MG4 Intelligent battery heating on SE?

[Rolfe]

Interesting. I presume they supply the feature for a reason though. I mean, they can't even supply a working USB player, but they give us this for no benefit? Doesn't compute.

 

[MG4London]

Tap on the battery tile on the home screen, tap on the Energy Consumption tab and the battery heating toggle should be there. (From memory).

Done that now what? Can you actually turn it in?

 

[MoDolph]

I really don't know how we're supposed to use battery heating. I presume it's provided for a reason.

I've been looking for an answer to this for the past few days and have been testing how it works but there is still some way to go.

When I turned it on whilst running some errands around town it behaved as follows:

So it seems to be trying to heat the battery to 20 °C and it took approximately 30 mins to raise the temperature by 10 °C. The heater seemed to consume ~3 kW so it used ~1.5 kWh (3% SE) for the 10 °C increase.

Unfortunately, the start of the drop in inlet temperature roughly coincides with when I got out of the car at the local rubbish tip. I didn't shut the car down or lock it but maybe it would have continued heating should I not have got out.

I'm currently pre-heating the battery whilst it's on charge at work so hopefully I can see what temperature it heats to when doing that and how long it takes to cool down.

As to why you would use it there are a few reasons but I'm struggling to calculate the exact times when it would be beneficial.

Pre-heating helps to; increase the amount of energy that can be delivered by the battery, increase the power output/input capability into the battery and reduce the extra degradation seen at low temperatures.

I've found a useful paper investigating pre-heating of LFP batteries in a bus with some real world testing (attached). This graph shows that at -10 °C the battery will lose ~13% of it's capacity compared with 20 °C. If this is true and my data above is correct then you might be able to gain ~4% extra range by pre-heating using the battery before a trip where you plan to use 100% of the battery. Probably not worth it. If you can pre-heat using power from the grid instead then it could be very useful.

The real world testing of the bus was interesting:

By pre-heating by 12 °C they saw a 6% improvement in energy consumption and a 35% reduction in degradation.

 

[siteguru]

Done that now what? Can you actually turn it in?

Yes you can. Make sure the car is in the READY state and then tap on the slider for Intelligent Battery Heating - that should turn it on (if it's off) or off (if it's on).

 

[Rolfe]

I've been looking for an answer to this for the past few days and have been testing how it works but there is still some way to go.

When I turned it on whilst running some errands around town it behaved as follows:
View attachment 21443
So it seems to be trying to heat the battery to 20 °C and it took approximately 30 mins to raise the temperature by 10 °C. The heater seemed to consume ~3 kW so it used ~1.5 kWh (3% SE) for the 10 °C increase.

Unfortunately, the start of the drop in inlet temperature roughly coincides with when I got out of the car at the local rubbish tip. I didn't shut the car down or lock it but maybe it would have continued heating should I not have got out.

I'm currently pre-heating the battery whilst it's on charge at work so hopefully I can see what temperature it heats to when doing that and how long it takes to cool down.

As to why you would use it there are a few reasons but I'm struggling to calculate the exact times when it would be beneficial.

Pre-heating helps to; increase the amount of energy that can be delivered by the battery, increase the power output/input capability into the battery and reduce the extra degradation seen at low temperatures.

I've found a useful paper investigating pre-heating of LFP batteries in a bus with some real world testing (attached). This graph shows that at -10 °C the battery will lose ~13% of it's capacity compared with 20 °C. If this is true and my data above is correct then you might be able to gain ~4% extra range by pre-heating using the battery before a trip where you plan to use 100% of the battery. Probably not worth it. If you can pre-heat using power from the grid instead then it could be very useful.

View attachment 21444

The real world testing of the bus was interesting:

View attachment 21445

By pre-heating by 12 °C they saw a 6% improvement in energy consumption and a 35% reduction in degradation.

That's brilliant, thanks.

 

[MGFour]

I've been looking for an answer to this for the past few days and have been testing how it works but there is still some way to go.

When I turned it on whilst running some errands around town it behaved as follows:
View attachment 21443
So it seems to be trying to heat the battery to 20 °C and it took approximately 30 mins to raise the temperature by 10 °C. The heater seemed to consume ~3 kW so it used ~1.5 kWh (3% SE) for the 10 °C increase.

Unfortunately, the start of the drop in inlet temperature roughly coincides with when I got out of the car at the local rubbish tip. I didn't shut the car down or lock it but maybe it would have continued heating should I not have got out.

I'm currently pre-heating the battery whilst it's on charge at work so hopefully I can see what temperature it heats to when doing that and how long it takes to cool down.

As to why you would use it there are a few reasons but I'm struggling to calculate the exact times when it would be beneficial.

Pre-heating helps to; increase the amount of energy that can be delivered by the battery, increase the power output/input capability into the battery and reduce the extra degradation seen at low temperatures.

I've found a useful paper investigating pre-heating of LFP batteries in a bus with some real world testing (attached). This graph shows that at -10 °C the battery will lose ~13% of it's capacity compared with 20 °C. If this is true and my data above is correct then you might be able to gain ~4% extra range by pre-heating using the battery before a trip where you plan to use 100% of the battery. Probably not worth it. If you can pre-heat using power from the grid instead then it could be very useful.

View attachment 21444

The real world testing of the bus was interesting:

View attachment 21445

By pre-heating by 12 °C they saw a 6% improvement in energy consumption and a 35% reduction in degradation.

Good research, I'd say its not worth it personally for UK climate.

Question - Does the 4% poss gain if using 100% of battery take into account that the battery will naturally heat up while being used anyway? If not the 4% could be less.

 

[MoDolph]

Good research, I'd say its not worth it personally for UK climate.

Question - Does the 4% poss gain if using 100% of battery take into account that the battery will naturally heat up while being used anyway? If not the 4% could be less.

No it doesn't and yes it could.

I'd say that it is basically pointless to use the battery to heat itself to get more range in the uk but it would be nice to have enough information to know for sure.