Has anyone else with an Air Dream Experienced Reduced Charging Capacity?

[momo3605]

Just remember that battery capacity loss is the worst in the first 2 years and then tapers off after that.

We’ve discussed this in the original thread when the battery api was made available.

You guys are using the wrong calculation. Explain to me why brand new Pure/Tourings show 88kwh available through the API?

It’s because 4kwh is the buffer. there should be 0 loss on a new car. You need to look at the usable capacity for your Dream/GTPs to get the right degradation statistic.

If anyone can show a Pure/Touring with >89kwh or a GT with >108kwh remaining through the API, I’m happy to be proven wrong.

 

[hydbob]

oh okay. I was slightly worried I was doing something wrong but I rarely charge above 85% and almost never gone below 20% SOC so I couldn't figure out what I might be doing wrong

 

[segbrk]

I’m actually a tiny bit worse @ 87.30999804846942, despite have only 5,000 miles.

Sometimes I wonder how accurate these numbers are, or if they’re really telling us what we think they’re telling us. I get suspicious when a number of people post their results and so many of the numbers in the string are identical. As an example, yours and mine both show ‘9998048’ in the result. It boggles the mind there could be that kind of ‘sameness’ in the results. I’ve seen the same thing in the results of others.

Could it be the numbers further down the string represent some other values? Who knows?

Some of this is likely because:
1) The input data from e.g. sensors in the car isn’t that precise. These raw numbers don’t consider significant figures. To get anything meaningful we have to round… to some precision.
2) Floating point (how most software represents fractional numbers) is kind of stupid. Doing math or anything on floating point number has a margin of error and spits out random looking (very slightly) inaccurate results. The more math you do, the more the error compounds.

 

[Lucken]

We’ve discussed this in the original thread when the battery api was made available.

You guys are using the wrong calculation. Explain to me why brand new Pure/Tourings show 88kwh available through the API?

It’s because 4kwh is the buffer. there should be 0 loss on a new car. You need to look at the usable capacity for your Dream/GTPs to get the right degradation statistic.

If anyone can show a Pure/Touring with >89kwh or a GT with >108kwh remaining through the API, I’m happy to be proven wrong.

So I’d like this to be true and frankly it’s more logical to me. Is it? If so then the losses owners like Chris and I are seeing are very minimal, yet consistent with what we’d ‘logically’ expect from very ‘young’ cars. Yet to some extent Bob’s graphical data somewhat conflicts with this theory.

Color me not entirely convinced one way or the other.

 

[xponents]

If I'm being completely honest, Lucid should be providing this data themselves. There is way too much ambiguity regarding the battery buffers/usable capacity, and I would love for that to be cleared up. To be fair, this does apply to nearly the entire industry..

 

[momo3605]

If I'm being completely honest, Lucid should be providing this data themselves. There is way too much ambiguity regarding the battery buffers/usable capacity, and I would love for that to be cleared up. To be fair, this does apply to nearly the entire industry..

Yea no manufacturer provides battery degradation data. They probably just don’t want to make it easy for customers to say their degradation is too high and need a new expensive battery. Even Apple tried really hard to hide this data until they lost the batterygate lawsuit

I don’t really care that much since I never keep cars more than a few years, but I think it’s a little crazy that so many people here are ok with losing 5-10% of their battery capacity on brand new cars. Especially on the lucid which has the most conservative charge curve in the 800v industry. I honestly don’t think there’s any way the degradation can be that bad. You just have to use the usable battery. Not the total capacity.

 

[hydbob]

Yea no manufacturer provides battery degradation data. They probably just don’t want to make it easy for customers to say their degradation is too high and need a new expensive battery. Even Apple tried really hard to hide this data until they lost the batterygate lawsuit

I don’t really care that much since I never keep cars more than a few years, but I think it’s a little crazy that so many people here are ok with losing 5-10% of their battery capacity on brand new cars. Especially on the lucid which has the most conservative charge curve in the 800v industry. I honestly don’t think there’s any way the degradation can be that bad. You just have to use the usable battery. Not the total capacity.

Remember battery degradation has less to do with charging and make to do with total discharge cycles. At least that's my understanding of it.

 

[Alex]

I have a Dream R. I fully charged to 100% today for a 200 mile trip. The range indicator was 510mi. I have about 30k miles on the car. Got a new battery at 18k miles. At that time I was able to charge to 520mi, but it soon dropped to 516mi. I haven’t paid much attention to 100% charges, but I did notice a decline to 510mi today. The API reports: capacity_kwhr: 110.72999752499163.

 

[momo3605]

Remember battery degradation has less to do with charging and make to do with total discharge cycles. At least that's my understanding of it.

I could see people gaming the system if they had the info. I.e maybe you’re at 80% with a couple years to go, so you start to charge in the worst possible way until it hits 70% and then demand a new battery

 

[momo3605]

I have a Dream R. I fully charged to 100% today for a 200 mile trip. The range indicator was 510mi. I have about 30k miles on the car. Got a new battery at 18k miles. At that time I was able to charge to 520mi, but it soon dropped to 516mi. I haven’t paid much attention to 100% charges, but I did notice a decline to 510mi today. The API reports: capacity_kwhr: 110.72999752499163.

