh and have the range always display based on that. Even more idea would be for it to use a couple of values, so you could enter an urban driving figure and a motorway one and have it show both ranges so you could see at a glance how far you're expected to go based on the two very different energy use regimes.

I have no idea why car manufacturers use GOM, it is what you say: a guess. @Cptn_penguin is on the money.

The e-208 is intended for city and secondary roads, not highway. Its Cd is bad. It has a permanent magnet motor - not SynRM. Great for city torque and efficiency at low revs, poor efficiency at high revs hence the 150 km/h limit: it would overheat. On the highway, compared to a Tesla, BMW, Ioniq or Kona, the e-208's consumption is terrible. For the 2022 model they patched it a bit with a more efficient heat pump and a somewhat longer ratio in the gearbox.

Here is my experience numbers for distances over 50 km done at once (1 year of data):

This needs a bit of explaining:

• Never empty your battery. I leave 5% in as a minimum.
• Charging to 100% takes "forever" due to the charging curve dropping off.
  • Fast DC charging from 5% at a 100kW capable fast charger will take 35 min to 80%, more than an hour to 100%.
  • I found around 87% still has OK charge speed, beyond 87% you need to have time... that last bit just slows you down.
  • So I have ranges for 100% battery, 87% (practical fast charge limit), 70% (limit for leaving car on driveway)
• With shorter stretches the stop and go increases utility consumption (like airco) significantly.
  • every time you stop your car heats up, aircon has to cool it back and 0 km travelled...

Another piece of info is my automatic logger using flobz/psa_controller in docker on my NAS, these figures look worse because they are dominated by short trips:



This data is recorded by the car and reported to Stellantis servers, even if you do not use the data. flobz/psa_controller gets your car's Stellantis data from the servers.
So these are real world measurements. No bragging here.