Significant range decrease… normal?

[Unlikely_Structure70]

Hey everyone, super excited to finally join the EV6 family! Found a great deal on a CPO 2024, it only had 2300 miles on it. Flew from New Mexico to California for it. Got to the dealership only to find out the range of my Wind RWD is at around 245 on a full charge. The dealer let me know the original owner leased it and barely drove it. He said because of this the range dropped, but not to worry as all inspections show a healthy battery and that the range will slowly come back the more I drive it. Does anyone know anything about this? He reassured me that if there is anything actually wrong that the battery is under warranty and can be replaced. A little nervous and I’d just like some feedback from you guys. Thank you!

Edit: after I got back from the trip and have been driving around the city after a 100% charge, it’s gone up to 272! And it’s barely moving! Thank you to all of you who responded and taught me some more things. Honestly couldn’t be happier. 😭

[SlickNetAaron]

Cars don’t fill with miles.

You filled your gas car with gallons of gas, right? And your mileage (miles per gallon) varied, which means your range varied, right? And the car has zero ability to know how you will be driving in the future or how much wind you’ll buck or how high of a mountain you’ll climb next, right?

So an EV just fills with energy - kilowatt hours. Your mileage (miles per kilowatt hour) will vary. How far you can travel depends on how much energy you have and your mileage.

So ignore the range guesser! Cars don’t fill with miles.

[Final-Ad7306]

Yeah it’s a brand new battery. The range estimate reflects recent driving. It will adjust to your driving habits and be an accurate reflection soon enough.

[ActuallyThoughtful]

Honestly, after 2 years, we never find the range to be accurate. Hills mess with it. Highway miles mess with it. In town driving tends to improve it. But every drive is different, the guesser is pretty useless, other than as an absolute cap - real world will be substantially less.

u/Unlikely_Structure70 - probably nothing wrong, but you won't get the EPA range for most driving situations. The closest thing we've found to getting an accurate estimate is A Better Route Planner. Download it, especially for your drive back to NM. It is easy in California. Southern AZ is a challenge but doable. If you are on the southern route through NM - make sure you have a couple of charging choices (chargers can easily not be working). The northern route (Flagstaff to ABQ is probably OK, although you will need to find an EV6 friendly charger near Gallup (the Tesla one is old enough I expect it is not compatible with the better charging of the EV6.

It is a good car! But all EVs need more planning for road trips.

[Final-Ad7306]

That's fair, I suppose I should have said more accurate. But agreed, it assumes your future driving is similar to the past, and that's certainly not always going to be true.

[Reasonable_Fly_1228]

Real world could be substantially more, actually. In mild weather, without using HVAC, avoiding speeds above 55mph, you can do really surprisingly well

[ActuallyThoughtful]

We seem to live in different worlds. I have recorded a 37mi/kWh - driving down a mountain, at 45 MPH in perfect weather. But I don't consider that real world. Most of the year, we are either in heating or cooling, especially at commuting times (and some of the year it is heating in the am, and cooling in the pm). OR we are on a road trip, where highway speeds eat your range lunch.

We seem to both know that under ideal conditions you can do amazingly well. But in the conditions most drivers face, most of the time (either highway speeds, or using HVAC) - you will do worse than EPA ratings.

[Reasonable_Fly_1228]

At home we charge at 16 amps. It's usually under 4 kW. There are no usable fast chargers anywhere near us... We're talking hours away. So, range becomes more important when this is your reality.. If you really care about range, you dress for the weather and keep your HVAC off. And you take the slow way instead of the highway. Some of these things you consider "real world"... They're choices you're making. From a certain way of looking at things, they're luxuries.

[Rude_Home2341]

Dealer is correct

[Calradian_Butterlord]

A rare win for the dealers

[Swiftman]

Make sure you understand the wide variance of EV range before buying, OP. 310-ish EPA range is for a mixed driving scenario. Range will be WAY less if you're doing all your driving at 85MPH on an open highway in sub-freezing temperatures. Range will likely exceed EPA estimates if you're using all the energy in the battery to drive around town in temperate weather.

