Battery Ageing Model

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Am re- posting the warranty info for the Battery Capacity Warranty. It is this that has the 70% limit.
It applies to the car not the first owner.

The warranty manuals are here.
USA: 2017 Soul EV Warranty Manual
Canada: 2016 Soul EV Warranty Manual
UK: Warranty Terms and Exclusions

The Korean warranty is 10 years, 160,000km to 70% SOH.
The United States is 10 years, 100,000 miles to 70% SOH.
The Canadian warranty is 8 years, 160,000km to 70% SOH
The United Kingdom is 7 years, 100,000 miles to 70% SOH.
Europe is 7 years, 150,000km to 70% SOH.

for my previous data points, refer to that post
http://www.mykiasoulev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=434&p=8387#p8387

2018-09-30
odo : 22459 km
SOH : 27,2 kWh (100,9%)
det (min/max) : 8 / 10,2
ccc/cdc : 4506 / 4588 ah
cec/ced : 1652 / 1643 kWh
optime : 392
batt temp : 12 C

2018-11-04
odo : 24053 km
SOH : 27,5 kWh (102%)
det (min/max) : 6,8 / 9,2
ccc/cdc : 5578 / 5697 ah
cec/ced : 2047 / 2042 kWh
optime : 498
batt temp : 3 C
outside temp : 4 C

2019-02-23
odo : 27739 km
SOH : 27,5 kWh (102%)
det (min/max) : 6,8 / 9,2
ccc/cdc : 8801 / 9058 ah
cec/ced : 3268 / 3259 kWh
optime : 845
batt temp : 0 C
outside temp : -8 C

2019-07-06
odo : 33955 km
SOH : 28,1 kWh (103,2%)
det (min/max) : 5,1 / 8,5
ccc/cdc : 12923 / 13286 ah
cec/ced : 4789 / 4773 kWh
optime : 1271
batt temp : 26 C
outside temp : 23 C

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guiacan - thanks for the data.
I have copied your data into my excel table, and adjusted the values for the BMS reset.
The trend line for your car is very similar to another car in Quebec (Siluzium's) for which we have a lot of data for.
If this continues it will add to the data we are getting that the batteries do not last as well in an occasionally extremely cold climate.
Note - the worst climate for any EV without proper TMS is an extremely hot climate like Phoenix, Arizona.

My car shown in blue in the chart is not one of the best we are tracking, merely average.
The best cars are mostly in Northern Europe which has a much cooler summer than I do.

But your car may well improve its trend. The initial values are bad from the time it was a demo car before you bought it.
Another car in the Netherlands (Zunige Rider's) started badly because of this, and is now one of the best.



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Now with the weather nice and warm I decided to force a calibration on my battery.


My SOH jumped back to almost 110%; it's now in 109.6%

The interesting part is, as you guys might remember I'm the "crazy" guy that recharges his battery with the lowest possible current; 6A.

With Ambient temperatures around 25°C





My cell temperature map is not that different; reading taken 10 minutes after recharging.




This comes reinforce my theory (and experience from my older Peugeot iOn, where we concluded in other forum that heat kills batteries) that I might be in the correct path where recharging the slowest possible rate is healthy, countering Kia's opinion where we should not use the "trickle" charger to regularly recharge the car; I'm not using it, but I have set my OpenEVSE to 6A.

Of course the down side of this is, I took 26h to go from 16% to 100%. Not many people can afford to do this.

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Here's some screenshots of the official Kia battery check.
These cars have all been recently bought second hand.

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1. Quebec, 79,000km, 99.4% SOH, Link to French Canadian Facebook thread.



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2. Jeju, 76,000km, 84.8% SOH



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3. Oregon (originally Georgia), 42.7% SOH, battery to be replaced under warranty.



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There is a car in the Netherlands with very similar stats to the American one just above. - Soul Spy? Thread
These 2 disastrous readings are very disturbing when considering the long term health of our batteries.
Particularly because the Netherlands is not a hot climate.

