Sitting unused and uncharged on dealer's lot for months?

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cgeary

New member
Joined
Dec 12, 2018
Messages
1
I've been lurking on the forum for a while, as I'm intrigued by/may be interested in purchasing an '18 PHEV. I actually really want the upgraded model they've got in Europe, but apparently we in the States won't be getting the upgraded '19s, or maybe even any '19's for quite some time, so I'm back to considering the 18's. Anyhow, I've had my eye on a few PHEVs on my local dealers' lots for about 4 or more months now, and they haven't moved--neither figuratively nor literally. While this apparent lack of local interest suggests I could probably get a pretty good deal, it also strikes me that the batteries may have not been charged in quite some time, and I'm concerned that, if they've fully discharged due to non-use, I'm not sure what that would do to the long-term life/capacity of the battery. I've never owned an EV before, but my dealings with batteries in other contexts suggest that they don't tolerate long-term disuse very well. Does anyone have any thoughts on the issue, and whether my concerns are valid? Thanks in advance.
 
cgeary said:
I've been lurking on the forum for a while, as I'm intrigued by/may be interested in purchasing an '18 PHEV. I actually really want the upgraded model they've got in Europe, but apparently we in the States won't be getting the upgraded '19s, or maybe even any '19's for quite some time, so I'm back to considering the 18's. Anyhow, I've had my eye on a few PHEVs on my local dealers' lots for about 4 or more months now, and they haven't moved--neither figuratively nor literally. While this apparent lack of local interest suggests I could probably get a pretty good deal, it also strikes me that the batteries may have not been charged in quite some time, and I'm concerned that, if they've fully discharged due to non-use, I'm not sure what that would do to the long-term life/capacity of the battery. I've never owned an EV before, but my dealings with batteries in other contexts suggest that they don't tolerate long-term disuse very well. Does anyone have any thoughts on the issue, and whether my concerns are valid? Thanks in advance.
Worst thing for batteries is sitting at a high state of charge + high temperature for an extended period of time. If the SoC is low, don't worry about anything.
 
Ideally you store Lithium Ion batteries at around 50% charge, then top them up if it drops below about 20%. As said above, the worst thing is storing them at 100% charge as they tend to produce gases and swell, potentially leading to fire. Given the slow self discharge rate they can go many months with only a small amount of charge loss (for reference, I top up my radio control aircraft batteries once a year). I expect they're still around 80% at worst even after a few months, so nothing to worry about.

However the smaller lead-acid 12V battery may have lost a bit and need a recharge, but they can usually go many months without losing too much. Remember that the 12V battery doesn't need to start the engine, only power the electronics.
 
jaapv said:
You can always demand a battery state of health report before buying.

That's a fair point. Hell, you barely need to even demand. Say you want to sit in each, plug your $10 OBD2 device in and see what phevwatchdog says about the state of the battery? Or do you need to give it a run before the app will record a state of health of the battery?
 
This is my first post on the forum and hope it will be a useful one! I bought my PHEV only a few weeks ago. It was registered in October 2017 but I believe is classed as a 2018 model. Anyway the point is that it was registered to Mitsubishi as the first owner who used it as shows and events as a display car. As such in over 12 months it had only done 600 miles. So the battery had little use for most of that time and therefore not much charging activity. In the few weeks I have had it the battery has been absolutely fine, working hard in the cold weather in the UK and charging just fine. I would have no worries about buying a PHEV that had sat around on a lot for several months.
 
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