Outlander PHEV Climbs the Grapevine

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STS134

Well-known member
Joined
Jul 11, 2018
Messages
310
Location
Saratoga, CA
We discussed this in the thread about CHAdeMO: https://www.myoutlanderphev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=4737&p=52342#p52342

How quickly does the battery drain when going up this slope? Well, recently did a test. Except this time, I didn't start with a full battery. I wanted to see what would happen if I tried to climb the slope with essentially an empty battery. So I left the vehicle in Normal mode the entire way down I-5, letting the computer hold the SoC at whatever value it wanted to. By the time I got to the Grapevine exit, I was at 26.1% SoC. In this particular case, instead of doing the climb at around 75-85 mph, I only did it at around 65-70, because I detected 34.7 GHz RADAR from a cop. By the time I passed the cop at 65 mph, SoC was down to around 20%, and I got the "propulsion power is reduced" message at around 19.5-19.8% SoC just 2 minutes and 5 seconds after passing the Grapevine exit and starting the climb. The ICE in this vehicle is so weak, I could only maintain about 60-70 mph up the grade even with the ICE operating at maximum power, once the batteries died. The grade from Grapevine to Lebec Road is 6%, and you can hear the frequent chimes from the computer, indicating that the car has no more power available and has limited propulsion. The 1500W inverter and climate controls all stopped working once SoC dropped into the low 20's, and never worked again until after the summit. Even in the area between Lebec Road and Frazier Park Mountain Road, which is relatively flat compared to the rest of the Grapevine grade, the car could only regain around 2% SoC before I had to climb again, and it quickly ran out of power again going up to the summit, and was unable to get past about 62 mph on the final climb. At around 10:35, I had finally had enough of the lack of power and got frustrated because unlike further down the slope, where my speed was being limited by traffic around me, I was now blocking traffic due to the lack of power.

Things to keep in mind:
- I slowed down because there was a cop on the early part of the climb, which meant that the battery didn't drain as quickly as it otherwise would have
- Traffic was moving slowly because there was water on the road in some spots

If it had been a more normal day, I would have consumed much more battery. Traffic in the left lanes here typically moves at around 75-80 mph, and if there's very little traffic, you can often go even faster. I've started at ~90% SoC (14/16 bars) and gone up at around 75-85 mph, and by the time I reached the summit, SoC was down to around 40%, battery temps were up to 34-36C on a cold day, and the gauge was showing 6-7 bars. All in around 8-9 minutes. So yeah, the Outlander PHEV needs a more powerful engine so it doesn't destroy its batteries. I'm honestly not sure how they can offer the warranty of 10 years/100k miles on this battery, because they're going to be doing a lot of warranty replacements.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvRdDiCBX4Y
 
Well, nothing new there. If you had read this forum over the last five years you would have seen dozens of threads warning to start a serious climb with a FULL battery... :roll:
Oh - and there are tens of thousands of these cars on the road here from 2013, with a fair percentage well over 200.000 km and the guaranty battery replacements can be counted on one hand...
 
jaapv said:
Well, nothing new there. If you had read this forum over the last five years you would have seen dozens of threads warning to start a serious climb with a FULL battery... :roll:
Here's the exact quote from the user manual:
"When driving a continuous uphill road with 4% gradient or more at a speed of 62 mph (100 km/h) or higher, it is recommended to activate the battery charge mode at least 20 minutes before reaching the uphill road. Depending on the road and/or vehicle condition, it may not be possible to maintain a high speed."

I guess they covered their bases by saying "at least" because on I-5, you definitely won't get much energy into the battery in just 20 minutes. I'm not even sure if 60 minutes in Charge mode would be enough at those speeds because there's so little power available for charging. The problem is the vehicle charges opportunistically, but I've never seen it run the engine at its maximum speed so that the generator is outputting a constant 60 kW so that it can charge at the maximum possible rate (although on I-5 this is not possible because the vehicle forces parallel mode above 78 mph).

jaapv said:
Oh - and there are tens of thousands of these cars on the road here from 2013, with a fair percentage well over 200.000 km and the guaranty battery replacements can be counted on one hand...
If my daily commute included climbing the Grapevine, I'm pretty sure I'd have killed my first battery already, and I only have 20,000 miles on the car.
 
The Grapevine is kind of an acid test for any vehicle. I've done it in a Diesel moving truck and was lucky to do 35 mph up the grade. My ICE cars show a lot of transmission heating going up it. If I were doing it daily, bigger tranny coolers would be needed. On the Silicon Valley to Los Angeles run, highway 152 has some challenging grades too, and I see the same.

