Somebody asked for a short easy to understand "what/not to do to the batteries" post.
Batteries for dummies: the short version of what not to do.
(look at previous posts for details):
There are basically two ways to shorten the life of your battery pack by a bunch
1. Always charge to 100% and then let it sit around for days, especially when it's hot out.
2. Run it dead every time. Drive until the range shows '---' on a regular basis.
And another couple ways to shorten it's life a little bit:
3. If you have ChaDeMo fast charging use it all the time. Every charge if possible.
4. Never let it charge all the way. (yes I know, seems to conflict with #1 but the key parts are 'always' and 'let it sit in the heat at 100% for days')
Note: We're really only talking about chewing off an extra 10-20% of the battery capacity here, absent an actual cell failure. Some folks would barely notice...
OK smart guy, so what --should-- I do?
Well for starters, if you know you're going to need something close to max range, especially in the cold rainy winter, go ahead and charge to 100% (16 bars on an iMiev, 12 ona Leaf). It's considerably less damaging to have it sit at 100% (especially when cold) than to run it flat and drag home in turtle mode.
It's actually good to get it fully charged every 2-4 weeks since the battery balancing system works during that last hour of charge, Just try not to let it sit out in the hot at 100% for long periods on a regular basis.
Every several (6?) months you should run it down to 'two bars' (iMiev) on the battery display (Leaf: when it just starts flashing, around 14 miles remaining?) and then charge it to 100%. It resets the battery/range assumptions in the controller.
If you have it, use fast charging on long trips or when away from home. Just not all the time, eh?
Most of the time just try and keep it between 4 bars and 14 bars (iMiev) 2 up from the bottom and 2 down from the top on a Leaf on the battery meter. Sure you can go slightly more in each direction regularly with no -real- problem, but that's not giving yourself much error room.
....AND.... don't stress about it!
Wednesday, May 31, 2017
Thursday, May 18, 2017
Updateration
Long time no post! Why? Because iMiev. "It just works!" No Drama, no failures nothing but drive and charge. Well, I did take it into the dealer for a bunch of airbag and brake system recalls, but they only had it for about 5 hours and they even washed, vacuumed and charged it. No $charge$. That's the total maintenance for the four years I've had it, excluding wiper blades and washer fluid.
I can (and have) gone almost 70 miles on my 60 mile range iMiev after 4 years of use. The battery is still going strong. Nothing to see here, move along. Resale value is down to around $7K but given that they were selling new ones for $9K two years ago, that's not so bad.
EDIT 2022: Still in the family. Still running strong.
Just had it's big birthday: 10 years since manufacturing. Huzzah!
Closing in on 50,000 miles. Still goes 60+ miles/charge in good conditions. We've had to replace tires, windshield wipers, wiper fluid and the 12V 'house' battery ($90). That's it for total maintenance over 10 years. There's a 'wear' mark on the edge of the driver's seat, the visor is slightly loose. The rear seat 'flop-down' control is sticky. Yep, that's about it. Been to the dealer exactly once (above).
Closing in on 50,000 miles. Still goes 60+ miles/charge in good conditions. We've had to replace tires, windshield wipers, wiper fluid and the 12V 'house' battery ($90). That's it for total maintenance over 10 years. There's a 'wear' mark on the edge of the driver's seat, the visor is slightly loose. The rear seat 'flop-down' control is sticky. Yep, that's about it. Been to the dealer exactly once (above).
It's used a bit over 12,000KWh (estimate) costing roughly $1500 to drive ten years including a total of 14 trips to public chargers. We know many people that exceed that $1500 in gas purchases Per Year!
"What, 14? You don't get out much do ya?"
To which we say:
Long distances, in this car? are you crazy?
end EDIT
Thursday, June 11, 2015
Cheezzeee home charge station
Done (as usual) the not so fancy way...
I've actually gotten questions about this and while it was just Maximum Expediency(tm) on my part I guess some details are in order:
It's just the EVSE (Charger cord) that came with the car, as modified by EVSE Upgrade (see earlier post HERE) and a white plastic desk-side trash basket
...tweaked a bit with some shears, a coat-hook and an old plastic flowerpot.
The rim and part of the side were cut off the trash basket and the bottom removed from the flowerpot (to create the 'holster') If you click on the picture you'll get more detail...
I needed a couple screws into the upper corners and it was hard to get those in, thus the holes you can see in the front. Those two screws plus the ones on the coat-hook are all that holds it to the wall.
The flower pot has the bottom cut off and a couple zip-ties hold it in place.
Hard to see, but there's a little block glued to the concrete in the lower right corner that keeps the garage door from coming down all the way. Even if your door doesn't normally close all that hard, it's sure to smash down harder on occasion. Smashing high current cords...can't be good...
One thing to think about: You don't want that cord exposed to strong sun for a long period every day. Couple years of that and you'll be looking at cracks. I'm guessing cracks and water are a bad combination...
