How low (on range) have you gone? Anybody run out yet?

[Theo]

Don't mean for this thread to tempt people to run their battery packs as low as possible, but I was wondering if anybody here has run out of juice yet, and what the car's behavior was when it happened. Does it go into "neutral" so that you can coast it to the side of the road, or is it an abrupt thing? Does the car range estimator have a built-in reserve to help people avoid getting stranded? What messages does the car give out and on what timeline/range thresholds does it do so?

For my part, I've had 2 close calls, one a couple weeks after getting our Spark, on a long drive home from the in-laws, kept watching the range get lower and lower on the freeway, doing the mental math of how far we were from home and trying to reconcile the two numbers together... and finally pulled up to our house with the range at 1 mile! t'was a bit nerve wracking to say the least as it was late at night, with the whole family in the car, and pretty early on in our EV experience! And then the one that prompted this post was, on the way to work this morning, got down to 0 miles of range, but fortunately the car still let me drive for another 0.5 miles which was all I needed to get to the charging station by my office. Let's just say that I won't be needing any coffee today :lol:

Note that I don't run my battery pack low for the fun/thrill of it. My charging options at home and work are sub-optimal (at home it involves running an extension cord out the front door of the condo and across a shared/busy driveway, and at work the nearest L2 charger is ~1.5 miles from my actual building), so I don't have the luxury of topping the car off every night. I typically plug the car back in when it's in the 5-15 miles left on the range and charge it back to full.

In terms of messages the car sends out, I've seen (I will have to take pictures next time to get the wording exact):
- "Battery low, recharge now" on dash at around 10 miles of range left
- "Reducing available power" on dash at around 8 miles of range left. You can't accelerate as hard anymore to keep the drain on the battery low, car feels really sluggish
- "Do you want to turn the radio off to conserve energy?" on the center console. I want to say this happens at about 6 miles of range left
- "Out of Energy, plug in to recharge now" on dash at 0 miles of range left (as mentioned above, I was able to keep driving for ~0.5 miles after this to get to the charging station)

 

[ecilopaveht]

I have been down to 3 miles, but that was on purpose. I was low when I got home so I drove around just to see how low it would go. I chickened out at 3 miles.

 

[fengshui]

I don't know of any recorded instances of driving a Spark EV to failure, nor do we know how much secret reserve there is at 0 miles of range. I expect there's some, possibly even more than you'd expect. When people have called Tesla at 0 miles of range, the Tesla techs usually report ~8% battery capacity. I'd love to hear how far someone has gotten after hitting 0 before the Spark EV completely conks out.

 

[Electricbowtie]

Got it down to 6 miles and it mentioned "Propulsion reduced" at one point.

 

[supcrds]

For my part, I've had 2 close calls, one a couple weeks after getting our Spark, on a long drive home from the in-laws, kept watching the range get lower and lower on the freeway, doing the mental math of how far we were from home and trying to reconcile the two numbers together... and finally pulled up to our house with the range at 1 mile! t'was a bit nerve wracking to say the least as it was late at night, with the whole family in the car, and pretty early on in our EV experience! And then the one that prompted this post was, on the way to work this morning, got down to 0 miles of range, but fortunately the car still let me drive for another 0.5 miles which was all I needed to get to the charging station by my office. Let's just say that I won't be needing any coffee today :lol:

It looks like you are the only one that has reached zero (and beyond) how can you post that without telling us miles driven? Don't you know some of us feed on data? Les is know your miles driven those two times.

 

[Theo]

Sorry to have to disappoint on the miles driven question, as I am not always able to charge back up to full (as was the case this time), so don't have a relevant "range from full" number. A typical use pattern for me sees the range drop down to "5-15 miles" before charging, at which point I plug it in overnight at home on a 110V charger, which gets me to 80-90% charge before I have to drive off to work the next day. So unfortunately not the most scientific and helpful in figuring out max range numbers...

When I was driving from a full charge and paying attention to the range, I have been typically getting in the low 90s for range, calculated as "miles driven" + "range left" when I would reach a range in the "5-15 miles to go" before charging back up, when driving reasonably carefully. I do mostly surface streets with a quick ~4 mile freeway section on my commute.

