Ownership Verified: NooDle’s EV take 2 : The Mullet (Kia EV6)

[eizbaer]

Super illegal? Why?
I did get a sort of warning when I turned them on saying 'this may not comply with all local laws etc don't sue us if you get a ticket' but I thought this was meant for France where all sort of warnings are banned.... amusingly there is loophole in the law that allows for warnings for "Points of interest" as long as you don't specify it's a speedcamera....

Yeah I think it's mostly the same in Germany... any tools (be it an app on the phone or active radar warning devices) to warn you about speed cameras are VERBOTEN!!!! same loophole might also work, though

Oh yeah, it's rather nice that you've kept that market design alive! And it does make sense... we used to have a similar thing for people who heat their homes with electricity (night storage heaters), but I think it was always only used for that and it's not actually all that feasible to get these tariffs anymore. there's now heat pump / EV charging tariffs, but those are usage-based rather than time-based (so the heat pump or charger has a second electricity meter) and only reduce the power grid fees (up to 7ct/kWh), not the base energy cost. Still good, but you end up having to pay for the second meter.

 

[NooDle]

Well it's been a while since I've had weird tyre pressure issues, but there's something strange happening (cue Stranger Things 80s synthpop soundtrack)

Got a 'low pressure' warning on the right rear, although 2,2 vs 2,4 for the other tyres didn't really need a warning if you ask me.
So fine, I go to the petrol station (btw why is it so effing expensive nowadays, LPG was off the scale !) to pump up the tyre, and a couple of days later, same thing, same tyre.
So I guess I have a leak or a slow puncture or something, guess I'll visit the tyre shop and they'll fix it.... but THEN.
It kept pressure all of a sudden? I reinflated all tyres to the same pressure, and while the right rear is sometimes 0,1 or 0,2 lower, it rises and drops with the other tyres (going up 0,2-0,3 bar as the tyres heat up/ I drive at speed) and then losing the pressure again as I slow down/the weather cools.

So... yay? Problem fixed itself?
I'm now paranoid and checking the pressures at all times because something feels off...

 

[NooDle]

I'm not crazy! Well maybe I am, but I as right about the tyre pressures being off.
Car was booked in to look at a creaky noise anyway, so I asked them to check the right rear, and lo and behold, a big old screw caused the problem. So that's sorted.

Also, amazingly, the creak/rattle/noise was just the door rubbers letting in air.
They can apparently fix this by use of magic technology, as there is some sort of spraycan thay can make the door rubbers more "tacky", which means they hold better together, and let no more air in.

So now, finally, after 4 months and about 15k kms, my car is whisper quiet above 70 kph as it's intented to be

 

[NooDle]

And not even 24h later there's an issue. Mainly me being clumsy (actually 100% my fault) but I missed one of those low narrow concrete block things in the parking lot and twatted into it at low speed. Was quite shocked, it wasn't picked up by either the parking sensors or the camera.

So small dent in the plastic bumper, and a crack in the sort of front splitter thingy. Licence plate also kinda damaged. Sadface

Insurance company are heroes though, accident occurred at around noon, I submitted it via their app, and 1 hour later they had notified a dealer to repair it, who sent me a text another hour later. I can have them look at it on monday. Will update with more.

Car's fine actually, everything still works, it's just cosmetic damage....

 

[NooDle]

First world problem nr 4.247 : I bought a large USB stick to take all my music with me in the car (256 GB) since I'm so bored of Spotify's constant ads. But the car only recognizes the first 8.000 songs (out of roughly 25k). Dang.

 

[NooDle]

More faffing around!
Found you can fuck around endlessly with the interior colours. Looks like this

View: https://youtube.com/shorts/Zzi-mCSoxVQ?feature=share
Went with dark purple because it makes me feel like a pimp

 

[NooDle]

First real world ‘worst case scenario’ test.
Purposely drove a bit too fast (nothing ridiculous, 125 kph+), it was very windy and rainy today, and I drove almost exclusively on the highway. I was curious to see what consumption I’d get…

Not too bad, this means that I could do 330ish kms in the worst possible conditions. I guess speed is the biggest contributing factor since it’s not that cold yet.

I’m kinda tempted to do a super eco run, but driving at 90 kph max until the battery runs out will take a looooong time. On the other hand, I have a trip to the Netherlands planned (where 100kph is the speedlimit on the highway)….

 

[NooDle]

Seems like that would make sense, with daytime/nighttime changing litterally every day, but apparently not possible in the Kia

They’ve added it now! Dunno how or why (auto updates?) but now I can set it to automatic!

