Jaguar I-Pace Forum banner

New owner with some real-world, no-bullshit range data

13K views 52 replies 12 participants last post by  chrisell 
#1 ·
Hi all - first post.
I've spent a while lurking here and on other I-pace forums, reading about range, the G-o-M and a bazillion other topics around how good or bad the actual / perceived range is. Thought I'd chime in with 6 months worth of real data.

Background - I'm a British ex-pat. I bought my MY2020 I-pace in July. It has the 20" wheels and (it seems) the H264 update (I'm guessing as I have the new linear battery meter in the display).
I have driven since day-1, "like a car" - ie with absolutely no concession to it being electric. This was a deliberate choice. I've had it in 'comfort' mode the whole time, with A/C or heating on. Right foot is moderate - not a hooligan but not an OAP. No pre-conditioning. Plugged in once a week to my 7kWh wall charger (to 100% charge) and once a month it gets some sweet sweet free 50kWh loving from a free Chargepoint station near me (to 80% charge). It's kept overnight in an unheated, badly-insulated garage so it gets pretty close to ambient temperature.

Location is Salt Lake City in Utah, so driving in the valley, mostly, which means little elevation change going north-south and major elevation changes going east-west. Driving is about 80% urban (with the plague of American stop signs and traffic lights every block) and 20% motorway. Two or three long day-trips into the mountains which involve a climb up I-80 which - here - is where U.S car makers frequently kill their test mules because there's an uphill section of I-80 which is murderous to cars in the summer if they're not in good shape. From where I am to the I-80 summit is 14 miles and 3000ft increase in elevation.

Because of COVID and work-from-home, most of my trips are pretty short at the moment - to and from shops, drive-throughs and the occasional trip to my office.

Anyway - at the end of the year (ie. now) I downloaded all my trip data from the InControl website, and spent an hour or so in Excel crunching the numbers and trying to get something faintly usable. I don't know if this sort of thing is a PR nightmare for Jaguar or not - I don't really care. I love the car, I'm growing to accept the mileage limitations, and I think that "that other brand" is full of it when they talk about their range (from knowing 8 owners who are getting barely 50% of the claimed range in real world conditions in their 3's and Y's).

Here's my real-world data:
July average kWh/100 miles : 39.7, theoretical max range 226 miles. Average temperature 30C to 35C
August average kWh/100 miles : 39.3, theoretical max range 229 miles. Average temperature 30C to 35C
September average kWh/100 miles : 41.0, theoretical max range 219 miles. Average temperature 25C to 30C
October average kWh/100 miles : 43.5, theoretical max range 206 miles. Average temperature 15C to 20C
November average kWh/100 miles : 55.5, theoretical max range 162 miles. Average temperature 0C to 7C
December average kWh/100 miles : 63.6, theoretical max range 141 miles. Average temperature -5C to 2C

What's interesting is the the G-o-M is always wildly off. Right now, in December, on a full charge, it claims 244 miles which I can't even get in the summer. More interesting is that if I use Jaguar's own online range guesstimator, it actually comes pretty damn close to the real-world numbers I've observed in my own car.

Conclusion 1: the I-pace is happier to be in hotter weather with the A/C going than it is to be in colder weather with the heating going. Seems about right as a general statement about batteries.

Conclusion 2: WLTP is an absolute joke. It's worse "guidance" than the old EPA gas-mileage numbers for ICE cars. About all it's good for is comparing EVs to each other. If one EV has a higher WLTP range, it means it has a higher real-world range. It doesn't mean you'll ever actually achieve the WLTP range.

If anyone is curious to see the raw data, I can probably share the spreadsheet on OneDrive....
 
See less See more
#2 ·
chrisell said:
Conclusion 2: WLTP is an absolute joke. It's worse "guidance" than the old EPA gas-mileage numbers for ICE cars. About all it's good for is comparing EVs to each other. If one EV has a higher WLTP range, it means it has a higher real-world range.
And right there you've identified the intended application of the WLTP figures. ;)
 
#5 ·
In cold weather without preconditioning, the battery drains quite quickly especially short journeys, preconditioning before a long journey makes a big difference.
Question - does driving at motorway speed keep the battery warm and improves range?.
 
