Regen braking and petrol engine battery recharge rate in PHEV

Faults and Technical chat for the Kia Niro
Post Reply
tonybkent
Posts: 35
Joined: Tue Jul 31, 2018 8:02 pm

Post by tonybkent »

I'm curious about how much power (in KW) both the regen braking and the petrol engine are capable of putting back into my PHEV battery whenever they are used. The regen capability for BEV was mentioned on a podcast I was listening to this week and it got me thinking about how well the Niro PHEV performs in this area.

I can't see it published anywhere.

Now, I know that the regen will vary depending on road conditions, geography and how hard I'm braking, but there's one particularly steep hill I use on my commute that almost always gives me an extra 1-2 miles back in my EV range just within a few minutes of reaching the bottom and coasting to the motorway entrance junction. I say "1-2" when in reality it will be a fraction over 1 as the range may have only just dropped by a unit at the top of the hill.

When I tested the sports-mode petrol-only recharging a while back, it added range back really quite quickly. I've lost the numbers I made a note of, but I remember seeing the range increase by one every few minutes of country road and motorway driving.

As I said, just curious...

AndyD
Posts: 22
Joined: Fri Apr 06, 2018 9:12 pm

Post by AndyD »

Over 5000+ miles I've got to understand my PHEV better. Clearly there are many factors affecting battery recharge, however I travel up and down a certain hill several times a week and got to know the numbers.... It's a climb of about 300m, a long, gentle incline in one direction, shorter but steep the other. Either direction typically uses '4 miles of EV range' to get to the top. The descent usually puts back '1-2 miles of EV range' so I estimate I'm getting a bit over '25% range' recovered. Of course this is observation and have no idea how many kWh are spend and then recovered...

I've only briefly tried sport mode recharging and though it appeared to increase the EV range available this was at the expense of increased petrol consumption. My way of looking at this is that the rationale of the PHEV is: that recharging the battery is cheapest when connected to an electrical supply and most costly when using petrol to drive the generator to self charge the car. Charging on overrun/coasting and degrees of braking is getting a little 'free' charge recovery that would otherwise be lost as heat in the brakes.


It would be great if we could access actual power usage - it must be somewhere in the control unit. Maybe it's better hidden so as not to be a distraction while we get obsessed by economy and range..... Equally curious!
UK PHEV in White Pearl.
Akula
Posts: 34
Joined: Thu Sep 27, 2018 8:44 pm

Post by Akula »

One thing i have tried a few times with success , is just before descending down a steep hill popping it into `Sport Mode` and using the gears to basically slow the car as you would , so the car is quite revvy , but your not actually using the accelerator or any fuel , puts more charge in than just the regen braking.
Post Reply

  • You may also be interested in...
    Replies
    Views
    Last post