But now you've got my curiosity, so I will have to find a day where I can con a friend into pushing my car to the closest charging station and find out both what the max range I can get is, and what happens when you get and go beyond 0 range. Already have a quiet industrial (read low traffic) 1-mile loop with no stop signs that has 2 charging stations along it figured out which will be perfect on a non-work day. Will be sure to rig up some GoPros to share the experience

 

[corwin]

I ran my Spark completely to a stand-still on the very first drive home from the dealer. It is a long story and I'm not a novice as far as EV's go, I've had a Leaf for three years and never got that car so low. I got the "output may be reduced" message and drove a further 5 miles past "0 range" (completely level road and going about 40 mph) before the car just coasted to a stop. While I waited for a tow truck to show up, I tried to drive to see if just sitting for a few minutes would restore some capability, but nothing. So the tow truck did finally arrive after about 45 mins and I got a tow for about 1 mile to my destination and a charger. At that point I was able to put in gear and drive about 30 feet into charging position.

Certainly not what I would ever choose to do again, but it was 3am and I was just a mile from my destination. But having said all of that I was really impressed with the range. I got from Roseville, CA to San Ramon, a distance of about 101 miles and still had a 'bar' showing on my gauge. I charged for as long as I could stand it, about 2.5 hrs before setting off for Santa Clara and my Leaf, a distance of 35 miles. I made it 34 miles.

Well the journey didn't end there. My Leaf was showing just two bars of charge and I still had to get to Capitola 44 miles away, and over the Hwy 17 summit. Luckily, my Leaf does CHAdeMO and there's quite a few of those around. At 5:30 am I pulled into my driveway.
-Corwin

 

[Oberon]

I just ran mine down to 1 mile. I started out the day with a full charge and did some opportunity charging and then since it was down to so low went out and drove a bit. Total mileage 136 since this morning. Total in the past 24 hours 180.

I did notice that when it is cold, ie low 40s it does not do as well. I can usually get 4.4 to 4.6 mi/kwh but the it was cold last night and tonight and during those times it was more like 4.0 to 4.2 and that is without running the heater. I'm not sure quite what this means since kwh should be the same size even when cold, but I repeated it two days running.

 

[fengshui]

I ran my Spark completely to a stand-still on the very first drive home from the dealer. It is a long story and I'm not a novice as far as EV's go, I've had a Leaf for three years and never got that car so low. I got the "output may be reduced" message and drove a further 5 miles past "0 range" (completely level road and going about 40 mph) before the car just coasted to a stop. While I waited for a tow truck to show up, I tried to drive to see if just sitting for a few minutes would restore some capability, but nothing. So the tow truck did finally arrive after about 45 mins and I got a tow for about 1 mile to my destination and a charger. At that point I was able to put in gear and drive about 30 feet into charging position.

Thanks! 5 miles past zero isn't bad. I took mine down to 2 miles of range with about 7 miles to home. I drove to a public charger that was less than a mile away down-hill and had dinner while I charged for an hour. Good to know that I might have made it, if I had had to.

 

[iletric]

Good info!

 

[gra]

I just ran mine down to 1 mile. I started out the day with a full charge and did some opportunity charging and then since it was down to so low went out and drove a bit. Total mileage 136 since this morning. Total in the past 24 hours 180.

I did notice that when it is cold, ie low 40s it does not do as well. I can usually get 4.4 to 4.6 mi/kwh but the it was cold last night and tonight and during those times it was more like 4.0 to 4.2 and that is without running the heater. I'm not sure quite what this means since kwh should be the same size even when cold, but I repeated it two days running.

Cold air is denser than warm air, so air drag is increased in cold weather. In addition, cold temps will lower the air pressure in your tires slightly if you don't adjust them (Tire Rack says the rule of thumb is 1 PSI per 10 deg. - see http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tiretech/techpage.jsp?techid=73 ), and the rolling resistance of the rubber compounds will also increase in colder temperatures, and the same can be true of wheel bearing drag. In addition, wet or snowy roads will decrease your m/kWh.

Summing, there are lots of possible reasons why you'll see a lower m/kWh reading in colder weather than warm, and it's normal for this to be the case.