#6 ·
For clarity, motorway speed in cold weather.
 
#7 ·
For me it does certainly. There's one round-trip we do every couple of weeks which isn't too far - about 30 miles out and back, most of which is motorway. The outward journey with no preconditioning gives me about 75kWh/100mi. The return journey 20 minutes later gives me about 35kWh/100mi. I'm guessing the outward journey is basically the battery starting at very close to freezing, and it heats up as I drive, and by the return journey, it's nice and warm.
For giggles: the journey is to a local off-beat store that imports English sweets so we have to stock up on Buttons and Revels and things like that every couple of weeks :D
 
#8 ·
Additional thought: I've yet to decide if the loss of battery charge to condition it before a drive is worth the trade off of a better kWh rate. If it was plugged in, sure, but I tend not to plug in until I get down to about 15-20% remaining. So any conditioning I do would be done untethered, generally speaking.
 
#9 ·
chrisell said:
Additional thought: I've yet to decide if the loss of battery charge to condition it before a drive is worth the trade off of a better kWh rate. If it was plugged in, sure, but I tend not to plug in until I get down to about 15-20% remaining. So any conditioning I do would be done untethered, generally speaking.
If not plugged in the preconditioning will mainly pre-heat/cool the cabin - it will consume more energy than it saves on efficiency.

Then again unplugged pre-condtioning is meant more to improve your comfort than save energy in the battery.
 
#10 ·
Jelle v/d Meer said:
chrisell said:
Additional thought: I've yet to decide if the loss of battery charge to condition it before a drive is worth the trade off of a better kWh rate. If it was plugged in, sure, but I tend not to plug in until I get down to about 15-20% remaining. So any conditioning I do would be done untethered, generally speaking.
If not plugged in the preconditioning will mainly pre-heat/cool the cabin - it will consume more energy than it saves on efficiency.

Then again unplugged pre-condtioning is meant more to improve your comfort than save energy in the battery.
True, but the difference will not be significant. Because in either case you will end up spending the same energy to heat or cool the same cabin to the same desired temperature. The only difference is that, if you precondition, you'll keep the cabin at the nice temperature slightly longer. In all the difference between
the 2 scenarios will rarely be more than half a kWh. Small price to pay for the extra comfort, IMO.
 
#11 ·
chrisell said:
Conclusion 1: the I-pace is happier to be in hotter weather with the A/C going than it is to be in colder weather with the heating going. Seems about right as a general statement about batteries.

Conclusion 2: WLTP is an absolute joke. It's worse "guidance" than the old EPA gas-mileage numbers for ICE cars. About all it's good for is comparing EVs to each other. If one EV has a higher WLTP range, it means it has a higher real-world range. It doesn't mean you'll ever actually achieve the WLTP range.
Was doing the same last week. Oh what to do in this long Covid winter nights 😄.

Conclusion 1: i am getting on average 17% more consumption in NOV/DEC compared to JUL/AUG. kWh/100mi: 43.3 vs 37.3 or kWh/100km: 26.9 vs 22.9, showing a linear correlation with the temperature decline.

Slope Black Rectangle Font Line


Conclusion 2: WLTP calculates to full usable battery, right? In my long term data, anything before 18kWh/100km or 29kWh/100mi i consider an outlier. 18kWh on 84.4kWh battery would give 470km.

Since range really applies to long distance usage, where typical charge seem to be more between 10-80% or 60kWh usable battery, that translates to practical usually distance:
• summer (22.9kWh/100km 20"): 262 km / 162 mi
• winter (26.9kWh/100km 18"): 223 km / 138 mi

Other findings:
First 5 miles: the first 3.1km/5mi or maybe 5 minutes increases the consumption by 25% above the average. So yes, those short distances are killing for range.