Yea from my understanding the dream has 112 usable. So 110/112 is consistent with 510/520. 2% loss in your case. That being said, it could also just be calibration, and not ACTUAL degradation.

 

[hydbob]

Yea from my understanding the dream has 112 usable. So 110/112 is consistent with 510/520. 2% loss in your case. That being said, it could also just be calibration, and not ACTUAL degradation.

Dreams are 118, GT are 112

 

[suchluke]

capacity_kwhr: 86.70999806188047

2023 AIR PURE AWD build date 3/2023 currently 4,650 miles.

I also noticed unavailable_range: 2.600000038743019. Could this be the buffer from 92kwh?

 

[xponents]

I could see people gaming the system if they had the info. I.e maybe you’re at 80% with a couple years to go, so you start to charge in the worst possible way until it hits 70% and then demand a new battery

I actually thought of that a while ago, but with some research I figured that it was almost impossible to hit 70 percent and if you came close, you would be stuck with the shitty degradation with no replacement.

 

[segbrk]

capacity_kwhr: 86.70999806188047

2023 AIR PURE AWD build date 3/2023 currently 4,650 miles.

I also noticed unavailable_range: 2.600000038743019. Could this be the buffer from 92kwh?

The unavailable range in there goes up and down while the capacity (from what I’ve seen) only goes down. I think the unavailable range corresponds more with the cold battery warning - this much capacity is unavailable right now. Not forever.

 

[hmp10]

. . . my battery capacity is at 108kWh vs. the 118kWh originally. So I have lost roughly 8% capacity . . .

My battery is down to 107 kwh now . . .

Just remember that battery capacity loss is the worst in the first 2 years and then tapers off after that.

Yep, no need to panic. Battery degradation in the early days of EVs, such as when the original Nissan Leaf had no battery temperature management system, was a serious worry. But all major manufacturers now have sophisticated battery management systems that keep temperatures in optimal range, meter charge speeds as needed, and use buffers where needed to protect against over- and under-charging and to reduce dendrite formation.

Long-term tests of modern EV battery systems show they fairly quickly accrue 6-8% of capacity loss, at which point the hockey stick curve significantly flattens and the packs go on to provide years of service, often into the 100-200k mile range with relatively little further loss of capacity. (There's a reason that Tesla, Lucid, and other EV manufacturers plan to use battery packs from decommissioned cars as energy storage devices for renewable energy installations, such as solar and wind farms.)

 

[hmp10]

I could see people gaming the system if they had the info. I.e maybe you’re at 80% with a couple years to go, so you start to charge in the worst possible way until it hits 70% and then demand a new battery

First, the bad news: it won't work.

Now, the good news: it won't work.

One of the earlier studies of battery pack longevity in real-world use was with the fleet of 167 Tesla Model S's the Amsterdam airport acquired in 2014. The cars operated round the clock, were charged with 60kW L3 fast chargers up to 100%, and then often driven down to very low percentages. In 2018, the airport retired the fleet and switched to roomier Model X's. The retired Model S's had accumulated 155-188,000 miles on each car, and their batteries still retained over 90% of their original capacity.

It's worth remembering two things: (1) 2014 is ancient history in EV and battery management development, and (2) the engineer who oversaw the development of the battery packs and their management systems in those early Model S's was Peter Rawlinson, the CEO and CTO of Lucid.

As a few of us Air owners have learned, the battery packs can suddenly fail (as mine did in a 2015 Model S, too). But I think they're going to be very difficult to wear out.

 

[sri]

AIR GT 7200 miles: capacity_kwhr: 106.88999761082232
Build 10/22

 

[borski]

I’m actually a tiny bit worse @ 87.30999804846942, despite have only 5,000 miles.

Sometimes I wonder how accurate these numbers are, or if they’re really telling us what we think they’re telling us. I get suspicious when a number of people post their results and so many of the numbers in the string are identical. As an example, yours and mine both show ‘9998048’ in the result. It boggles the mind there could be that kind of ‘sameness’ in the results. I’ve seen the same thing in the results of others.

Could it be the numbers further down the string represent some other values? Who knows?

Ignore the weird floating point stuff. That’s Python being weird.

 

[EZEVDriver]

I also don’t have a DE, but nearly one year later with low mileage, my degradation seems to be 1.3%. However, I charge nearly always at EA (early mornings at a mall with six chargers), but I keep almost always between 20 and 80%. It would be interesting to combine the stats from the API website with self-reported driving and charging habits. By contrast, my Dec. 2016 Model X lost about 7% in the first year and I was much more gentle on fast charging. After more than seven years, the degradation is at 14%, which Tesla service told me was about average for my model. But over the course of its 6th year, with lifetime free charging, I now always supercharge and the degradation was about 1.5%. So I’m not at all concerned about battery degradation on the Lucid AT, which has been above expectations.

 

[Lucken]

Ignore the weird floating point stuff. That’s Python being weird.

So I guess those floating points are a byproduct of snake oil?