It's just the EVSE (Charger cord) that came with the car, as modified by EVSE Upgrade (see earlier post HERE) and a white plastic desk-side trash basket
...tweaked a bit with some shears, a coat-hook and an old plastic flowerpot.
The rim and part of the side were cut off the trash basket and the bottom removed from the flowerpot (to create the 'holster') If you click on the picture you'll get more detail...
I needed a couple screws into the upper corners and it was hard to get those in, thus the holes you can see in the front. Those two screws plus the ones on the coat-hook are all that holds it to the wall.
The flower pot has the bottom cut off and a couple zip-ties hold it in place.
Hard to see, but there's a little block glued to the concrete in the lower right corner that keeps the garage door from coming down all the way. Even if your door doesn't normally close all that hard, it's sure to smash down harder on occasion. Smashing high current cords...can't be good...
One thing to think about: You don't want that cord exposed to strong sun for a long period every day. Couple years of that and you'll be looking at cracks. I'm guessing cracks and water are a bad combination...
Sunday, June 7, 2015
Pricing: New, Used and the vicious depriciation curve
First a short update on where new prices seem to be going: (subject to change, obviously)
Update to the update: O'Brian Mitsubishi (the 'home' dealer Mitsu-USA in Normal IL) seems to have the most new 2016 stock. I do not have any information on anyone's purchasing experiences with them. They quote a price of $12.9K which is not 'real' (It's after the federal credit)
As of last check they still had a dozen or so 2016's at around $20K. Even if you can't get exactly this deal, it does provide a useful 'line in the sand' for other negotiations. With around $1200 in delivery costs you're looking at a total around $21.2K, less the Federal Tax Credit of $7500 your final cost should be around $13,800-ish. Not bad, however, do keep an eye on what's happening on the used market. New LEAF's are also reduced somewhat and are now at these same levels for 2013 and 2014 models with low (under 10K miles) on them.
As mentioned in a previous post linked here, the depreciation curve for mass market electric vehicles doesn't look so hot. Tesla may (so far) be the exception. Everyone else is suffering a combination of things that drag the used valuations down; including but not limited to:
Battery life fears - The manufacturers seem to have roughly standardized on the 8yr/100K mi. battery warranty. This appears to have made the depreciation curve considerably steeper than 'normal.'
Off-Lease glut - When the manufacturers had some periods of slow unit sales a couple years ago they responded by offering amazingly low lease deals. This also helped with the customer's battery life fears issue(s). The result was a larger than normal percentage of these cars being leased rather than bought outright. Now all those leased vehicles are reaching the end of their 2 or 3 year lease periods and showing up on the used market. This is probably pushing used prices down $3-5K.
Obvious price adjustments - Pretty much everyone knows about the $7500 Federal Tax Credit, so you have to start the depreciation assumptions from (at the very least) that amount below the average new selling cost. There were also lots of relatively large dealer incentive/rebates flying around at various times, some as high as 30% off. This appears to have also affected prices by several thousand.
So what happens when you add all that up? The volume of iMiEV's is low enough that randomness and local influences have had significant impact on used pricing. Still; You probably shouldn't pay much more than $7-8K for even a great condition, under 10K mi. used 2014 iMiev.
The LEAF market is much bigger and the pricing there pretty much matches expectations: Lets say your 2013 LEAF was $33K minus some rebates and with the tax credit we're around $23K. Applying a steeper than average depreciation curve to the three years that's been out and a couple thousand for the other factors and we're probably looking at $11K-$15K as the current price for that car.
"That's Terrible!!" well, only if you're the seller. If you're the buyer it's GREAT.
Reality check: Good friend of mine just took delivery of a 2013 LEAF with under 5000 miles on it and near showroom condition. Not the bottom model either. Thanks to carlypso.com (now defunct) he paid $12.5K plus around $600 for delivery (they're based in CA). This car is in REALLY nice condition too. Delivery and transactions went pretty much without a hitch (it was a couple days late getting here.)
Looking at their website, that's a little below the average for the many LEAF's on there.
Not bad at all.
Update to the update: O'Brian Mitsubishi (the 'home' dealer Mitsu-USA in Normal IL) seems to have the most new 2016 stock. I do not have any information on anyone's purchasing experiences with them. They quote a price of $12.9K which is not 'real' (It's after the federal credit)
As of last check they still had a dozen or so 2016's at around $20K. Even if you can't get exactly this deal, it does provide a useful 'line in the sand' for other negotiations. With around $1200 in delivery costs you're looking at a total around $21.2K, less the Federal Tax Credit of $7500 your final cost should be around $13,800-ish. Not bad, however, do keep an eye on what's happening on the used market. New LEAF's are also reduced somewhat and are now at these same levels for 2013 and 2014 models with low (under 10K miles) on them.