Colorfulness Rectangle Slope Plot Font


Tyre pressure: coincidently i seem to have lowered the tyre pressure to 2.5 bar/ 36 psi around the same time the day-time temperature plummeted early November. This increased the first 5 mi consumption to 47% above average. After i increased last week to a (very) high 3.1 bar / 45 psi the graph seems to come down to linear projections.

Slope Rectangle Font Parallel Pattern


Winter tyres: changing from 20" summer to 18" winter tyres early October does not seem to have affected range. In fact it seems to improve, probably under influence of the higher pressure upon fitting. Don't recall exact numbers, but it was in the range of 2.8 bar summer vs. to 3.0 winter.
 

Attachments

#12 ·
What I like about EVs is that the heating is instant. It's basically a mobile fan heater, so preconditioning the cabin doesn't do much for me. Within a mile of starting to drive, my feet are warm, and shortly afterwards, the steering wheel and seats are up to temperature. Now - what WOULD be nice would be if preconditioning turned on the driver's heated seat and steering wheel. My Volvo XC60 used to do that and it was brilliant in cold weather.
-10C here this morning, reported kWh rate is 62.4 for a 5 mile round trip.
 
#13 ·
ANBO said:
chrisell said:
Conclusion 1: the I-pace is happier to be in hotter weather with the A/C going than it is to be in colder weather with the heating going. Seems about right as a general statement about batteries.

Conclusion 2: WLTP is an absolute joke. It's worse "guidance" than the old EPA gas-mileage numbers for ICE cars. About all it's good for is comparing EVs to each other. If one EV has a higher WLTP range, it means it has a higher real-world range. It doesn't mean you'll ever actually achieve the WLTP range.
Was doing the same last week. Oh what to do in this long Covid winter nights 😄.

Conclusion 1: i am getting on average 17% more consumption in NOV/DEC compared to JUL/AUG. kWh/100mi: 43.3 vs 37.3 or kWh/100km: 26.9 vs 22.9, showing a linear correlation with the temperature decline.

kWh by temperature.jpg

Conclusion 2: WLTP calculates to full usable battery, right? In my long term data, anything before 18kWh/100km or 29kWh/100mi i consider an outlier. 18kWh on 84.4kWh battery would give 470km.

Since range really applies to long distance usage, where typical charge seem to be more between 10-80% or 60kWh usable battery, that translates to practical usually distance:
• summer (22.9kWh/100km 20"): 262 km / 162 mi
• winter (26.9kWh/100km 18"): 223 km / 138 mi

Other findings:
First 5 miles: the first 3.1km/5mi or maybe 5 minutes increases the consumption by 25% above the average. So yes, those short distances are killing for range.

kWh by distance.jpg

Tyre pressure: coincidently i seem to have lowered the tyre pressure to 2.5 bar/ 36 psi around the same time the day-time temperature plummeted early November. This increased the first 5 mi consumption to 47% above average. After i increased last week to a (very) high 3.1 bar / 45 psi the graph seems to come down to linear projections.

kWh by temperature less than 5 mi.jpg

Winter tyres: changing from 20" summer to 18" winter tyres early October does not seem to have affected range. In fact it seems to improve, probably under influence of the higher pressure upon fitting. Don't recall exact numbers, but it was in the range of 2.8 bar summer vs. to 3.0 winter.
Interesting that your drop for winter weather is only 17%. You're right - it must be that almost all my trips at the moment are under 5 miles that is just hammering the range badly.
Also thanks for reminding me about tyre pressures. Now it's lower than zero every day, my fronts are down to 34psi and my rears are at 39. I'll air those back up to 37 and 42.
 
#14 ·
The capacity of the battery when charged in freezing conditions is not as great as it is when warm. The GoM may think the battery is fully charged and indicate 200+ miles, but at such low temperatures there is nowhere near the capacity that is available when charging to full at higher temps. The best solution is to insulate your garage, keep it reasonably warm (say 10degC) and charge the car in there. This would be far more effective and loads cheaper than charging outside in low temperatures and then preconditioning before you leave. In sub-zero temperatures and with wind chill it is barely possible to heat the battery due to heat sinking into the chassis. You would need to precondition for a couple of hours under a car cover to get anywhere close to a decent operating temperature.
 