Hills like that are exactly why many PHEVs have 'save' and 'charge' modes. (On the Volt, the equivalents are 'hold' and to a lesser extent 'mountain' modes - to prevent the dreaded "propulsion power reduced" issues. Though the Gen 2 Volt doesn't need them as badly as the Gen 1 Volt did.) Since the car can't predict that you are going to do grades like that, it is incumbent on you to help things along. If I were to do the I-5 run in our Volt, I'd just put the car in "mountain mode" at the beginning of the trip so that a portion of the battery pack is available to assist with the hills on 152 and the GV. Mountain Mode maintains a minimum SOC of about 4 kWh (40%) on a Gen 1 Volt, and 3 kWh (20%) on a Gen 2 Volt. An Outlander is heavier, less aerodynamic, and has a smaller battery pack than the Volt. So I'd guess on an Outlander you'd simply want to use "charge" mode from the beginning of the trip to keep the pack at 80%.

The U.S. version of the BMW i3 REx also got a bad reputation for this kind of problem. The issue with the BMW is that they don't allow the equivalent of "hold" or "charge" because of some arcane California CARB rules their car takes advantage of. So the car would almost completely deplete the battery pack before the REx would kick in. By then it was too late for a big hill. However the European version of the car does have a settable hold mode, and it is easy to "code" the car to enable the Euro feature.
 
STS134 said:
jaapv said:
Well, nothing new there. If you had read this forum over the last five years you would have seen dozens of threads warning to start a serious climb with a FULL battery... :roll:
Here's the exact quote from the user manual:
"When driving a continuous uphill road with 4% gradient or more at a speed of 62 mph (100 km/h) or higher, it is recommended to activate the battery charge mode at least 20 minutes before reaching the uphill road. Depending on the road and/or vehicle condition, it may not be possible to maintain a high speed."

I guess they covered their bases by saying "at least" because on I-5, you definitely won't get much energy into the battery in just 20 minutes. I'm not even sure if 60 minutes in Charge mode would be enough at those speeds because there's so little power available for charging. The problem is the vehicle charges opportunistically, but I've never seen it run the engine at its maximum speed so that the generator is outputting a constant 60 kW so that it can charge at the maximum possible rate (although on I-5 this is not possible because the vehicle forces parallel mode above 78 mph).

jaapv said:
Oh - and there are tens of thousands of these cars on the road here from 2013, with a fair percentage well over 200.000 km and the guaranty battery replacements can be counted on one hand...
If my daily commute included climbing the Grapevine, I'm pretty sure I'd have killed my first battery already, and I only have 20,000 miles on the car.
I rather doubt the last for a state where the maximum speed is a snail's pace 65 mph...
 
jaapv said:
I rather doubt the last for a state where the maximum speed is a snail's pace 65 mph...
You've never driven in California, have you?

First of all, the statutory maximum legal speed is 70 mph, not 65, on certain rural roads, which includes I-5 and the Grapevine. CVC Section 22356 http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=22356.&lawCode=VEH

Second, on many freeways, CHP often won't even pull you over unless you're over 85 mph. This includes I-280 between CA-85 and Daly City, which has a speed limit of 65 but was built for around 85 mph. They seem to be looking for over 90 before they'll even bat an eye most of the time.

Third, very few people care about the speed limit on I-5, since it's over 200 miles of very boring, mostly flat, and mostly straight road and doesn't even pass through a single town over that distance. In fact I-5 was deliberately built along the western side of the San Joaquin Valley to AVOID all towns; CA-99 (formerly US-99) is the highway that passes through the cities. The only stuff around I-5 are the fast food restaurants and gas stations at exits every 10-15 miles that have those amenities, and a few rest stops, which are spaced every 50-100 miles. You go out on I-5 and do anything under 75-80 mph and you'll get stink eye even from Prius drivers. This is not a commuter road, and it doesn't even have any significant commuter traffic mixed in. It's a long distance travel road. Most people just want to get this section over with and get back to civilization, and when traffic is light, it often moves at 85+, with a significant fraction of cars over 90.
 
wws said:
The Grapevine is kind of an acid test for any vehicle. I've done it in a Diesel moving truck and was lucky to do 35 mph up the grade. My ICE cars show a lot of transmission heating going up it. If I were doing it daily, bigger tranny coolers would be needed. On the Silicon Valley to Los Angeles run, highway 152 has some challenging grades too, and I see the same.
CA-152 doesn't have anything nearly as challenging as the Grapevine. I'm not even sure if it has a 6% grade, but if it's that steep in any section, it's only for about maybe half a mile. Furthermore, the section between Gilroy and Casa De Fruta doesn't have traffic that moves at 85-90 mph up the hill. The section near the San Luis Dam does, but it's very short.

