Soul Spy?

[Lelik]

Checked the SOH is 81%, battery max.cell detoriation_pct 58, max cell V 3.74 battery min.cell detoriation_n 2. Also I noticed that after I charged to 100% last night, the spy shows following SOC_display 100%, battery.SOC 95%, battery.SOC_precise_pct 75%.

Any thought about these numbers? Should I call Kia to get my car checked?

 

[JejuSoul]

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Looks like one of the cells has gone bad. If so you will be getting a battery replacement soon.

To be sure, please post the voltage heatmap screen.
Once after driving - try accelerating up a hill - stop at the top and take a screen shot.
Once when charging - try to get a screen shot just before charging finishes.
Any bad cell would stand out clearly. And it would be the same cell on both images.

 

[Oinq]

Force a battery calibration. Chargebt 100%, discharge below 20% and charge again to 100% that will update the BMS. After this do what @Jejusoul said above.

I suspect you will get a new battery soon from Kia.


Ps, are you Dutch?

 

[Lelik]

Thanks for suggestions, I will try to do that. I noticed that cell 1 has lower voltage than the rest. I'm Russian, but living in Canada, Vancouver. I used to drive Nissan Leaf for 3 years same route and lost like 4% over that period of time. So I hoping it is either the bad battery or some software issue. I have called Kia and scheduled a check up. They told me that based on VIN the BMS software was updated, but it might be worth to try the update one more time.

Does one bad cell cause the battery replacement under the warranty?

 

[Lelik]

After discharging to 20% and charging back to 100% cell #1 showing 4.10v the rest showing 3.88-3.90v, so it’s clear that the cell#1 is bad. The temperature above cell#1 was 33C and the rest 28C. Car display shows 100% charge, however the soulspy soc-display 75.5% and soc precise only 49.8%. So I assume that the cell#1 reaches the max voltage and tell BMS to stop charging to avoid overcharge. I will let battery seat overnight and cool down in this case the voltage will dropdown a bit and car should charge a bit more till cel #1 again reaches the max voltage. Does anyone have battery cell replaced? Or it has to be whole battery pack?

 

[Oinq]

When I bought my car I was told they will repair or change the pack, that was their decision.

 

[JejuSoul]

After discharging to 20% and charging back to 100% cell #1 showing 4.10v the rest showing 3.88-3.90v, so it’s clear that the cell#1 is bad. The temperature above cell#1 was 33C and the rest 28C. ...

Yes. Cell #1 has gone bad.

Technical details -

The Soul EV battery pack has 192 polymer pouch type cells.They are laid out in a series string of 96 sets of 2 parallel cells. A group of 12 cell pairs form a module. There are 96 cell voltage sensors, and 8 module temperature sensors.

Cell #1 is in module 1. Because Cell #1 has gone bad it heats up faster than the rest, hence the temperature of module 1 is higher than the rest.
The car normally charges until the cells reach about 4.12V, (it depends on the temperature). When one cell is bad the car stops charging early.

I have a Hyundai BlueOn electric car with a single bad cell, and this behaviour matches what you are seeing.

Kia has never 'fixed' a faulty cell by replacing just the one cell. They have always replaced the entire pack. I assume that this is easier for the local mechanics. Kia has never been pro-active in fixing a pack that is failing, they will only do a replacement after the SOH has reached 70%. However once a cell has gone bad the entire pack will deteriorate quickly. You will be getting a new pack soon. And luckily for you it will probably be a 30kWh pack that replaces your existing 27kWh pack.

This issue is also talked about here - Battery Ageing Model

 

[Lelik]

So to accelerate the battery degradation I need to go completely opposite of what every EV onwer does. Discharge to very minimum and use quick charge as frequent as possible.

 

[Oinq]

So to accelerate the battery degradation I need to go completely opposite of what every EV onwer does. Discharge to very minimum and use quick charge as frequent as possible.

make the battery hot and you will definitely kill it.
Lot's of highway, ac full on, charge it at hot days on quick charge, like certainly accelerate his life cycle.

 

[ksoul2084]

So recently my SOH reading dipped below 80% for the first time (79%).

SOH: 79%
Max cell det %: 42.3
Min cell det%: 16.9%

Then after driving more and dipping to 7% SOC and charging to 100% again it reset to:
SOH: 91%
Max cell det %: 37.3
Min cell det%: 0.6%

I find the SOH to be fairly misleading, not really sure what it's telling me?

I find the Battery SOC prec(ise?) value to be a better representation of my overall battery state of health, since when the battery is at 100% SOC, it seems to how the actual available percentage of the battery vs. when it was new.

So on my soul battery SOC at 100% , SOC Prec = 58.72%. In my experience this represents an accurate estimation of the range I will get from the charge.

SOC Prec 100% = 150kms range (when new).
SOC Prec 58.72% = 88kms range now (what the GOM typically shows).

Of course, depending on my driving habits I can squeek up to 110kms out of the range, but typically no more than 100kms.

So what good is SOH? Do others find SOC Prec to a better indicator of overall battery health?

 

[langemand]

I find the SOH to be fairly misleading, not really sure what it's telling me?

As you have experienced, BMS battery balancing and recalibration can result in a updated evaluation of battery state. If it has been a long time, or a long distance since last time you discharged to around 10% and charged back up to 100%, the change can be significant.

The SOH is calculated using the mean of the two values indicating lost capacity: min and max det. I don't know if the calculation is the same as used by Kia, so the app may not produce the same SOH value as an official test at a Kia garage. That value is the goal for the SOH calculation in the app, but I need some app-recorded files with min and max det from shortly before and after a Kia SOH readout, as well as the official Kia SOH. I can improve the SOH calculation if I get a few such datasets, at different levels of SOH, and significantly different min and max det, like your car's values.

