[jmurphEV]

I've noticed the same reduction in the full charge predicted range and talked about it here. Mine is a 2018 PHEV with ~73k miles on the clock. Better than 70% of those miles are on the battery and it gets charged basically every day so it's had a fair number of cycles. My predicted EV range has declined to 24 on most charges. I do occasionally see 25 and ever more rarely the original 26 so there is some variation on how much charge the pack will take evidently.

In the linked thread I've posted some data from my car's charging history that seems to show a slow decline in the amount of energy delivered on a full charge which would tend to confirm the info from the guess-o-meter that the pack's full charge capacity has been reduced a bit. To be fair, the data is a bit noisy, so my confidence is probably at the 80% level, but it certainly seems to me that the trend is there.

 

[jmurphEV]

ok, so 2 questions arise form the data.
1. despite what is showing as range, what are you actually getting? if it is only 23 miles and if that is a 10% degradation now is that acceptable.
2. How does the 100k battery warranty read, does it give an acceptable actual battery degradation rate for the miles/Years. It will be interesting to see how that is interpreted by KIA and also Federal.
3. What are your thoughts on acceptable battery degradation and if the battery is "dead" after say 10 years will you replace the battery and at what cost or will you just recycle the car?

curous for thoughts
thanks

Good questions. I've actually given some thought to most of them although my anwers are necessarily kinda fuzzy.
1. Actual vs Estimated Range: Measuring actual range turns out to be tricky since it varies based on season, driving conditions, how much crap I have in the car, etc. My impression is that I have lost a bit of range, maybe 2-4 miles. That's actually not as bad as it sounds since when the car was new I could easilty get 30+ miles out of a full charge. RIght now, I'm probably getting closer to the EPA predicted number. So, yes I've lost a bit, but I had more in the beginning so I'm still doing pretty good.

2. The warranty states that the traction pack is covered by the warranty but I would suspect that it's limited to defects only and does not cover what would be considered normal wear.

[soapbox] This is a fundamental question for EVs of all types. Given that the battery is a wear item with a limited lifespan and that the replacment cost can easily be a significant fraction of the cost of the entire vehicle, who should bear that responsibility? It doesn't sound like a part that a traditional warranty would cover, it's more like brake pads and other parts that are expected to wear out over time. Requiring the manufacturers to cover most or all of the traction pack replacement at end of life would almost certainly cause them to raise the purchase price significantly to cover their exposure. Same applies to the owner, when you purchase an EV are you including the eventual replacement of the traction pack in your cost estimates? I bet most people don't.[/soapbox]

3. I'm not sure I have a limit where I would consider the battery dead until the car itself started complaining about it. In the limit, if the EV range is reduced to just a few miles then I effectively have a slightly heavier Niro HEV that's paid off and gets 50+ mpg. Not that it would get to that point, I'm sure the car will throw codes well before that point. When I get there I'll probably sell the car since it'll be 10+ years old at that point and who knows if replacements will be available. As to what I think is acceptable, I think if the loss of range remains steady and I get to 10 years with 20 miles or so of fuctional EV range I'll be pretty happy.

 

[jmurphEV]

My 2018 Kia Niro PHEV is now 7½ years old, 93.000 miles and is recently gone down in range from 36 miles (which is max from new) to 29 miles. I have searched the web on and off to find out what and when to expect degradation for the last two years without finding anything about it. So here is my experience if anybody can use that information to anything

In the 2 years since my last post on the subject I've lost around 2-3 additional miles from the predicted range. Sometimes I see as low as 20 on the range-o-meter after a full charge. I still think my use case is pretty much the upper limit for a PHEV vs a BEV, driven daily and draining the battery completely. This means a full charge pretty much every day which is kind of the worst case scenario for the pack. Now, it's true that the Niro doesn't allow the pack to drain completely, leaving a decent buffer at the lower end, but still I probably have over a thousand max charges in 7 years and just over 100k miles. That's quite a lot.

Still love the car, no complaints.