wws said:
Hills like that are exactly why many PHEVs have 'save' and 'charge' modes. (On the Volt, the equivalents are 'hold' and to a lesser extent 'mountain' modes - to prevent the dreaded "propulsion power reduced" issues. Though the Gen 2 Volt doesn't need them as badly as the Gen 1 Volt did.) Since the car can't predict that you are going to do grades like that, it is incumbent on you to help things along. If I were to do the I-5 run in our Volt, I'd just put the car in "mountain mode" at the beginning of the trip so that a portion of the battery pack is available to assist with the hills on 152 and the GV. Mountain Mode maintains a minimum SOC of about 4 kWh (40%) on a Gen 1 Volt, and 3 kWh (20%) on a Gen 2 Volt. An Outlander is heavier, less aerodynamic, and has a smaller battery pack than the Volt. So I'd guess on an Outlander you'd simply want to use "charge" mode from the beginning of the trip to keep the pack at 80%.
Yeah the time before this trip, I had Charge mode active the whole drive from the time I left home, and arrived at the Grapevine with 14/16 bars on the gauge. By the time I reached the summit, I was down to around 6-7 bars. So basically 90% to 40% in ~8 minutes or a sustained discharge rate of around 3.75C that takes the cell temperatures over 34C. Which is a great way to kill any battery.

wws said:
The U.S. version of the BMW i3 REx also got a bad reputation for this kind of problem. The issue with the BMW is that they don't allow the equivalent of "hold" or "charge" because of some arcane California CARB rules their car takes advantage of. So the car would almost completely deplete the battery pack before the REx would kick in. By then it was too late for a big hill. However the European version of the car does have a settable hold mode, and it is easy to "code" the car to enable the Euro feature.
Exactly why I won't buy any BEVx. It's either PHEV or BEV for me.
 
Well, I have run tens of thousands of miles on the German Autobahn @ 150 kph, long 4% to 8% inclines all over the place, always on Charge, heavily loaded regularly too, added plenty of 10-12% climbs on mountain passes in the Alps as well, and at 130.000 km and six years the battery is better than expected. Not just me, that goes for thousands of PHEVs. Mitsubishi must have shipped a real second-rate batch of cars to California. :roll: By now there must be cars with battery replacements around already. How many? Time for a class action, I would say.
 
jaapv said:
Well, I have run tens of thousands of miles on the German Autobahn @ 150 kph, long 4% to 8% inclines all over the place,
Can you provide some links on Google Maps of where these long 4% to 8% inclines are?

jaapv said:
always on Charge, heavily loaded regularly too, added plenty of 10-12% climbs on mountain passes in the Alps as well, and at 130.000 km and six years the battery is better than expected. Not just me, that goes for thousands of PHEVs.
Well I've driven up Mount Umunhum, Mount Hamilton, and to Donner Summit in my PHEV. These places have grades of over 6%, but they aren't nearly as demanding on vehicles as the I-5 Grapevine section. The Grapevine is extremely demanding because it begins with a 5 mile, 6% grade that people do at 80-90+ mph uphill. And even after this grade levels out a bit, the road continues climbing for another 6 miles. This is the only place I've ever literally had the accelerator to the floor in a vehicle for over 2 minutes straight, just to keep up with traffic. A 10-12% grade is pretty easy, if you're doing it at 35 mph. Try it at 70 mph and it's a completely different ballgame.
 
Tejon Pass is one of the good example that how a road/bridge/dam can unite people:

In the late 19th century, there was serious talk in Sacramento of splitting the state in two at the Tehachapi Mountains because of the difficulty of transportation across the rugged range. The discussion ended when it was determined that building a highway over the mountains was feasible; this road later became the Ridge Route, which today is Interstate 5 over Tejon Pass.

Using today’s technology, the grapevine probably would be a high speed train (Hyperloop :)

The road was not designed for car to go uphill at 90mph hence the grade of 6%.

Our PHEV is not designed to go uphill for long time either.

If my commute includes Grapevine, I probably will get a diesel car for the torque.

Tai
 
STS134 said:
jaapv said:
Well, I have run tens of thousands of miles on the German Autobahn @ 150 kph, long 4% to 8% inclines all over the place,
Can you provide some links on Google Maps of where these long 4% to 8% inclines are?