Also, winter tyres are on. More road noise obviously but also a bit more feel/bite. About to do 400 kms today so will see how it goes

 

[NooDle]

Empty battery is empty. Drove 8 more kms like this. Aside from the turtle icon and a lot of beeps, nothing really impacting the driving experience

420 pure highway kms, pretty happy with that at 4-15 degrees

 

[NooDle]

And not even 24h later there's an issue. Mainly me being clumsy (actually 100% my fault) but I missed one of those low narrow concrete block things in the parking lot and twatted into it at low speed. Was quite shocked, it wasn't picked up by either the parking sensors or the camera.

So small dent in the plastic bumper, and a crack in the sort of front splitter thingy. Licence plate also kinda damaged. Sadface

View attachment 3566720

Insurance company are heroes though, accident occurred at around noon, I submitted it via their app, and 1 hour later they had notified a dealer to repair it, who sent me a text another hour later. I can have them look at it on monday. Will update with more.

Car's fine actually, everything still works, it's just cosmetic damage....

All fixed! They even replaced the licence plate with a new one with a slightly weird font, but whatever.
Colour looks awesome in overcast conditions

 

[DanRoM]

Colour looks awesome in overcast conditions

Good choice for Belgium then.

 

[NooDle]

Nearing 6 months of ownership so time for some reflection and stats (because I'm nerdy and I like stats)

Total mileage : 21296 kms
Total charged : 4327 kwh
This gives me an average consumption of 20,31 kwh/100 kms, which seems a bit on the high side (car reports 18,2)

Total charging sessions : 140 for 184 days, which means a charge every 1,31 days
Public slow charging 131 kwh (3% of total)
Public fast charging 362 kwh (8% of total)
Home charging 3833 kwh (88% of total)
Which underlines again how important a home charger is if you drive a lot like me. I have charged on public chargers, but more often because I could, not because I had to.
Times the Guessometer lied to me : 0 => this is a major difference compared to my eGolf who would wildly guess a random number and then adapt it while on the go in ways that were incomprehensible. This is much better, I may lose or gain a few kms, but the general guesstimate is usually 100% accurate. I can say this because I drove it down to 0% and it still got me 16 kms further...

Total number of unintended drifts/powerslides : 1
Total number of deliberate drifts/powerslides : many

Total number of damages out of my control : 2 (1 cracked headlight due to a rock, 1 puncture due to a screw on the road)
Total number of damages because I'm an idiot : 1 (dented the front splitter/bumper because I didn't notice a concrete block)

Ragrets about picking this car: 0
Yes it's a big and wide thing so parking can be an issue at times, and yes it has ridiculous wheel/tires so it does crash a bit over rough surfaces, but as a whole it's an awesome machine that does everything I ask of it and more. Still chuffed to have it

 

[NooDle]

Been seeing this a lot lately but can't figure out why? It shows as 100% full but somehow still needs 26 hrs to charge?
It isn't drawing any power, but the charger still says it is (it's not in waiting mode or something).
30 or so minutes later the charge does complete ....
Anyone on here have any ideas?

(Also despite being coldish now and me only doing highway miles/high speed, it still gives me 400 kms of real range. Noice)

 

[loose_unit]

Could this be due to battery re-balancing? I know this is what it looks like when Tesla does it (I was told this, I haven't seen it mysefl)

 

[eizbaer]

Could this be due to battery re-balancing? I know this is what it looks like when Tesla does it (I was told this, I haven't seen it mysefl)

Probably something like this, yeah...

It shows as 100% full but somehow still needs 26 hrs to charge?
It isn't drawing any power, but the charger still says it is (it's not in waiting mode or something).

may just be a weird rounding thing going on, coupled with the cars display showing what's happening according to SOC. I.e. the car thinks it's basically getting no effective charge while the draw from the socket is definitely still there. the 26hrs thing is a bit strange for sure, though.
Out of interest: how much power does the car still draw in this state according to the charger? The regular standby consumption during an active charge session without any energy going into the battery can easily be 300+W, just from the electronics in the car running... hence why Schuko charging (among other things) is a baaaaad idea.

 

[NooDle]

interesting. My app doesn't show actual charging speed, just time remaining, and by doing some math you can actually figure out what the speed is (77.4kwh * % left to charge / amount of hours left on the clock) but it's usually just quicker to go and look at the dashboard.

As soon as it hits 100% the dash shows 0 kw so I have no clue how much it's actually pulling.
Just electronics pulls 300-400w while driving so sounds about right.