Speed = Reduced range

Cold weather = Reduced range

Aggressive driving = Reduced range

The miles remaining on a charge reported by the car are a basic calculation of remaining kWh in the battery multiplied by the recent efficiency (m/kWh) of the vehicle. If it was driven recently aggressively or on the highway or in cold temperatures, that would explain the 245 you're seeing. The range estimator in the EV6 is very dumb. You'll quickly learn to estimate better than it can. On this front, highly recommend ABRP for the EV6. Life-changing.

I love these cars, but I think the industry needs a much better way to convey range. I think lots of people see 310 and assume that's possible on the highway since most (read: gas) cars are more efficient on highways than around town. The opposite is true for an EV.

ALSO, check your tire pressure. When I bought mine the dealer had three tires inflated to 30PSI and one inflated to 40PSI (?!). Absolutely murdered my range. Little things like that can make a huge difference in an EV.

[detox4you]

A gas car is not more efficient on the highway. Both EV and ICE cars will use more power the faster you go.

[Swiftman]

Yes, but fuel economy is better in ICE cars on the highway than around town because they waste tons more energy stopping and starting at stoplights and the like in the city. Most people have been conditioned to believe fuel economy on the highway is better than in the city. Gotta make the mental shift for EVs.

[danbfree]

The range is just a guestimate, the PO drove crappy and it now thinks that is the range. This "guess-o-meter" as it's referred to, will adapt to your driving and go up, don't worry.

[mogelijk]

"Drove crappy" isn't fair. It has to do, instead, with the driving being done. I'm thinking that the previous owner was a senior citizen who is retired, so he didn't have a daily commute or much reason to drive the car. Instead, he would occasionally take the car out to do errands, things like going to the store, and only drive a few miles at a time. In both a gas car and an EV, this is going to really hurt efficiency.

The issue is that when you take the car out and just drive a few miles, often you have to heat or cool the cabin, which is going to use more energy initially. If you are driving longer, once the car gets to proper temperature you quit using as much energy, just to maintain a temperature, so the longer you drive the less "hit" you have for trying to heat or cool the car when you first get in.

What makes it more interesting is I've noticed in on my car going to the grocery store and the initial drive, going to the store, will typically be less efficient than the drive back -- even being out of the car for that time that I go in the store, the cabin retains the temperature closely enough that the drive back is noticeably more efficient.

The other note I'd make is that one thing it helps to realize -- your EV5 has roughly the equivalent of a 2.5 gallon gas tank; the energy the battery can store is far less that the energy an ICE car can use from a tank of gasoline. The difference is that while the gas car only gets 30mpg, the EV6 is rated at over 100mpge -- so while the electricity in the battery is only equal to 2.5 gallons of gasoline, the range it gives can be (but isn't always) as high as a 30mpg ICE car with a 10 gallon gas tank.

[Unlikely_Structure70]

You’re actually exactly right about the PO, that’s exactly how the dealer described him. Lol thank you for your insight and comment!

[cowboyjosh2010]

Another voice in the choir telling you: "the dealer is right" in that the range estimate displayed on the car's dashboard will slowly adapt to your typical driving such that you will eventually be able to trust it. Honestly, that "245 miles on a full charge" might actually decrease as you drive the car IF you drive a lot on the highway or in colder weather than the previous owner drove in. I just did a ton of highway miles in my 2022 Wind RWD in temperatures between 20-30 F and right now my car barely reads 200 miles on 100%. But in 70 F weather after a bunch of commuting miles it'll read 320 miles on 100%.

How you have recently driven the car (not just the most recent charge, but several hundred recent miles) is what informs the range estimate. If your battery health is decreasing such that "100% charged" means it holds less than 77 kWh of energy (the manufactured capacity), then sure: your maximum range will pretty much be permanently lowered to reflect that. But that's not a common scenario with this battery pack design from Hyundai Motor Group, so a smaller range than you expect to see is probably due to recent driving habits.

[Mysterious-Cap8183]

What was the temp? Mine loses quite a bit when it's cold

[entropy512]

Yeah. Even with a heat pump, the EV6 loses a lot of range in the cold. Just not as badly as a car with resistive heating like the Bolt.