Yes, that's the Soul I drive since September 2015 (the car is from August 2014). Like I mentioned before I always found the range less than on the car I had driven for testing.

My onboard charger failed in September 2016. I had swapped the granny charger with a coworker who had a Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV. Due to location of the outlets and his inlet on the car his granny charger was too short. The garage wouldn't replace it under warranty because I didn't use the Kia granny charger.

There was some back and forth between my boss and the garage and it wasn't fixed until the end of December. All that time I had to fast charge the car as that was the only way to charge that was left.

I didn't really notice a big deterioration then.


In May 2018 my engine broke. I heard a noise when driving on the highway but could still drive. It made a lot of noise when driving 50km/h but above that you didn't hear much. According to the garage I could still drive to them but once they had driven the car I wasn't allowed to drive with it anymore. Then it took four months and four shipments before they finally had an engine that would actually fit in my car.

As I understood they actually needed to make pictures and video before Kia in Korea was able to send the right engine.

After I got my car back I began noticing deterioration. Of course, winter was coming and that always meant less range. In the spring the range didn't improve. I went back a few times but nothing they did helped. Last May I was more or less fed up but they made a last change claiming the brakes had been stuck and they performed a firmware upgrade. That meant everything was reset and the car was showing 150 km range again.

Of course that didn't help either. I made a few trips where I kept track of the odometer and the percentage the car shows. I could drive about 25 km from 100 to 84%. After that I could drive 35 km till 30%. The first part would mean a total range of about 150 km. The second part would mean a range of 64 km. In a few days teh car was down to a range of 90 km.

So I went back, they did the battery check and I could get the battery replaced under warranty. They will be doing this next Thursday.

I don't know why that battery check wasn't done sooner. Apparently a battery check can't be logged in their system and they can only make a hardcopy. They said I should have these from earlier but I don't. I never saw one from my car. I'm sure I would have remembered if I did.

My commute is 90 km one way and in the last weeka I have been needing to do a quick fast charge on tlroute to get to work or home. Actually the fast charging is no way slower than it used to be. I'm lucky to get 35kW but that quicky slows down to around 25kW.

Anyway, maybe a rambling post but I think the main problem has been that my car wasn't used while the engine was broken. I don't know for sure, but my guess is the garage hadn't been keeping the battery charged. In fact it was the only time they had charged my battery to full when I got my car back. In hindsight they said they charged my car because it was "empty". Perhaps the battery slowly depleted and went way too low in voltage?

JeroenE said:

I don't know why that battery check wasn't done sooner. Apparently a battery check can't be logged in their system and they can only make a hardcopy. They said I should have these from earlier but I don't. I never saw one from my car. I'm sure I would have remembered if I did.

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I have to ask explicitly to have the SOH readings and I get a hardcopy then. The figures are then in the same range as Torque Pro is measuring for my Kia Soul EV of August 2014. I think the number plate is almost the same with JeroenE and myself. Last time measure my Max Deter. was 17.9 % and Min Deter was 15%. So my minimum SOH is 92.1 %.

How many kilometers have been driven? Mine around 113.000 km now.

ZuinigeRijder said:

I have to ask explicitly to have the SOH readings and I get a hardcopy then. The figures are then in the same range as Torque Pro is measuring for my Kia Soul EV of August 2014. I think the number plate is almost the same with JeroenE and myself. Last time measure my Max Deter. was 17.9 % and Min Deter was 15%.

How many kilometers have been driven? Mine around 130.000 km now.

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I recall our number plates don't differ much. Our vinnumbers are also near each other.

I'm currently at 155k km, I drive the car currently as little as possible because of the range issues while it used to be our main car.

I have never heard a so terrific story about an EV Soul...
I suspect you have a really bad dealer there.

JeroenE said:

...I could get the battery replaced under warranty. They will be doing this next Thursday.
...I'm currently at 155k km...

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I thought the warranty in Europe was 150,000km. not true?

