[h8ten]

I use Torque Pro with an OBD to read things from the Ampera. Normally when the car is fully charged I have been seeing a battery charge of 83.5% with it occasionally showing 84.1%. Today on the way to work I had 2 miles remaining and about 2 to go with a couple of junction acceleration points. I hate driving the car a short distance with the engine kicked in so I thought I would try Mountain mode to give the battery a wee boost for moving the car to the charger at lunchtime as opposed to the 1 mile on the engine. After it had been running for a few minutes the range was showing '0', kind of disappointed that I had not had it running for long enough but anyway went to move it back to normal and noticed that 'Hold' was not available, probably due to the low range. So I went to 'Normal' and found I had 6 miles range, enough to get to work and also move to the charger midday. Come time to head home first thing I noticed was the range was at 50 miles, normally only 48 for the last week or so but the battery charge was now up to 87.1%. Back home tonight, charged up in town and the battery capacity is still showing 87.1% and a range of 50 miles.

 

[Barty]

I have no idea what's happened here but it looks like the extra bit generated in MM has not been accounted for when charging the car, so it is available on top of the normal charge. Or maybe it has temporarily lost track of the charge state and will reset back to normal after the battery is fully drained. It will be interesting to see if you do actually get extra range or not. These are just guesses and I expect someone who knows far more than me will be along soon!

I have Torque Pro but have only used it to clear codes. Do you have a special set of PIDs(?) for the Ampera to show battery charge state?

 

[h8ten]

I have them from the Chevy Volt group. I will try and find them tonight. Today the battery ran out at 10.4 so only 0.1 or 0.2 higher than normal. I had made it to my usual charger there at lunchtime but three were iced and one in use so I had to go further and the engine kicked in, scunnered.

 

[h8ten]

Here is the link to the Chevy Volt Forum regarding the PIDs. The car is still charging up to 87.1% but the weather has been pretty wild and windy to really tell if it's making much difference.

 

[Barty]

Thanks Ian, I will have a play around with Torque and see if I can load those PIDs at the weekend.

 

[h8ten]

I have the SOC which gives me the 87.1% when full and 19% when empty (I can't recall this exact figure but around the 19 mark) and also HBATT which give the same reading but rounded down and always a zero after the decimal point. Also, I have Bat Temp and Coolant Temp (Coolant so I know when I can switch the cabin heater on if the engine is running and up to temp and when to switch it off along with Volts (measured at the adaptor and Revs (just out of curiosity for when the engine is running).

 

[Barty]

I can see I have a bit to learn about Torque. I managed to copy the PIDs across in a .csv file into Torque and can list the PIDs under Volt but have no idea how to set up a custom screen and automatically load the ones I want to see. All I've ever used it for before is clearing codes, so have a bit of a learning curve coming up!

 

[h8ten]

I have one that I don't know what it refers to but the figures change so it must be reading something!

 

[Barty]

Well, after looking online, I managed to set up a screen with some gauges that appear to work. Due to the bad weather I forgot to look to see the raw SOC after charging but after a short trip to the shop it was just around 81%. I also added a rev counter and coolant temp gauges which did nothing as the engine was not on, plus Inst Power Kw and HV Volts.

It's all very interesting, just having it on a phone with limited screen size I may set up two screens, one for EV driving and another with engine stuff for hybrid mode. The MyGreenVolt app works OK but it's nice to have more flexibility in the gauges and layout.