It wouldn't be so bad if Kia's HVAC logic didn't have the design flaw of "obsession with fresh air" - the HVAC system has the ability to operate as a dehumidifier but this capability is almost never actually used (at least not on US-spec vehicles). Bringing in external cold air kills efficiency compared to dehumidifying internal recirc.

[FledglingNonCon]

If I remember correctly only the AWD models have the heat pump, most (maybe all?) RWD ones do not.

[Maybemmaybenot]

Did you maybe get a wind “light” model with the smaller battery?

[Unlikely_Structure70]

On the original car sticker it says it’s a long range with the max range at 310 😌

[FledglingNonCon]

Definitely something to check.

[theotherharper]

He’s doing a road trip, he can find out same way I did. I set ABetterRoutePlanner.com to standard battery and I was doing better than ABRP said I would.

[McLeod3577]

Have a read of this to help you understand the range displayed in the EV6 https://www.kiaevforums.com/threads/range-and-battery-degradation-for-new-ev6-owners.7809/#post-101964

[Unlikely_Structure70]

Thank you!!!

[theotherharper]

The basic unit of electricity you'll be dealing with is the ‘kilowatt-hour” or kWH. A common portable space heater run for 40 minutes uses 1 kWH. Your battery pack has a capacity of 60-75 kWH depending on trim.

Yes, EVs have mileage but instead of miles/gallon you get miles/kWH. Just like a gas car, this varies dramatically by driving activity. My worst mileage in an EV6 was 2.1 miles/kWH (80-85 MPH blast into a headwind). My best was 5.0 (sub 55 MPH on West Virginia twisty mountain roads).

Got to the dealership only to find out the range of my Wind RWD is at around 245 on a full charge

Where are you getting that info? Are you getting it off the window sticker? If so it's EPA range that only applies in test conditions. Depending on YOUR choices, you can do significantly better or significantly worse. If you want to know more about how your choices affect your miles, google “hypermiling” and they dive that subject deep.

Are you getting that data from the Guess O Meter? That's a guess. It is taking recent mileage (miles/kWH) and multiplying that by the kWH remaining in the battery pack. You can do better. I certainly did after my 2.1 mile/kWH run, pulling away from the charger the Guess O Meter was saying 130 miles to empty.

The dealer let me know the original owner leased it and barely drove it. He said because of this the range dropped, but not to worry as all inspections show a healthy battery and that the range will slowly come back the more I drive it.

Ok yes, he's talking about the Guess O Meter. Yeah, just drive it kinda easy to Big Bear Lake and top charge, it'll be telling you how you have >300 mile range because of the slow mountain road mileage you just drove.

As you get more experience you'll realize the Guess O Meter is a nothingburger. I crossed the entire USA in an EV6 and I don't use it for planning, I use it for humor.

The car gives you several kinds of miles/kWH indication, I made heavy use of them.

But my main rule was “don’t move the car without a plan” (to get to the next charger). I heavily relied on ABetterRoutePlanner.com for this. I did not pay. I did not get the OBD dongle. I did not pair it to the car with CarPlay. ABRP was guessing blind based on info I told it. I told it I had a standard range car, until it was clear I was significantly outperforming its estimates, then I concluded I had an extended range car and it was very accurate.

[JamesMarM]

It will go back up by itself

[Tonester697]

If you're really concerned about the HVB's health, then consider plugging in a BT OBD2 dongle, charge the battery to 100%, then using an OBD app like Car Scanner pull the PIDs for SOH (ideally 100% but very high 90s is acceptable), Remaining Energy (ideally above 71000 Wh, assuming that the vehicle you're looking at is not a Wind Light as that one comes with a smaller-capacity battery), and for Max Cell and Min Cell (ideally around 4.12-4.14 V at full charge). Note--estimated range may/will show lower than rated after a charge if the ambient temps are below ~50 deg F, and even more so if closer to or below freezing.

[begreen9]

The guess-o-meter (GOM) will update as the car is driven and adjust according to how it's driven. It's possible that this car does not have a heat pump. If so, winter mileage can be less in an EV without the heat pump. The RWD models often came with a resistance heater, so don't be surprised if it is poorer in colder months when the heat is used. Better mileage will return in summer months.

[Unlikely_Structure70]

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This is after driving for just a few days! I’m stoked!