In England the warranty is 100,000 miles (approx. 160,000km) and 7 years - WARRANTY TERMS AND EXCLUSIONS
Presumably Holland is the same.

EV Lithium-Ion Polymer Battery

The Lithium-Ion Polymer Battery warranty covers a minimum capacity for a period is 84 months or 100,000 miles from the date of first registration, whichever comes first. This warranty covers repairs needed to return the battery capacity to at least 70% of the original battery capacity. Where possible, the original EV battery components will be repaired and will be returned to the vehicle. If unrepairable, the EV Battery will be replaced with either a new or remanufactured Lithium-Ion Polymer Battery.

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JejuSoul said:

JeroenE said:

...I could get the battery replaced under warranty. They will be doing this next Thursday.
...I'm currently at 155k km...

Click to expand...

I thought the warranty in Europe was 150,000km. not true?

Click to expand...

In The Netherlands the warranty is 7 years or 150k km. There is no replacement battery in The Netherlands so it has to come from Kia in Korea. It takes several weeks for an order to arrive (just like my replacement engines). In the mean time I'm still driving the car so my mileage is now higher.

I don't know if I'll get an new, refurbished of repaired battery. As far as I could tell from the stories on this forum people get a new battery.

JeroenE said:

The garage wouldn't replace it under warranty because I didn't use the Kia granny charger.

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Just a question, what do you mean with you don't use the Kia "granny" charger?
As far as I remember in the car manual, they say to not recharge regularly with the Kia's supplied charger.

Oinq said:

JeroenE said:

The garage wouldn't replace it under warranty because I didn't use the Kia granny charger.

Click to expand...

Just a question, what do you mean with you don't use the Kia "granny" charger?
As far as I remember in the car manual, they say to not recharge regularly with the Kia's supplied charger.

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I used the same type of charger but from Mitsubishi. In the manual it says only Kia certified portable chargers should be used. In the Dutch version it says so on page 43 of the special green part where all the procedures of the EV are explained.

This of course is not true, you can use any. The so-called granny charger is not something special, it just is box which works like a (slow) charging pole. There is no difference in functionality between the granny charger and a normal charging pole, except the speed of the charging. Of course, you usually need to pay for using a real charging pole and the granny charger can be used in any outlet.

In the Dutch manual it only says that a) normal charging is recommended, b) quick charging should only be used when needed and can shorten the lifetime of the battery and c) if you can't use the normal or quick charging you can use the slow charging with the portable charging cable.

I'm not sure if I use the same words as in the English manuals, I'm paraphrasing what the Dutch one says.

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In July I sold my Hyundai BlueOn and bought a second 2015 Soul EV.



The blue Soul EV I have had for 4 1/2 years. It has done 60,750km. The GOM always shows about 185km at full charge.
The white Soul EV had done 75,000. The GOM showed 155km at full charge. Both cars showing 8.5km / kWh.
I made a guess when I bought it that the white one had 155 / 185 = 84% SOH.

The initial reading from Torque was -
Using the formula in Torque the SOH would be 89.9%, but using Elmil's new formula the SOH would be 84.8%



A week later I got an official reading from Kia.The SOH is 84.8% which matches Elmil's new formula.



The white car I just bought seems to have a 'bad' battery. The interesting question is, does my old blue Soul EV also follow a degradation pattern based on Elmil's new formula. The answer seems to be no. The data fits the original formula much better.
There is no official reading from Kia that shows any difference for my blue Soul EV yet.





The important point here is not the argument about what formula to use, it is the fact that for a substantial number of our cars very rapid degradation will occur leading to a replacement battery.

JejuSoul said:

The important point here is not the argument about what formula to use, it is the fact that for a substantial number of our cars very rapid degradation will occur leading to a replacement battery.

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I'm not sure but it seems to me (whilst driving a car with a bad battery) that you could sense the battery getting worse every week. Perhaps due to the fact I had to do more quick charging than usual, and especially because it was summer.

