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My EU trip in July

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2K views 23 replies 12 participants last post by  HandyAndy  
#1 ·
I sailed across overnight to Caen in my Vauxhall Combo -e Wheelhome camper at the end of June. I was heading to the Dordogne and then to Nuremberg in Germany (not really the route most people would choose!)
My Combo e-Life is now coming up to 2 years old and has done nearly 30,000 miles (including the 2068 miles of EU travel). I have found that it has lost about 12% battery capacity now, which didn't bother me at all on my hols, because I never planned to drive more than 100 miles between charges in any case, and it was all daylight summer travel. It is now more a problem for my UK social life, where evenings out present the capacity problem, even before we get to the dark, cold winter.
The camping and charging in France and Germany is a doddle. Electricity in France is cheaper and they seem to be well geared up for motorhome and camper overnight stops. Germany was a bit more expensive on the charging, but all the chargepoints worked wherever I went and there was no shortage of them. The total charging cost, including my UK journey to Portsmouth was under ÂŁ250. (NB I sailed back from the Netherlands to Harwich, pretty close to my home base.)
The only other significant cost was the motorway tolls in France for which I bought in advance a Sanef Emovis Tag, total cost ÂŁ94. That was a dream to have so that, travelling solo, I didn't have to worry about getting out to pay the tolls, and in any case, some motorways don't have barriers and you have to pay afterwards somehow!
All in all, my Combo-based Wheelhome worked really well. The solar panel on the roof allowed me to park up overnight pretty much anywhere (legally, that is.)
My worry is the deteriorating battery. I had a battery failure at South Mimms on my way to Portsmouth, which a friend on Speak EV suggested might have been a traction/12V start-up battery blip. I just carried on to Portsmouth anyway, once it decided to play again, and I had no other problem at all throughout my trip. Vauxhall have since confirmed that this was the likely problem, though they offered no advice about it!
The battery capacity is likely to continue to deteriorate at the rate of 10% every 25,000 miles and that is going to present a problem for me as I use my camper also as a daily car. Vauxhall have said that a replacement battery pack would be ÂŁ20,000!! So I shall be considering a small run-around for a lot less than that! Where does that leave the second-hand market for EVs, I wonder??
Is there any advice that other high-mileage users have in the face of falling capacity? I don't want to be forced give up my Wheelhome - next year is the Orkneys for me - and I do want to use my tight piggybank wisely.
 
#3 ·
He's lost 12% in 2 years. So 6% a year. Some of that will be loss from natural aging and some from usage (15k per year).
Obviously because it's a van (low mileage/kWh) and has a small battery (45.6kWh usable) there has been a fair bit of cycling of the battery which won't help.

The problem is do you hold on to the van for another 5 years in a hope that it drops below the threshold for a new battery while having to put up with an ever decreasing range. Or do you bite the bullet and get rid now while it has a fair bit of value left in it.
 
#4 ·
The question posed above is exactly my dilemma - at what point do a part with my vehicle in favour of another? My plan was to have the camper for another 5-8 years and then rethink, but if the battery attrition continues at this rate, I am not sure how realistic that is. (This is no ordinary Combo van, it was a 5 seater car converted to a camper, so really not cheap!) I don't want a second vehicle, but that is an option for non-camping.
Whether the loss is relatively high may be a feature of Stellantis - the figures seem to be in line with the Vauxhall "norms". I have them somewhere but can't lay my hands on them just now. From memory, I think I am in line with 150 miles capacity after 25,000 - from about 43Kwh rather than 50 kwh (new). I need to check whether they offer new battery after 8 years.
 
#5 ·
You might get a new battery under warranty if the degradation is that bad but you are going to end up with a battery with less than 100 miles range until then. Depends if that will suffice.
In several years time you maybe able to pick a relatively cheap secondhand battery as there are lots of Stellantis 50kWh packs out in the wild.

What is the actual kWh available? If it's 43kWh then that's 93% of usable capacity. So 70% of usable capacity for a battery warranty claim would be 32.4kWh.
 
