[johnnyp420]

Quick question as my car is currently at the service center- I have the pre-LCI 9.2kwh battery, from a 0% charge I am only getting 6kwh until battery is full. I asked BMW to run a diagnostic which they stated was $189. Service tech came back and stated the tech suggested they test the HV battery (which I thought they were doing in the first place) which is $419. Does that seem reasonable? And if the diagnostic was originally quoted at $189 why are the coming back saying $419? Am I crazy??

[Alpine530e]

Hey fellow pre-lci 530e owner here. I would say 6 kwh is spot on for the pack. They always allow for additional storage for keeping the electrics in the car operational when fully depleted. There is also around a 20% hold back for degration over the packs lifetime to keep range consistent. You will never be able to fully deplete the pack and charge the full 9.2kwh. So usable battery is about 6.5-7 kwh. If you don't have any warnings on the dash or I drive screen you should be good to go.

[Volasko]

Originally Posted by johnnyp420

Quick question as my car is currently at the service center- I have the pre-LCI 9.2kwh battery, from a 0% charge I am only getting 6kwh until battery is full. I asked BMW to run a diagnostic which they stated was $189. Service tech came back and stated the tech suggested they test the HV battery (which I thought they were doing in the first place) which is $419. Does that seem reasonable? And if the diagnostic was originally quoted at $189 why are the coming back saying $419? Am I crazy??

You're not crazy, the dealers are. I dealt with the same headaches when I was buying a used 530e and wanted the dealer to run a check. When I called in they said they would do a full diagnosis using proper testing equipment and also providing a formal report, this test was around the same $200 dollar amount. When it came to actually doing the test the price jumped up to nearly 400 dollars and all they did was have a tech charge the car and drive it around checking the range manually. The good news was the battery was fine but the overall experience was frustrating. Also Johnny is correct, the NA PEHV have a max discharge cap to always keep a portion of the charge available for HVAC and other battery loads.

[LogicalApex]

BMW needs to clarify this stuff.

How can there be a charge to test the battery when it is under warranty? Remember the battery has an 8Y/80K mile warranty (10Y/100K miles in CARB states)...

My warranty booklet says it shouldn't be a paid "diagnostic"...



Additionally, what did the report say. "Good" as in it holds a charge? What about degradation as that could also lead to having it replaced as has been done on the forum for SteveinArizona

Originally Posted by Alpine530e

Hey fellow pre-lci 530e owner here. I would say 6 kwh is spot on for the pack. They always allow for additional storage for keeping the electrics in the car operational when fully depleted. There is also around a 20% hold back for degration over the packs lifetime to keep range consistent. You will never be able to fully deplete the pack and charge the full 9.2kwh. So usable battery is about 6.5-7 kwh. If you don't have any warnings on the dash or I drive screen you should be good to go.

You are correct the the US gets a 20% lower battery capacity to better handle aging, but in my extensive testing it doesn't appear that the car "saves" anything for use. Said another way, I wasn't able to find a way to "use" that 20% that's walled off in anyway.

The car's HV system and electronics can operate off the ICE motor with it acting as a generator. It can produce more charging current than you can with the 16A @ 240V the car allows. In my testing once you drop the car below a threshold amount (< 5%) it will use the ICE to power the HV system and aggressively charge the battery up to about 10% then go back to normal. This ensures you always have some HV battery on top to use "eBoost" as that requires both the ICE and HV motor to work together (so the ICE can't be dragged by charging the HV system).

You can drain the battery the most by running the climate control system with the car on, but parked and you can monitor charge and energy use when the car drops enough to flip over to the ICE and back. The climate control in the car can't operate off the ICE, but it doesn't miss a beat and the energy view shows the charge occurring then the ICE flips off after a minute or two.

I used to think the same though until my extensive testing.

If I had access to a dyno it would be interesting to see what the car reported if you went WOT until the HV battery was flat. Almost impossible in real world though to create a situation where regeneration can't capture some energy and the ICE doesn't have excess capacity to top you up between hard acceleration pushes.