My guess is that the air cooling is good enough for a normal battery but once it gets bad the battery gets hotter when charging and then the cooling is not sufficient any more. My car also knew something was wrong because the quick charging was throttled down pretty quickly.

JeroenE said:

...I'm not sure but it seems to me (whilst driving a car with a bad battery) that you could sense the battery getting worse every week. Perhaps due to the fact I had to do more quick charging than usual, and especially because it was summer.

My guess is that the air cooling is good enough for a normal battery but once it gets bad the battery gets hotter when charging and then the cooling is not sufficient any more. My car also knew something was wrong because the quick charging was throttled down pretty quickly.

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Yes, summer temperatures combined with long drives may be a big factor in the recent volatility of the deterioration counters on my white Soul EV. The blue Soul EV is driven less and more gently. It does not show any recent change. The counters on the white Soul EV change about every day.

Here's the driving info for the first half of each daily commute.

The white Soul EV takes the freeway over the mountain.


The blue Soul EV takes city roads along the coast.


Obviously the battery of the white Soul EV gets much hotter, because it has the faster, longer drive. Summer temperatures means it has little chance to cool down. The charging profile is also different. The blue Soul EV is charged to 80% and goes down to about 30% before I recharge Maybe once every 3 days. The white Soul EV is charged to 100% every evening.

I don't drive the blue Soul EV down to the bottom of the pack very often. In fact so rarely that I forgot when the low battery warning come on.

I got a battery warning yesterday at 16% I couldn't remember if this was normal. It is.

Range Test results on a brand new 27kWh Soul EV - Kia Soul EV Range Autonomy Demonstration Nets More Than 100 Miles - Video



What did seem unusual was that the energy consumption numbers got reset with the low battery warning.

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My white Soul EV has lost 5% SOH in the last 5 weeks. Now down to 79.8% SOH according to Elmil's formula.
Am wondering if this fast loss will slow down now the summer is over.

Had a look at another way to measure capacity loss. More for fun than accuracy.
My white Soul EV takes 4 hours to fully charge on my home c harger.
My blue Soul EV took 5 hours to fully charge on the same home c harger, when the car was new.

This would imply 80% SOH. But I doubt there's much accuracy in this.
The charging rates are probably not the same. I would expect the smaller battery to heat up faster.
It also might spend far longer balancing the pack.
Maybe that means faster charging, or maybe slower. I don't know. I will have to graph some charging curves.

My blue Soul EV takes 4.5 hours to fully charge. This would imply 90% SOH. whereas the deterioration counters suggest 97%.
It suggests measuring the time it takes to charge it not a good predictor of SOH.

JejuSoul said:

My white Soul EV has lost 5% SOH in the last 5 weeks...

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What further evidence do you need that relying on the BMS estimate of SOH/capacity is a waste of time?

JejuSoul said:

...Had a look at another way to measure capacity loss. More for fun than accuracy...

Click to expand...

By comparing the kWh (as determined by an accurate external meter) your pack will accept at standard temperatures and charge rates between fixed SOC levels (generally full charge and full discharge allowed) with reference sources for a new pack (including charge efficiency and the percent of pack accessible) you can make a reasonably accurate estimate of both the accessible and total capacity of your pack at any time.

I was able to track my 2011 LEAF pack capacity in this manner for the last five years, and (happily) learned to ignore the inaccurate BMS readouts.

I expect (at least, I hope) that someone made the same suggestion before over the last 42 pages, sorry I didn't have time to review them all.

edatoakrun said:

...I was able to track my 2011 L eaf pack capacity in this manner for the last five years, and (happily) learned to ignore the inaccurate BMS readouts..

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Hi edatoakrun, its been a long time since you last wrote on this forum.
Last time here back in April 2016 you wrote

edatoakrun said:

...it seems likely to me that most or all Soul EVs driven in a climate as hot or hotter than Phoenix would qualify for replacement long before 10 years or 100k miles are covered.Depending of course, on how accurately Kia measures battery degradation for warranty purposes.