Missing the actual charge speed in the app kinda bugs me, especially since VW has got that down. My coworker plugged his ID4 in at work and could see what the car was getting at any time. Our work chargers are all over the place when it comes to output though, so knowing what SoC you'll be when you leave is just guesswork. They range from 2 kw to 11 kw and it changes like 20 times throughout the day. At first I thought it was because of many cars plugging in and/or leaving, but it seems to be just random?
There are a TON of chargers though (30+) so maybe there is some balancing going on? I've never gotten 11 kw though, which is what each charger should be capable of providing, and even when there's nobody parked next to me (the chargers have twin sockets) it rarely goes above 5kw

 

[eizbaer]

They range from 2 kw to 11 kw and it changes like 20 times throughout the day. At first I thought it was because of many cars plugging in and/or leaving, but it seems to be just random?
There are a TON of chargers though (30+) so maybe there is some balancing going on? I've never gotten 11 kw though, which is what each charger should be capable of providing, and even when there's nobody parked next to me (the chargers have twin sockets) it rarely goes above 5kw

that sounds like a fairly simple power sharing algorithm of the chargers at work with a VERY limited grid connection somehow. in theory, our chargers at work do the same (20+ charge points) and I can see the charger starting out with the minimum 6A (=5.5 kW, they're not technically capable of switching to 1phase* and 6A is the minimum the standard will allow) and quickly ramping up in single A steps to the full 16A / 11 kW over the course of half a minute or so (my app does show all this, happy noises). this is because a) the grid connection is fairly generous and b) there's never more than maybe 5 cars charging in parallel. your situation sounds similar, with the difference of a much more restrictive total limit plus more concurrent active charging sessions, so you never get to see the full 11 kW. also it changing 20 times a day would fit that whole power management thing, I'd expect it to change much more frequent than that, though (i think our's theoretically updates every 5 seconds or so, which we never see, because everyone is always on the full 11 kW after the first ramp up anyway). what's a bit weird and why I think this is maybe either a very early implementation of such a system or a particularly simple/dumb one, is that you say the result you're seeing is very unpredictable. which, from a user / customer perspective, really isn't what you want may be explained by the sheer number of cars charging and their differying energy needs, though.

* something I just thought of: maybe your chargers can switch between 1p/3p, but only before a charging sessions starts. that may explain the weird behavior - once a sessions starts on either 1p or 3p, it can't switch out of that, so the chargers deliver wildly varying power simultaneously. so once a 1p session is started, you're limited to 3.7 kW, while a 3p session is inversely limited to a minimum 5 kW (because of the 6A minimum limit). in any case: seems a little annoying.

 

[NooDle]

Interesting. While I was faffing around looking for my charge card I did notice the charge speed go from 3 to 5 kw and then back down to 4 in a matter of a couple of seconds. None of the other cars there were being unplugged so I guess it's something to do with the available power of the building? And AFAIK the chargers can switch from 1p to 3p, giving me 7,4 kw maximum (1p 32 amp).

It's so weird that it's all over the place, with some chargers giving a "not enough available power" warning and not outputting anything at all...
At home I've only seen the power drop once, when I was charging the car AND running washer and dryer simultaneously, which is a bit much for a single phase connection. Even then I got 5,5 kw ....

 

[eizbaer]

yeah sounds like the system does work similarly to what we have here and balances rather quickly and properly... which really is in line with:

None of the other cars there were being unplugged so I guess it's something to do with the available power of the building?

Oh for sure they usually do that, which makes sense when you want to get the most out of the limited connection. otherwise you'd be stuck with a certain "reserved" power for the chargers and another part reserved for the building, the latter only being used a few % most of the time (especially if there's high power stuff like an elevator or something, which only runs very rarely but uses a huge amount of power).

Even then I got 5,5 kw ....

weird... since that is 6A/3phase... which doesn't make sense with a 1phase home connection. maybe a coincidence. no idea there (nearly) nobody has smart stuff like that in their home over here, since everybody has 3phase home connections with ridiculous power reserves anyway.
only really relevant for people who want to do excess-PV-charging, which requires the wallbox to quickly and widely adapt to changing solar generation and home consumption. like me. i have the ugliest wallbox in the world at home because it will do exactly that out of the box incl. 1p/3p switching during charging (without having to tinker with home automation or even worse cloud based bullshit systems). the PV system isn't there yet, but once it is, since the charger is from the same manufacturer as the inverter, they will just talk to each other and figure stuff out without me having to worry about it.

some chargers giving a "not enough available power" warning

that's probably the result of the system in theory having to lower average amperage below 6A (with equal distribution to all chargers) - which isn't possible. so you end up with a few chargers still running (above 6A), while others have to be switched off completely because they can't be throttled down far enough to provide that "fair distribution".

 

[NooDle]

Interesting. We do have 2 elevators that run pretty much all day (6 story building, tons of different business in there so a LOT of people). I do sell chargers for a living but the ones at the office are a different brand working differently from what I’d expect… why isn’t there a FIFO system for power?