#6 ·
Thank you, GavJ for that useful info. I will feel ok if I have a plan and your comment about getting hold of a half decent Stellantis pack is an option. I was thinking that my battery capacity was still around 47% but my recent arithmetic suggests 43%. I shall hunt around for all my paperwork so I know where I stand.
 
#8 ·
I did take it in a while ago and they said it was "in the expected range (normal mode)". That's how I got the figures on degradation out of Vauxhall. I have now found my piece of paper with the range data on it:
the Summer figure for a new vehicle in 2022 does not accord with the advertised figure for the range (174 miles) and is stated as 152 miles. The Winter figure is 146 miles.
the Summer figure for 25,000 is given as 128 miles - and I am getting better than that. The Winter figure is 121 miles.
The projection for 100,000 miles OR 8 years is Summer 106 miles/Winter 100 miles. If I can hold out that long, I ought to be able to get a much better battery, though I suspect 4 more years might be my limit for winter driving!
 
#9 ·
Nice trip on the contenent. What chargers were you using? Did you get any memberships? If going now I would be looking for Tesla and Ionity for a month. Personally I avoid the French motorways as I am not normally in a hurry and want to see the country more. Plus I am tight...

You can not judge the battery degradation based off the GOM estimate. You need to do a real range test from full down to a very low charge % and then calculate the energy used based on the consumption and the distance covered. An OBD dongle will let you see the State of Health (SOH) as reported by the van which is probably what Vaxhaul will look at first for any waranty claim.

FYI my Citroen eDispatch 75kwh 2.5 years old 29000 miles curently reports a SOH of 93.13%. battery capacity is about 61kWh. The Highest value I ever saw when I got the van a year old 4500 miles on it was 67kWh. So realistically I have seen about a 10% loss. Most of this came fairly early on. The typical degradation curve of the batterys is not flat. There is a fairly steep drop initally and then it shallows out and then drops steeper towards the end of the usefull life. Hopefullymost of the drop you are seeing is this inital quick drop and it's now into the slower drop period and you want see things getting dramatically worse. Although if you do then you may be good for the warranty claim.
 
#15 ·
Nice trip on the contenent. What chargers were you using? Did you get any memberships? If going now I would be looking for Tesla and Ionity for a month. Personally I avoid the French motorways as I am not normally in a hurry and want to see the country more. Plus I am tight...

You can not judge the battery degradation based off the GOM estimate. You need to do a real range test from full down to a very low charge % and then calculate the energy used based on the consumption and the distance covered. An OBD dongle will let you see the State of Health (SOH) as reported by the van which is probably what Vaxhaul will look at first for any waranty claim.

FYI my Citroen eDispatch 75kwh 2.5 years old 29000 miles curently reports a SOH of 93.13%. battery capacity is about 61kWh. The Highest value I ever saw when I got the van a year old 4500 miles on it was 67kWh. So realistically I have seen about a 10% loss. Most of this came fairly early on. The typical degradation curve of the batterys is not flat. There is a fairly steep drop initally and then it shallows out and then drops steeper towards the end of the usefull life. Hopefullymost of the drop you are seeing is this inital quick drop and it's now into the slower drop period and you want see things getting dramatically worse. Although if you do then you may be good for the warranty claim.
The Charge points I used in France and Germany were the ones compatible with the Chargemap Pass, which was the RFID I used throughout. Chargemap seemed to work very well, both in terms of routing and charging by card.
The motorway service stations (aires) are often Ionity, but some are Totalenergie. I used a Shell garage once, I think, when I used a Shell card (expensive everywhere). I didn't see any Tesla sites, but that's because I wasn't looking for them on Chargemap. I have found a few since on my Tesla app and they are even cheaper than the usual supercharger rates! (I missed a trick there!)
The total cost for my motorway tolls was ÂŁ95 over under a fortnight, going from Caen to the Loire valley, then Dordogne before crossing the border at Saarbrucken. I don't know what it would have cost if I hadn't paid for the tag facility, but I just didn't trust myself to stay off all toll roads.
Thanks for the tip about the OBD dongle. I was hoping/assuming that the battery degradation was not linear, so maybe it will flatten a bit for a while now. The exchanges on this forum are really interesting and useful.
 