#15 ·
Captain.Plummet said:
The capacity of the battery when charged in freezing conditions is not as great as it is when warm. The GoM may think the battery is fully charged and indicate 200+ miles, but at such low temperatures there is nowhere near the capacity that is available when charging to full at higher temps. The best solution is to insulate your garage, keep it reasonably warm (say 10degC) and charge the car in there. This would be far more effective and loads cheaper than charging outside in low temperatures and then preconditioning before you leave. In sub-zero temperatures and with wind chill it is barely possible to heat the battery due to heat sinking into the chassis. You would need to precondition for a couple of hours under a car cover to get anywhere close to a decent operating temperature.
My garage is detached from the house and not exactly well-insulated. That being said, it's -10C outside today and the garage is reporting about -1C inside so it's better than being outside for sure. There comes the question of trying to insulate a 40-year old garage and then heat it but the cost of doing that would be more than the saving of having the car somewhere warm :D
 
#16 ·
The temperature difference is going to be down to wind chill. If you simply close any holes in the garage and put a small oil filled radiator inside the car (the type you might use in a greenhouse) it will keep the car warm enough to optimise charging. The heater will use about 200Wh say 2kWh overnight whilst a two hour precondition will use about 12kWh and be nowhere near as effective.
If you factor the increase in battery capacity (preconditioning from freezing will not improve the SoC) you'll save a lot on en route charging too.
 
#17 ·
I did a sanity check this morning. The car stood outside overnight in -3degC temperatures but there was no wind. I preconditioned for three hours before leaving home fully charged with 251 miles on the GoM and clocked 40.2Wh/m over a round trip of 27.5 miles leaving 86% and 220 miles on the GoM. Average speed was 39mph with over half of it at 50-55mph. This is similar to the car's performance in balmier temperatures. Had I left without preconditioning the consumption would have been in the region of 550-600Wh/m but, had I left with just 30 minutes preconditioning, the results would not have been a lot better. Had it been windy the results would have been much worse. There really is no substitute for bringing the car as close as you can to optimum temperature and charging with a warmed battery, especially when driving in cold conditions. Short or no preconditioning, wind chill and modest journey times will give range results that appear frighteningly poor.
 
#18 ·
3 hours preconditioning at what rate? ie. what's the car pulling from the wall to pre-condition? I've seen YouTube videos where it pulls anything from 1kWh to 4kWh to pre-condition. (the 4kWh rate was in Norway at -5c). If it's pulling 4, then 3 hours is 12kWh and that gets into the territory of being moot because the drop in range from a cold battery wouldn't be much more or less than the 12kWh you spent to warm it up.

Also it's shockingly unclear from Jaguar what preconditioning actually does, what the SOC has to be for it to work, and if it actually DOES work. The best I've been able to gather from the various forums is if the battery is between 80 and 100%, preconditioning works but it takes 2 to 3 hours. If it's under 80%, preconditioning does nothing. That's all heresay and opinion and Jaguar don't seem to have any clear guidance on this at all, which is why I've largely not even bothered experimenting with it. That and the fact my car isn't plugged in every night. (again because a lack of information from Jag about what it does to the longevity of the battery having it at 100% the whole time). Then there's the "does it actually use 90kWh or only 82kWh"? question. Is 100% actually 90kWh or is it 82kWh which means they've 'baked in' a maximum owner-capable charge of 90%? A simple technical doc from Jag would go a long way to helping understand exactly what we - as owners - should expect. We shouldn't need third party apps like Wattcat and MyPace to try to glean this information and force an 80% charge by continually monitoring the car and then automatically, remotely, telling it to shut off charging.

Plus - as I said up front - I've been deliberately driving my I-Pace with zero concessions to it being an electric car. Which is what you would have to expect of uninformed new-to-EV owners. That's not me though - we've had a Nissan Leaf for 5 years which we've driven "like an electric car", making concessions left, right and center. For the Jag I wanted to do it differently.
 