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You were right many Soul EVs in hot climates have already required a new battery.
And it is the BMS readout via an OBD adapter that Kia uses to judge when the battery needs replacing.

Here is an example of a car with a second replacement battery. From Facebook page for Kia Soul EV - Aug 25th 2019
It's in Southern California near San Diego so not quite as hot as Phoenix but nearly.

Jim Robertson said:

So my range was deteriorating over the summer, took it to Kia to be diagnosed. The SOH was 66%, took 2 days to get approved for battery replacement. I will drop it off Monday. This is the second time I will be getting a new battery. The first was at 50,000 miles along with the on board ch arger and now again at 82,000 miles for just the battery. Mine is a 2015

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The 2nd new battery he got may be an upgrade. From Facebook page for Kia Soul EV - Sept 7th 2019

Jim Robertson said:

I have more range now than ever. A full charge shows 118 mile range, it didn't do that when it was brand new. I'm thinking they put a 30 kwh battery this time instead of the original 27 kwh

Click to expand...

JejuSoul said:

edatoakrun said:

...I was able to track my 2011 L eaf pack capacity in this manner for the last five years, and (happily) learned to ignore the inaccurate BMS readouts..

Click to expand...

Hi edatoakrun, its been a long time since you last wrote on this forum...

Click to expand...

HI, again.

JejuSoul said:

Last time here back in April 2016 you wrote

edatoakrun said:

...it seems likely to me that most or all Soul EVs driven in a climate as hot or hotter than Phoenix would qualify for replacement long before 10 years or 100k miles are covered.Depending of course, on how accurately Kia measures battery degradation for warranty purposes.

Click to expand...

You were right many Soul EVs in hot climates have already required a new battery...

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Well, no great credit is due for that prediction.

If you look at the AVTA data up to termination of the testing program, ALL the BEVs being tested looked likely to be headed for early battery failure, when subject to the tortuous test conditions of high ambient temperatures and severe discharge/recharge (for the DC capable BEVs) cycling.

And, to the extent I have been able to discern from anecdotal reports on this and other forums, rapid capacity loss has been the case, irrespective of variations in cell suppliers and thermal management strategies, in those regions with extremely high ambient temperatures like Phoenix.

I'm hopeful that the packs being installed in BEVs today, almost a decade later, are significantly more resistant to degradation from high ambient temperatures and/or the increased cycling required by active thermal management.

But the primary reason I am a lot less worried about my ("40 kWh") 2019 LEAF than my ("24 kWh") 2011 under my own hot seasonal conditions, is that, with a I simply have a much larger margin of capacity to work with.

After eight years of use, my old LEAF had lost between five and six kWh of available capacity (as determined by an external meter) and I could no longer make my >50 mile winter commute (in temps down to 0 C) without a recharge.

If my 2019 LEAF loses only about the same five or six kWh over the next eight years...no big problem.

So I saw no reason to choose a BEV with a pack larger than ~40 kWh, which (unfortunately) meant passing on both the Niro, Soul and Kona, which are currently only available with the larger packs in the USA.

Of course, the costs of batteries were far too high back in 2011 to have allowed a mass-market BEV with a ~40 kWh pack (much less 50 kWh, 60 kWh, or even larger) so kWh hoarding was only an effective hot climate strategy for very expensive BEVs...like Teslas.

JejuSoul said:

...And it is the BMS readout via an OBD adapter that Kia uses to judge when the battery needs replacing...

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I know, but the reason I replied to your post is that your posted results indicated with near-certainty that your BMS could not be relied on, at least in the short term.

I Assume other forum members may have their own reasons to want to know their actual pack capacity, especially those who do not have the BMS reading to qualify for a free replacement pack under warranty.

JejuSoul said:

...San Diego so not quite as hot as Phoenix but nearly...

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Actually, San Diego is probably the most popular vacation destination for those getting out of Phoenix in the Summer.

Some inland areas of SD County are "Hot", in the same sense where I live is "hot" in the Summer but the coastal region (and most of the City itself) are quite moderate, year-round.