#13 ·
In the light of the bigger EV world i very much doubt that amount of degradation and it is no indication of the future which will be much lower. Unless you really do have a faulty battery you are not going to exceed the manufacturers warranty -they are not that stupid.

This kind of talk reminds me of the early days when people were saying they would only last 2-3yrs like mobiles and cost zillions to replace -all not true.

Just dont leave the battery fully charged or empty for long periods- a few days.

Dont panic, see what it will be like in another year.
 
#14 · (Edited)
Didn't you have different tyres put on it recently? Before youe EU trip I believe? What sort were the originals, and what do you have now? This can make a sudden change of range of 10% quite easily, as the Rolling Resistance varies a lot, and is a critical factor. I might be able to make a ballpark estimate of this factor, if I know the tyre details & can find the tech info for them. Need to know the vehicle weight as well if poss!

edit: Looking at some pics, I think that as of 15 June this year you had
Michelin Primacy 4 205 60 R16 92H Rears
?what brand? 205 60 R16 92V Fronts which you had to have fitted in a rush.
Assuming the Michelins are the OEM tyres fitted all round (correct?), and you had the front 2 replaced, can you tell me what brand these are? My pic doesn't show this.

V rating is totally over the top! No way you'll be doing 149 mph! :LOL: H rating seems normal for our EVs that are often limited to 100 mph.

I have a feeling the Stellantis profile on Car Scanner Pro is very limited in detail. Not sure if it stores useful info like accumulated Ah etc etc, but it does have a SOH entry. I used it to look v quickly as a demo to an electrician in his Stellantis EV Van, and his reported degradation was large. Forget how many miles he'd done though. Surely we have some typical Stellantis degradation figures for their 50 kW packs in here now?
 
#16 ·
I had the Michelins when the car was new. After my many (possibly pothole-related) disasters within a three month period this year, I had to replace the rear two, so they moved the front Michelins to the rear and I could only get Continentals 205/60R 16 ECOC (noise class B!) for the front two at the time. I had ongoing problems with valves on the Michelins, but then that all got sorted before I left for France and I had no pressure difficulties whilst travelling - nor since.
I had the feeling - without evidence - that I was getting generally better performance in France and Germany than on our fair isle.. That could have been road surface quality or weather, but I have not felt quite as secure since I got back home - and the weather has been much the same throughout.
I can't say the weight of my vehicle, but it won't be very different from the 5-seater car fully loaded.
I support your call for Stellantis degradation figures as the foundation for monitoring. When thinking of replacement batteries, I would want to look for something showing better performance and shelf-life.
 
#19 ·
It seems to me that your battery degradations calculations are based on the displayed range to empty, which can vary quite a lot according to whether you have the air con on and how much, the weather now and in your last drives, the time of year, the speed and driving style. It is not of any use to calculate battery degradation.

Therefore, your estimates of battery degradation are probably not right and the degradation is likely smaller than you think. That's just a guess, you can try to see if I'm right if you measure the state of health using an app + dongle or if you measure the consumed energy by measuring how much energy is taken out of a charger to charge from near 0% to near 100%, for example.

However, it's not clear where even these methods are reliable indicators of degradation or not.

I would probably not worry about it. If the range estimates keep going down for another year maybe look into it more.
 
#20 ·
I don't use the aircon hardly at all, but I take the point. I am also not sure about the consistency of the performance or the measurements that I attempt to draw from the metrics it seems to produce. It seems to be random and not at all as reliable as how we used to monitor fuel usage. I will be running as is for at least another year, including a prospective trip to the Orkneys next year - by then I shall have clocked up another 15,000 miles at least. The winter will be another testing season, no doubt!
 
#23 ·
I do want to use my tight piggybank wisely.
You might want to consider Newhaven -Dieppe as an alternative which is a lot cheaper: my neighbours left in their camper van yesterday (towing a small car too!) and they always use that route. We used it too back in July although returned via Caen (Ouistreham) as Portsmouth is on my doorstep and home in minutes.