#19 ·
As it was a cold bright day decided to take a scenic winter road trip, charged to 100% and preconditioned 218 miles on the GOM.
Temperature - 3C up to +2C after lunch, 3 legs with 1 hour break in between, total miles 170, 30 miles left on GOM, all legs close to 40kw/100miles, heater was on 22C all the day ( OH refused to turn it down)

It was mostly quiet " A " roads slower, than expected due to icy patches but still averaged 40mph overall, beautiful snowy winter scenery in a beautiful car, 200 miles in freezing conditions, good enough for me.
 
#20 ·
chrisell said:
3 hours preconditioning at what rate? ie. what's the car pulling from the wall to pre-condition? I've seen YouTube videos where it pulls anything from 1kWh to 4kWh to pre-condition. (the 4kWh rate was in Norway at -5c). If it's pulling 4, then 3 hours is 12kWh and that gets into the territory of being moot because the drop in range from a cold battery wouldn't be much more or less than the 12kWh you spent to warm it up.

Also it's shockingly unclear from Jaguar what preconditioning actually does, what the SOC has to be for it to work, and if it actually DOES work. The best I've been able to gather from the various forums is if the battery is between 80 and 100%, preconditioning works but it takes 2 to 3 hours. If it's under 80%, preconditioning does nothing. That's all heresay and opinion and Jaguar don't seem to have any clear guidance on this at all, which is why I've largely not even bothered experimenting with it. That and the fact my car isn't plugged in every night. (again because a lack of information from Jag about what it does to the longevity of the battery having it at 100% the whole time). Then there's the "does it actually use 90kWh or only 82kWh"? question. Is 100% actually 90kWh or is it 82kWh which means they've 'baked in' a maximum owner-capable charge of 90%? A simple technical doc from Jag would go a long way to helping understand exactly what we - as owners - should expect. We shouldn't need third party apps like Wattcat and MyPace to try to glean this information and force an 80% charge by continually monitoring the car and then automatically, remotely, telling it to shut off charging.

Plus - as I said up front - I've been deliberately driving my I-Pace with zero concessions to it being an electric car. Which is what you would have to expect of uninformed new-to-EV owners. That's not me though - we've had a Nissan Leaf for 5 years which we've driven "like an electric car", making concessions left, right and center. For the Jag I wanted to do it differently.
There is one. Another forum member uploaded it but I've attached it here. I do think you are misunderstanding the complications of charging and preconditioning in relation to battery / air temperature and wind chill. Also, there is no problem having your car plugged in overnight at 100% using the onboard charger, in fact it is preferable as it balances the cells. My car sits at 100% on the charger every night, it is two years old, has covered 32,000 miles and battery degradation is 1.2%. What you do not want to do too often is hook it up to a 100kW fast charger with a hot battery. Go for the 50kW option and wait a bit longer if you want to avoid battery issues. Font Screenshot Paper Paper product Document
Font Screenshot Parallel Slope Diagram
Font Material property Rectangle Screenshot Slope
 

Attachments

#21 ·
That's very useful - thanks.
Still a bit confused though - it says that even when plugged in, no battery preconditioning happens unless you set a departure event. Or rather, without a departure event, the battery is "maintained" between -15C and +35C (TS1), which is basically ambient. ie. unless it goes over 35 or under -15, even plugged in, nothing is being done to condition the battery.
So even if it's plugged in, the battery isn't being heated or cooled unless you tell it when you next plan to drive somewhere. For a daily commute, that's ok (for the morning part), but otherwise, that means that keeping it plugged in really doesn't do anything other than keep the battery at maximum SOC. I doubt anyone is going to go through the minutiae of planning shopping trips, work commutes, trips to see families etc, then pre-programming all the departure times into the car, then making sure it's plugged in every time they get home.

Like if I wanted to go for a drive, right now, after finishing typing this, even with the car plugged in all night, the battery is going to be at (looks at outside thermometer) -8C because I decided just now to go for a drive, and didn't plan it and program it into the car yesterday.

