The BZ4X is Seriously Rangebound

[Steve312]

Having just completed a 1000 mile round trip, I found the BZ4X to have approximately a 100 mile range between charges. I had set my trip planner, ABRP to arrive at charging stations with 30% SOC in case the station was occupied or broken. The dismal charging speed I experienced in 50-60 deg F weather meant that I would typically spend 75 min per charge to get from 30% to 70%. Charging speeds would often start out at 35-45 KW but would then drop to 16 KW after a short time. The one time I tried to charge past 70%, I experienced 4KW speeds. I will never try this again. A 500 trip (each way) that would typically take 8 hrs in an ICE took 14.5 hrs. The BZ4X is seriously rangebound.

[Barkley]

I was getting results like this in 2014 in a Renault Fluence (my mean time between charges was 100m in Summer but fell to 75-80m in Winter.  As it’s the car telling the chargerpoint what wattage it requires as the pack temp rose the wattage decreased - indeed I would move off a Rapid to a Fast to let someone else in.

i now drive an iQ. Much simpler!

[Hybrid21]

Hi Steve, I would like an EV but with these figures it would be impractical ☹️

[Stopeter44]

7 hours ago, Steve312 said:

A 500 trip (each way) that would typically take 8 hrs in an ICE took 14.5 hrs. The BZ4X is seriously rangebound.

Doesn't sound fun. I used to think EV was the way to go, and I thought that a hybrid was a complicated solution. In many ways it is, but I average 50% distance in EV mode with my Yaris.

If my wife and I needed two cars, which we don't, I could see us having an EV for city driving and an efficient ICE pour longer highway trips.

It seems annually that the range limitation is lifting on EVs, (e.g. Peugeot just announced c. 25% range on there 2008 platform), that buying an EV anytime soon is a serious waste of money.

 

[philip42h]

7 hours ago, Steve312 said:

A 500 trip (each way) that would typically take 8 hrs in an ICE ...

I can only speak as someone who has decided not to go EV just yet ...

500 miles in 8hrs is an average speed of 62.5 mph - so I guess you are using motorways and travelling at 70+ mph where you can. You'd go further on a charge travelling at 60 mph which may take a little longer on the road but would save you more in recharge time.

And then, you (sensibly) stopped to recharge when you still had 30% SoC and then recharged to 70% SoC. The faster range of recharge are between 10% and 30% so you are missing out on the better recharge period. If you want to add 40% charge it would be far quicker to charge from 10% to 50% than from 30% to 70%. So better from the point of view of overall journey time would be "to set your trip planner, ABRP to arrive at charging stations with 15% SOC in case the station was occupied or broken". The problem here is more to do with the state of the charging infrastructure than the bZ4X.

I rather doubt that an EV will ever deliver quite the convenience of an ICE and we will need to adjust our driving styles and expectations to get the best out of an EV ...

[flash22]

30-70% is prime recharge percentage either side, and you end up with slower charging, Maybe if/when tesla open their chargers up it will give a few more options

 

For going the distance, Hybrid is the best bet at this time, in the future maybe leaning more towards the EV side as tech progresses, Battery tech is still not matured, and the infrastructure is not in place

[philip42h]

21 minutes ago, flash22 said:

30-70% is prime recharge

Not so - 10%-30% is the 'prime' recharge zone as shown in the figure below:

(taken from the EVDB site)

The charge rate drops-off 'linearly' from round 140kW at 30% but should remain above 50kW until 70% charge.

We don't know the capacities of the chargers that the OP was using ...

[AJones]

That does sound very poor, 40% increase in charge on a 72kWh Battery is ~29kWh, so over 75 mins that's averaging 23kW. If it was a one-off you'd blame the charge point, but if its repeatable across multiple different charge points then it sounds like an issue with the car.

I don't think it can be generalised as an issue with all EVs though, many other makes and models have got rapid charging perfected, that's the area Tesla focused in on with their rapid charging network, to avoid exactly this issue. 

One poor EV doesn't mean all EVs are poor.

[bZ4X]

4 hours ago, AJones said:

That does sound very poor, 40% increase in charge on a 72kWh battery is ~29kWh, so over 75 mins that's averaging 23kW. If it was a one-off you'd blame the charge point, but if its repeatable across multiple different charge points then it sounds like an issue with the car.

I don't think it can be generalised as an issue with all EVs though, many other makes and models have got rapid charging perfected, that's the area Tesla focused in on with their rapid charging network, to avoid exactly this issue. 

One poor EV doesn't mean all EVs are poor.

We should also consider rapid charging effect on the Battery life... There is no data currently. 

[Barkley]

Speaking as someone who purchased his first EV in 2007, things did get better, but 16 years on all we have are bigger batteries and faster charge points. There are lots of ‘poor’ EV’s out there and if a driver expects an easy tank to Battery swap without compromising will be hugely disappointed.  They are not for everyone and whilst I enjoyed things like free charging and parking that ended in 2014.  The remaining benefit - no Road Tax was useful until lower emission petrol cars were similarly benefiting - so the iQ for me was ideal for the small mileages I do.

I do still have an EV, an electric ‘executive’ bike that needs a replacement Battery pack (at a cost - in 2019 - of £7,200 plus fitting - for a 110m range).  I keep it in the garage to remind me of my occasional stupidity.

With the financial benefits of EV ownership continuing to be whittled away, the decision becomes harder with each budget.

[Barkley]

12 minutes ago, bZ4X said:

We should also consider rapid charging effect on the battery life... There is no data currently.

Rapid charging has been with us for at least 9 years - Tesla was the leader, and because the EV manages the charge it’s not the same as wacking it in as fast as you can (and heating up the rear seats and floor as a bonus).