I find the Battery SOC prec(ise?) value to be a better representation of my overall battery state of health, since when the battery is at 100% SOC, it seems to how the actual available percentage of the battery vs. when it was new.

So on my soul battery SOC at 100% , SOC Prec = 58.72%. In my experience this represents an accurate estimation of the range I will get from the charge.

SOC Prec 100% = 150kms range (when new).
SOC Prec 58.72% = 88kms range now (what the GOM typically shows).

Of course, depending on my driving habits I can squeek up to 110kms out of the range, but typically no more than 100kms.

I am glad you find "SOC prec" useful. I haven't found and explanation of what this value from "PID 598" actually is, see https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YYlZ-IcTQlz-LzaYkHO-7a4SFM8QYs2BGNXiSU5_EwI/edit#gid=234054559

So your guess is as good as mine. On a new car with 100% SOH, it seems to follow the SOC fairly well, so you may be correct in this value indicating the actual / expected amount of energy currently stored by the battery. I am interested in knowing more about the nature of "SOC prec" as well. Perhaps I should do some number crunching on the data I have gathered from my car 2017-2019, if I can find the time for it.

So what good is SOH? Do others find SOC Prec to a better indicator of overall battery health?

The SOH is useful for determining whether to visit Kia for a warranty check. But as you have demonstrated; you need to perform a BMS battery balancing and recalibration first: Kia will undoubtedly start by doing that, if you ask them to test the battery.

 

[ksoul2084]

The SOH is calculated using the mean of the two values indicating lost capacity: min and max det. I don't know if the calculation is the same as used by Kia, so the app may not produce the same SOH value as an official test at a Kia garage. That value is the goal for the SOH calculation in the app, but I need some app-recorded files with min and max det from shortly before and after a Kia SOH readout, as well as the official Kia SOH. I can improve the SOH calculation if I get a few such datasets, at different levels of SOH, and significantly different min and max det, like your car's values.

Ah I see. On my car I usually get to below 10% and back to 100% at least once a week. Every so often it seems to reset the min det value when this happens, which then slowly creeps back up as I drive/charge.

The SOH is useful for determining whether to visit Kia for a warranty check. But as you have demonstrated; you need to perform a BMS battery balancing and recalibration first: Kia will undoubtedly start by doing that, if you ask them to test the battery.

Well something doesn't add up, because my SOH has varied from 93% - 79% (and back, more or less) but my actual range when charged to 100% is much closer (consistently) to the 58.72% of orig. range value that Soc Prec reports.

If I take the car to KIA they'd have a hard time arguing that the battery range isn't below 70% of original, regardless of what the SOH calculation says (I would think).

In any case, this app has been very useful to me thanks for creating it.

 

[Kish]

Tested out the Soul EV Spy today, looking good. I prefer to use Torque Pro + custom dashboards, but this makes it easier for newbies to get the technical info they want. The info matches up exactly as Torque Pro (which makes sense because the data is all coming from the same PIDs)

How does my battery look? This a fully charged battery at 100% SoC.

 

[Oinq]

This new beta version introduced an error that I never had seen.
I start the app normally, apparently it reads the values from the car, and disconnects itself after a few seconds. If reconnect automatically is on, it will reconnect and star the cycle again.

I notice this because of the message on the bottom saying it's connected or disconnected every few seconds.


What files do you need to troubleshoot this?

 

[langemand]

Please e-mail the soulspy... txt files from the Download catalogue to [email protected]

Also a file from when it worked, If you have it.

Write which dongle you use, which car model and variant you have, whether the car was on ready to drive, on not ready to drive, on only accessory or off, what you did, and what you observed.

Then I can check.

 

[Oinq]

Please e-mail the soulspy... txt files from the Download catalogue to [email protected]

Also a file from when it worked, If you have it.

Write which dongle you use, which car model and variant you have, whether the car was on ready to drive, on not ready to drive, on only accessory or off, what you did, and what you observed.

Then I can check.

sent

 

[Oinq]

Hello langemand, I already received your email, thank for reply.

Meanwhile, I also found something strange that is coming for a while, but only today I filled the spreadsheet, so I could only find it today.

Min cell deterioration and max cell deterioration are the same, in my case, cell number one.
Also this is just cosmetical, but deterioration is misspelled; it's written detoriation.
Can you guys see this images?

Best regards and thank you

 

[langemand]

Min cell deterioration and max cell deterioration are the same, in my case, cell number one.

I checked your log files, the car reports 1 for both cell numbers, the app just display what the car reports:
7EC 24 00 24 01 00 08 01 A6

Also this is just cosmetical, but deterioration is misspelled; it's written detoriation.

I will fix it.

 

[Oinq]

Min cell deterioration and max cell deterioration are the same, in my case, cell number one.

I checked your log files, the car reports 1 for both cell numbers, the app just display what the car reports:
7EC 24 00 24 01 00 08 01 A6

Funny... Does anyone knows if did this happened to someone else?

 

[langemand]

Well something doesn't add up, because my SOH has varied from 93% - 79% (and back, more or less) but my actual range when charged to 100% is much closer (consistently) to the 58.72% of orig. range value that Soc Prec reports.

I will repeat: I don't know what the value in 'SOC Prec' is. The name was invented during the guesswork of finding meaning in the anonymous data values collected from the car.

Actual range is affected by many other factors besides battery capacity. Have you ruled out:
- hanging brakes
- New wheels or tires
- AC lost (most of) it's cooling fluid
- season of year (temperature, wind)
- changed driving patterns: Style, route, speed, distance per stop, time per stop, hills
- changed charging patterns
- roof rack

And the range value displayed by the car is varying even more, based on the latest trips (and, I believe, depending on when you last reset it).