It also says that battery preconditioning happens for up to 4 hours before a departure event. If that's pulling 4kwh during that 4 hours, that's 16kW or close to 20% of the battery capacity. Unless you're losing 20% of battery because of external temperature, it's costing more to precondition the battery than it is to just drive with the lower range, surely?
 
#22 ·
Just having the car plugged in does not precondition, but then you would not want it to. The car will only precondition if you tell it to do so, either by setting a departure event or by hitting the precondition button that appears on the lower screen when you unlock the car. You can also initiate preconditioning using the Jaguar Remote app (30 mins only, then manual restart) or the MyPace app in which you can set camper mode which keeps conditioning going for as long as you want.
The need for reconditioning is relative to your range expectation. If you don't plan to drive more than a hundred miles or so in a day you might as well precondition from the battery (i.e. without the car plugged in) because you will have charged it using cheap rate electricity and discharging helps to self heat the battery. Also you only need to heat the cabin and you are not worried about battery temperature because you won't use all the available energy in the miles you intend to cover before you are back home and on your charger.
If, on the other hand, you intend to drive 300 miles and only want one charge stop you are better to precondition on mains power before you leave to optimise first leg range. In that case the cheapest way to precondition in cold weather is to cover the car (by means of a garage or car cover) and heat with a separate heat source such as a greenhouse heater placed in the car overnight. If you choose to precondition the car exposed outdoors in windy sub-zero temperatures it is going to draw loads of power trying to bring the battery up to temperature and, in any case, you won't have charged the battery to full energy capacity anyway.

In answer to your final question, to perform a long precondition on full rate electricity outdoors in freezing conditions you'll use maybe 15kWh peak rate, say £1.95 but you'll still have only about 180m range. Preconditioning under cover with a separate heater will use about 2kWh and cost 26p, in which case you'll fully charge the battery from the wall and have 240m range. 60 miles on an en-route fast charger would cost you around £10.00 so, for a long trip, the first leg of say 230 miles would cost about £11.00 more if you don't think about effective preconditioning.
 
#23 ·
Assuming that you precondition a couple of time 30 min before your departure, and you have a warm battery when you leave with an outside temp of -10c (this is what we have these days), and you drive 100km/h on the highway (this is the limit we have here) for 200km, do you think this is enough to keep the battery warm for the next fast charge, or the battery temp will cool down because of the -10c deg outside ? I can drive at 160km/h here before the fast charge.
 
#24 ·
So if you precondition from the remote app while unplugged, it obviously uses the battery to heat itself up. But preconditioning takes 4 hours according to that page, not 30 minutes. So would it actually do any good in 30 minutes or would it just be burning power for no appreciable gain?
This is what I meant by a hideous lack of usable information from Jaguar on this topic. It's just not clear how and when preconditioning is actually beneficial.
Example : right now it's -4C. My car is in the garage. I need to drive about 20 miles an hour or so from now. The car is unplugged. If I use the remote and precondition in 30 minutes time, ie 30 minutes before leaving, does it do anything to the battery or does it just heat the cabin? And if it heats the battery, does it use more energy to do so than I'd lose through driving 20 miles without preconditioning?
If I have to go out to my garage to plug it in each time I want to precondition it, that's something I need to know. It also becomes a pain in the ass because it means I have to try to predict when I'm going to drive somewhere AND remember to manually set it to precondition 4 hours before I go.
Then there's the precondition button when you unlock the car which seems to be a waste of time. If you press that it's really not doing anything (unless you're plugged in?) in which case you can't drive and it sort of implies you want to sit in a cold car for 4 hours waiting for it to heat the battery.
And this is indicative of what I see the problem as here. I've had the car since July and there is just so little verifiable usable information about preconditioning that I don't know what to do. Jaguar are absolutely useless. Their help lines and support emails just repeat what the extremely unhelpful manual says, the implication of which is that I need to somehow predict every trip and plug the car in 4 hours ahead of those AND use the app to precondition it.
Honestly the further into this topic I go the more confused I'm getting.
And it seems I'm not the only one judging by other ipace forums.
I just need a straight 1-2-3 answer. And if the answer is "you need to plan every trip at least 4 hours ahead of time AND you need to go and plug it in" then I'll basically never be able to use preconditioning.