[Cyker]

3 hours ago, bZ4X said:

We should also consider rapid charging effect on the battery life... There is no data currently. 

There is - Repeated rapid charging is known to accelerate pack wear, with the higher the current the faster the wear; Tesla have been known to disable supercharging on young high mileage packs in order to preserve their capacity above the warranty threshold.

This is why I think they need to standardize on an 800v system - Not just for charging speed, but because the lower current should reduce the pack wear. At the moment not many cars support 800v, but it's becoming clear that 400v is very short-sighted as higher energy density batteries are developed.

When I still wanted an EV, I calculated we'd need around 100-120kWh in something the size of a Yaris minimum to be more broadly acceptable, and at current charging rates filling that is already either inconveniently long or perceptibly damaging to the pack when done repeatedly at 400v.

That said, it'll be interesting to see how Toyota' solid state batteries respond to being repeatedly rammed with high current - It might not be such an issue with them.

 

[bZ4X]

8 hours ago, Barkley said:

Rapid charging has been with us for at least 9 years - Tesla was the leader, and because the EV manages the charge it’s not the same as wacking it in as fast as you can (and heating up the rear seats and floor as a bonus).

I meant that there is no data yet to compare the lifespan of Toyota batteries with those of its competitors.

[Barkley]

I Don’t believe Toyota have any magic bullet that makes their branded batteries better than any other - after all, they are not a Battery manufacturer and only buy in what they need.  Renault tried designing a charging module that (at the time) was credited with intelligently charging the Battery depending whether it received a domestic, Fast (three-phase) or Rapid - for the Zoe, which at the time I thought was a great idea - but that was in 2016 and was heard of no more, Chameleon they called it.  
 

I don’t believe modern batteries suffer with Rapid charging, but why stress the pack with high temperature variations if you only need a trickle over 10 hours for the next day\?  As you’ll never have a Rapid at home it’ll rarely be a daily occurrence anyway as you’ll do it overnight, hopefully with a discounted white meter rate or Solar at no cost.

[ernieb]

2 hours ago, Barkley said:

..........
 

I don’t believe modern batteries suffer with Rapid charging, but why stress the pack with high temperature variations if you only need a trickle over 10 hours for the next day\?  As you’ll never have a Rapid at home it’ll rarely be a daily occurrence anyway as you’ll do it overnight, hopefully with a discounted white meter rate or Solar at no cost.

That's why they start to restrict the charge as it gets to 80% or less depending on the temperature etc. Also Toyota restrict, I think, the number of rapid charges and full charges in any day?

The protection is built in which is why people get frustrated on long trips when the car charge rate is small and the charger can potentially give more.

[Hybrid21]

I would also need to take in the psychological unease on a journey always watching the amount of charge left, wondering if the next charge point will be working, should I stop for a fast charge, etc

Not for me 😄

[Barkley]

27 minutes ago, Hybrid21 said:

Not for me 😄

I believe the technical term for this is ‘Range Anxiety’. I quickly got over this by carry a Mains Extension lead 🤠 just in case I had an issue.
 

 I never ever used it in anger, or ran fully out.  Once you get the measure of EV driving and factor in the type of route and the temperature you get a sixth sense of how far you can really go, rather than the ‘estimate’ shown on screen - which, let’s face it has as much chance of getting it right as you have of winning the lottery. However ‘Range Confidence’ will click in as you become familiar.

Would I return to an EV?  Perhaps, but not at any cost as my self-bought iQ was £38k less than my BMW i3 I’m saving a fortune and I’m getting used to the economy! 😜

[Cyker]

The best thing with an EV is if you can charge at home - You have max range at the beginning of every day, and as long as you don't need to go further than half its range than it'd be very convenient. For the odd longer journey, you'd have to plan and you can't just go on a whim like you can with an ICE car, but it's doable.

If you can't charge at home (Or work), then it quickly becomes pretty miserable experience, as the public charging experience is still pretty awful by all accounts.

I think if you're retired and/or can hit the chargers 'off-peak' and have no time pressure then it's still doable, but for everyone else they're just not ready.

My absolute baseline is 300 miles at 70mph in something the size of a Yaris - That would be enough I could get away with only needing to charge once a week, which I could do during my weekly shop (Assuming all supermarket carparks have full charging by then... people in charge, make it happen!), and the range would be enough to get to my furthest relative and back with a small contingency buffer for e.g. when they shut the M1, as they like doing randomly.

I do like the idea of EVs, but I'm not willing to pay more for something that's just worse in every way than my current vehicle.

[OldSteve]

On 11/25/2023 at 1:44 AM, Steve312 said:

Having just completed a 1000 mile round trip, I found the BZ4X to have approximately a 100 mile range between charges. I had set my trip planner, ABRP to arrive at charging stations with 30% SOC in case the station was occupied or broken. The dismal charging speed I experienced in 50-60 deg F weather meant that I would typically spend 75 min per charge to get from 30% to 70%. Charging speeds would often start out at 35-45 KW but would then drop to 16 KW after a short time. The one time I tried to charge past 70%, I experienced 4KW speeds. I will never try this again. A 500 trip (each way) that would typically take 8 hrs in an ICE took 14.5 hrs. The BZ4X is seriously rangebound.

I'm slightly confused. So you charged to 70% when you reached 30%, therefore using 40% of capacity and achieving 100 miles, suggesting a full range of 250 miles. I would suggest this isn't bad at all for long journeys at motorway speeds which handicap all EVs. Presumably you charged on the road around nine times, how many times did you have to find an alternate site because the station was fully occupied or all chargers out of commission?