GX3H Battery gauge showing empty.

Hi

I've had a GX3H for over a year now with mixed motoring, today for the first time, the battery gauge went completely blank. It's previously shown one blue bar at the bottom, and the ICE cuts in as required.

On charge for about 15mins at home and the blue at the bottom reappeared, charging time was still estimated at 3:30. Anyone else experienced this?

Cheers

Chris

It's not uncommon for me...

maby said:

It's not uncommon for me...

Click to expand...

Thanks for the prompt reply.

Was this from new, or after a year or so?, just wondering if it's reflecting any slight deterioration of the battery?

Best regards

Chris

I've had mine for about 9 months now and I have this happen on a reasonably regular basis.

I can still get over 30 miles from pure EV and have not seen any degredation in the battery performance.

There is empty and there is empty.

Under normal circumstances, when driving faster than approx. 40 mph, the engine will start recharging the battery when there is still 30% charge left. But, when driving slower, the engine will only start recharging when no more than 26 or 27% charge is left.

Under more tasking circumstances (towing, climbing, etc.) lower charge levels are possible. As low as 22% is not uncommon for those towing a heavy trailer. And 20% or less can happen when towing a trailer up hill.

Finally, 17% is rock bottom. The battery will not provide any more power when you reach that limit.

So, you can see there are many variations of "empty". The difference between showing 0 or 1 bar is somewhere between 27 and 30% charge.

The deeper you went, the longer it will take before you recharge from 0 to 1 bar.

So, in essence what you've seen is no reason to be alarmed. It suggests you live rather close to a main road, where you can drive more than 40 mph. Does that make sense?

The difference between 0 and 1 bar is somewhere between

Lyra252 said:

maby said:

It's not uncommon for me...

Click to expand...

Thanks for the prompt reply.

Was this from new, or after a year or so?, just wondering if it's reflecting any slight deterioration of the battery?

Best regards

Chris

Click to expand...

No, it can happen from brand new out of the dealer. The car's default behaviour is to run the battery down till it is on one bar, then go into a mode where it cycles the charge level up a bit using the engine, then drop back to EV for a while till the battery has dropped a bit, then top it up again. This works OK provided you don't demand too much power, but too many heavy accelerations off the lights or steep hill climbs will pull the charge level down lower - effectively to zero bars. If you carry on driving, it will top it back up again and you'll get your one bar back. If you keep on pushing it hard for a long time, you can get the battery low enough for it to go into "Turtle mode" where it will limit your ability to accelerate and your top speed until it has managed to bring the battery level back up.

Pushing helps, but unlike Maby suggests, you do not have to push hard at all to get rid of the last bar. Just keep rolling at 30 mph steady and you will loose the last bar.

So, even if you drive the car like a milk-float (sorry Maby ) , this may still happen.

Thanks for the replies guys (or gals), it's just that this has never happened in the last 10800 miles, including towing and long motorway runs, along with delivering milk around town.

It seems strange that it should suddenly happen, just wondered why now?

Cheers

Chris

Lyra252 said:

Thanks for the replies guys (or gals), it's just that this has never happened in the last 10800 miles, including towing and long motorway runs, along with delivering milk around town.

It seems strange that it should suddenly happen, just wondered why now?

Cheers

Chris

Click to expand...

Are you sure you would have noticed? It will tend to charge back up to one bar - depending on driving conditions and style, the completely empty display may only show for a few minutes at a time.

maby said:

Lyra252 said:

Thanks for the replies guys (or gals), it's just that this has never happened in the last 10800 miles, including towing and long motorway runs, along with delivering milk around town.

It seems strange that it should suddenly happen, just wondered why now?

Cheers

Chris

Click to expand...

Are you sure you would have noticed? It will tend to charge back up to one bar - depending on driving conditions and style, the completely empty display may only show for a few minutes at a time.

Click to expand...

Definitely never happened before, the battery gauge has always show at least some blue until today, probably nothing to worry about, but something must have changed, just wonder what!

That is strange indeed.

Lyra252 said:

maby said:

Lyra252 said:

Thanks for the replies guys (or gals), it's just that this has never happened in the last 10800 miles, including towing and long motorway runs, along with delivering milk around town.

It seems strange that it should suddenly happen, just wondered why now?

Cheers

Chris

Click to expand...

Are you sure you would have noticed? It will tend to charge back up to one bar - depending on driving conditions and style, the completely empty display may only show for a few minutes at a time.

Click to expand...

Definitely never happened before, the battery gauge has always show at least some blue until today, probably nothing to worry about, but something must have changed, just wonder what!

Click to expand...

The only changes I can think of are driving conditions or -dare I say it- driving style.

Mine has 15.000 km and the same thing happened (just one time, like you Lyra). It didn't bother me at all.
I don't remember when it was nor why, just remember that I thought "finally it happened"