1. Does preconditioning EVER heat or cool the battery when it's unplugged? If the answer is "no" then:
2. Does keeping it plugged in and at 100% SOC mean it's actually a full 90kWh charge , or is it 82kWh? Which leads to:
3. If it's the full 90kWh then surely that's bad to keep it at 100% all the time?
And lastly
4. IF it has to be plugged in to be preconditioned AND I have to plan ahead to precondition it BUT I'm not blessed with precognition so I don't know when I'll be using it next, is there actually any point in keeping it plugged in in the first place ?

I have yet to get a straight answer to any of those three questions from Jaguar - either corporate or from my dealer.
 
#25 ·
chrisell said:
So if you precondition from the remote app while unplugged, it obviously uses the battery to heat itself up. But preconditioning takes 4 hours according to that page, not 30 minutes. So would it actually do any good in 30 minutes or would it just be burning power for no appreciable gain?
This is what I meant by a hideous lack of usable information from Jaguar on this topic. It's just not clear how and when preconditioning is actually beneficial.
Example : right now it's -4C. My car is in the garage. I need to drive about 20 miles an hour or so from now. The car is unplugged. If I use the remote and precondition in 30 minutes time, ie 30 minutes before leaving, does it do anything to the battery or does it just heat the cabin? And if it heats the battery, does it use more energy to do so than I'd lose through driving 20 miles without preconditioning?
If I have to go out to my garage to plug it in each time I want to precondition it, that's something I need to know. It also becomes a pain in the ass because it means I have to try to predict when I'm going to drive somewhere AND remember to manually set it to precondition 4 hours before I go.
Then there's the precondition button when you unlock the car which seems to be a waste of time. If you press that it's really not doing anything (unless you're plugged in?) in which case you can't drive and it sort of implies you want to sit in a cold car for 4 hours waiting for it to heat the battery.
And this is indicative of what I see the problem as here. I've had the car since July and there is just so little verifiable usable information about preconditioning that I don't know what to do. Jaguar are absolutely useless. Their help lines and support emails just repeat what the extremely unhelpful manual says, the implication of which is that I need to somehow predict every trip and plug the car in 4 hours ahead of those AND use the app to precondition it.
Honestly the further into this topic I go the more confused I'm getting.
And it seems I'm not the only one judging by other ipace forums.
I just need a straight 1-2-3 answer. And if the answer is "you need to plan every trip at least 4 hours ahead of time AND you need to go and plug it in" then I'll basically never be able to use preconditioning.

1. Does preconditioning EVER heat or cool the battery when it's unplugged? If the answer is "no" then:
2. Does keeping it plugged in and at 100% SOC mean it's actually a full 90kWh charge , or is it 82kWh? Which leads to:
3. If it's the full 90kWh then surely that's bad to keep it at 100% all the time?
And lastly
4. IF it has to be plugged in to be preconditioned AND I have to plan ahead to precondition it BUT I'm not blessed with precognition so I don't know when I'll be using it next, is there actually any point in keeping it plugged in in the first place ?

I have yet to get a straight answer to any of those three questions from Jaguar - either corporate or from my dealer.
1. Stop worrying about battery temperature as the car takes care of that for you. Use preconditioning to heat the cabin so that it is comfortable when you leave. Personally I use the MyPace Apple Watch app. I hit the button 20 minutes or so before I plan to drive away irrespective of whether the car is plugged into a charger or not. The only proviso is that, if the car is kept outdoors in very cold conditions, you won't have a full energy level in the battery to achieve maximum range.

2. The I Pace has a 90kWh battery of which about 84kWh is usable. You can leave it plugged in as long as you like on a 7kWh wall charger as that will not damage the battery. Long and slow charging is best for cell balancing, so you are less likely to have a cell failure if you charge and precondition at home.