All over the place. Feel free to drive them.

jaapv said:
always on Charge, heavily loaded regularly too, added plenty of 10-12% climbs on mountain passes in the Alps as well, and at 130.000 km and six years the battery is better than expected. Not just me, that goes for thousands of PHEVs.
Well I've driven up Mount Umunhum, Mount Hamilton, and to Donner Summit in my PHEV. These places have grades of over 6%, but they aren't nearly as demanding on vehicles as the I-5 Grapevine section. The Grapevine is extremely demanding because it begins with a 5 mile, 6% grade that people do at 80-90+ mph uphill. And even after this grade levels out a bit, the road continues climbing for another 6 miles. This is the only place I've ever literally had the accelerator to the floor in a vehicle for over 2 minutes straight, just to keep up with traffic. A 10-12% grade is pretty easy, if you're doing it at 35 mph. Try it at 70 mph and it's a completely different ballgame.
Sounds a bit like the A30 between A1 and A2. The only time I ever saw the reduced power warning - not that it actually slowed down, I just eased up a bit. Four people, luggage, skibox, 160 kph with the throttle floored constantly.
 
jaapv said:
Sounds a bit like the A30 between A1 and A2. The only time I ever saw the reduced power warning - not that it actually slowed down, I just eased up a bit. Four people, luggage, skibox, 160 kph with the throttle floored constantly.
https://www.google.com/maps/@52.2300515,8.1384196,10z/data=!5m1!1e4

This area? I don't really see anything here that compares to the Grapevine. The very highest points of the terrain in this area are no more than 250m high. The steepest section of the Grapevine gains ~500m in altitude over a ~8-9 km distance, and the entire section gains ~800m in altitude, very quickly at first, and more slowly later on, but NEVER descends.
 
Oh, do you mean driving something like the Stelvio? https://www.colcorsa.com/tour/stelvio-pass/ 1000-2750 m. Average incline something like 10%.
I've done that regularly with the PHEV without any problem, staring full and ending empty, but never low power mode. I thought you meant high-speed inclines. Try the Brenner then. Officially 100 or 110 kph, but especially the Italian side attracts much higher speeds.
 
jaapv said:
Oh, do you mean driving something like the Stelvio? https://www.colcorsa.com/tour/stelvio-pass/ 1000-2750 m. Average incline something like 10%.
I've done that regularly with the PHEV without any problem, staring full and ending empty, but never low power mode. I thought you meant high-speed inclines. Try the Brenner then. Officially 100 or 110 kph, but especially the Italian side attracts much higher speeds.
Yes, but high speed inclines that are monotonically increasing for 8km and gain 500m in elevation over that distance. In Germany, I'd expect such things to exist perhaps in the southern section of the country, near the Alps. Basically, something like the first part (the region marked "1") of this chart (Y-axis in feet, X-axis in miles):

View attachment Grapevine Elevation Profile.jpg

The "0" point on the X-axis is the Grapevine exit. The number "1" is about where the Lebec Rd exit is, and the end of the first shaded region is Tejon Pass.
 
Yes, Southern Germany has plenty, and the righthand lane will do about 60 (on steep inclines) - 90 by the lorries, the middle one 140, the lefthand 200+. (kph, that is) and the inclines are quite long. On the A7 at Aalen- the watershed between Rhine and Donau- I fail to push the PHEV over 140 in some parts.
I only mentioned the A30 because that was the only time in six years that I managed to get the battery level down to the absolute limit.
 
STS134 said:
wws said:
The Grapevine is kind of an acid test for any vehicle. I've done it in a Diesel moving truck and was lucky to do 35 mph up the grade. My ICE cars show a lot of transmission heating going up it. If I were doing it daily, bigger tranny coolers would be needed. On the Silicon Valley to Los Angeles run, highway 152 has some challenging grades too, and I see the same.
CA-152 doesn't have anything nearly as challenging as the Grapevine. I'm not even sure if it has a 6% grade, but if it's that steep in any section, it's only for about maybe half a mile. Furthermore, the section between Gilroy and Casa De Fruta doesn't have traffic that moves at 85-90 mph up the hill. The section near the San Luis Dam does, but it's very short

Climbing from east to west, by the dam, has some steep places. Not Grapevine steep. But again, scanning my tranny temp in a couple different ICE cars, definitely shows the cooling system working hard.

Speaking of steep grades in California, have you ever driven up Old Priest Grade Road to Yosemite? Believe it or not, it is an old wagon road. I have no idea how they ever drove horses, or any other livestock, pulling wagons up that road. The 'new' road is much easier, but also much longer.
 
wws said:
Speaking of steep grades in California, have you ever driven up Old Priest Grade Road to Yosemite? Believe it or not, it is an old wagon road. I have no idea how they ever drove horses, or any other livestock, pulling wagons up that road. The 'new' road is much easier, but also much longer.

Yes, I've been on it. But I did it at around 20-40 mph and I definitely didn't have to floor it.
 
Ok, I have tried, and scared the bejesus out of me, climbing Grapewine at 100mph!

I was alone in my wife’s old 2007RAV4 Sport 4cyl. Metal to the floor, it could get 100mph up hill. I do feel the car is firm (good weather/good tires/good suspensions) but I just cannot stomach the curves and the risk of an unnecessary speed ticket.

I will stick with 80-85 mph...

Tai
 
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