3. You can precondition from the battery or the wall. Leave the car plugged in whenever you are at home and use your phone or watch to start preconditioning when you know you are going to use the car. Even a few minutes is enough to warm the cabin.

Every EV suffers the same constraints in very cold conditions. It is true that the battery heating elements in the I Pace are not as efficient as Tesla's and they suffer from heat loss through the battery chassis. If you understand that when preparing for journeys where you need maximum range in freezing weather you just compensate by preconditioning in a garage or under a cover. Using a separate heater in those circumstances is just a cheaper option.

You are asking for a simple answer to a range of circumstances that affect the car's capacity to achieve best range and there isn't one. That's why you observe conflicting results. Jaguar cannot explain every circumstance in which you might use the car or understand all of your preferences, so you do need to make one or two procedural decisions to get the best out of the car in extreme weather. Whatever you do don't get wrapped up in the fast charging thing. No battery likes being blasted with current, especially when hot. Much better to optimise range on the first leg of a long journey and en-route charge as little as needed to reach your destination. Personally I carry a Juice Booster 2 which allows me to charge from any power socket from 13A domestic to 32A 3 phase (but only at 7kWh maximum). This increases my options for destination charging and preconditioning and reduces the need for en route rapid charging. I mentioned in another post that although I'm a relatively high mileage business user I've only spent about 40 hours en-route charging in 32,000 miles. If I had been driving a fossil car I would have spent 20 hours refuelling in that distance travelled, so it's not exactly been a burden given the huge fuel savings.
 
#26 ·
Warming the cabin is not important to me - I have heated seats and a heated wheel, so I'm warm within a minute or so of starting to drive anyway.
The thing I care about the most is the battery.
Knowing it's 90kWh with about 84kWh usable is usable information for me, because it tells me that "100%" isn't "100%". It tells me that Jag deliberately don't let you charge to 100% so they can cycle the cells as their management system desires. It also tells me that I'm not going through a deep charge/discharge with the battery when it shows "100%". It also explains why I don't need to worry about an 80% charge cutoff for battery life.

A little background as we've strayed into that territory: I had one of Musk's abominations a few years ago. At the top of this post I mentioned that where I live in America, there exists one of the best car-killer hills in the world, and my commute took me up and down that road every day. 3000ft elevation difference in 13 miles. It's unusual to see the side of the road NOT littered with dead cars, especially in the summer. Anyway, I commuted up and down there, religiously plugging the Tesla in every night, until about 4 weeks into ownership, it just died. Like properly died. As in Tesla had to send technicians out from California to take a look at the car, and they ended up taking it away. When it was returned, it had a new battery pack and new firmware, and it was explained to me that (at that time) there was an issue with deep-cycling the battery and that I'd killed it because of my commute. The battery and software didn't like the massive drain of the climb followed by 13 miles of downhill recharging on the other side. The Jag has the charge-limit indicator on the display when the battery is full. The Tesla didn't. It also didn't hold anything in reserve so when the SOC said 100%, it meant 100% (which is why Tesla owners obsess about stopping the charge at 80%). Anyway, Tesla blamed me for driving the car like a car, and took no responsibility for the fact that their faulty software and hardware was trying to over-charge a deep-cycled battery on the downhill leg of the journey. Essentially once the battery was at 100% they would keep trying to charge it using the regenerated power from braking and downhill driving. I'm sure this has changed now - this was in 2015 when I went through this. But even so, being blamed and being told that it was my fault, and killing an EV through what is just 'normal' driving out here, leaves a pretty bad taste in your mouth. I was able to use America's Lemon Law to give them the car back and get my money back because it was basically absolute junk and not fit for purpose. I then had a 4-banger for four years before buying the I-pace, and so far it's been so much better than anything Tesla could dream of producing. But - as stated - Jag have zero usable info about how their battery system works, and being nervous about killing another EV is why I've been trying to get that info.
Which I now have.
It's plugged into my 7kW ChargeStation at the moment in my garage. I set a precondition for 11am today so I'll report back on what that does after the 40 mile round-trip we have planned in -5C weather.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top