As mentioned in a previous post linked here, the depreciation curve for mass market electric vehicles doesn't look so hot. Tesla may (so far) be the exception. Everyone else is suffering a combination of things that drag the used valuations down; including but not limited to:
Battery life fears - The manufacturers seem to have roughly standardized on the 8yr/100K mi. battery warranty. This appears to have made the depreciation curve considerably steeper than 'normal.'
Off-Lease glut - When the manufacturers had some periods of slow unit sales a couple years ago they responded by offering amazingly low lease deals. This also helped with the customer's battery life fears issue(s). The result was a larger than normal percentage of these cars being leased rather than bought outright. Now all those leased vehicles are reaching the end of their 2 or 3 year lease periods and showing up on the used market. This is probably pushing used prices down $3-5K.
Obvious price adjustments - Pretty much everyone knows about the $7500 Federal Tax Credit, so you have to start the depreciation assumptions from (at the very least) that amount below the average new selling cost. There were also lots of relatively large dealer incentive/rebates flying around at various times, some as high as 30% off. This appears to have also affected prices by several thousand.
So what happens when you add all that up? The volume of iMiEV's is low enough that randomness and local influences have had significant impact on used pricing. Still; You probably shouldn't pay much more than $7-8K for even a great condition, under 10K mi. used 2014 iMiev.
The LEAF market is much bigger and the pricing there pretty much matches expectations: Lets say your 2013 LEAF was $33K minus some rebates and with the tax credit we're around $23K. Applying a steeper than average depreciation curve to the three years that's been out and a couple thousand for the other factors and we're probably looking at $11K-$15K as the current price for that car.
"That's Terrible!!" well, only if you're the seller. If you're the buyer it's GREAT.
Reality check: Good friend of mine just took delivery of a 2013 LEAF with under 5000 miles on it and near showroom condition. Not the bottom model either. Thanks to carlypso.com (now defunct) he paid $12.5K plus around $600 for delivery (they're based in CA). This car is in REALLY nice condition too. Delivery and transactions went pretty much without a hitch (it was a couple days late getting here.)
Looking at their website, that's a little below the average for the many LEAF's on there.
Not bad at all.
Monday, April 13, 2015
Oh Batteries my Batteries...
So it's been like almost two years since the last blast about batteries on here. Have we learned anything new?
Maybe not much new, but there's been enough learning (and failures) out there to get a little more nuanced impression regarding what's working and what is not. The greatest depth and variety of information comes (pretty obviously) from the Nissan LEAF universe, since in the U.S. there about a hundred LEAF's running around for every one iMiEV. People will argue that since the battery configuration and chemistry and battery management systems aren't the same we can't make 100% exact comparisons with 'our' car. True, but it's close enough (90-95%?) that we can sure learn stuff from there.
Some people have done 'everything right' and still had their battery packs fail. Hey, there's a lot of cells in each pack. Even with REALLY good quality control you're going to have the occasional outright failure. That doesn't mean you shouldn't treat your pack at least somewhat nicely, just that it won't guarantee zero failures.
No surprise.
Other people appear to abuse their battery pack consistently with no consequences (yet). How can that be? Well, that's probably due to the design engineers not being completely stupid. Their job was to make the pack last through the 8 year 100,000 mile warranty. They know that letting you charge absolutely completely full and then discharge to absolutely completely empty will result in a pack that only lasts a couple hundred cycles at best. So to achieve their goal they have made it so you can't really charge up all the way (even though it says 'full') or discharge all the way. Basically you're allowed to run your pack from about 95% full down to about 10% full. Actually it's about 15-20% when the Turtle kicks in and you only get 80% full if you're on fast charge, but you get the idea.
"So how come it's called a 16 KWh (kilo watt hour) pack if I only get to use 13-14 KWh out of it?" 16 KWh is the minimum that qualifies you for the full federal tax credit. Yes it's really that simple.
Even if the engineering whiz kids have designed the whole system so that making it to 100K miles or 8 years is highly probable, we gotta ask ourselves "How do I get to 12 years or 200K Miles?"
Let's back up for a minute:
If the cells that make up our battery pack are 'rated' for say 1000 cycles (I don't know what the actual number is, 1000? 2000? this is just an example) even that is probably under some sort of 'ideal' conditions that have no connection with reality. This doesn't matter much. Why not? Because we already know the battery is good for hundreds of thousands of 'cycles.' It just depends on how you define cycle. While driving, every time you let off the 'go' pedal or step lightly on the brake the regenerative braking system is charging the battery. Then you start accelerating again, you're discharging. This happens a LOT of times per day for most of us. It's a real world example of something battery engineers have known for a long time: The deeper the discharge, the fewer cycles you'll get. Fortunately much of the 'life reduction' occurs near the limits of fully charged or fully discharged. ...and the engineers already won't let us play too close to those limits, though it turns out we can be nicer than that.
Another thing we can look at is how much current (power) we can pull out of the batteries all at once. We look at this in relation to the total battery pack capacity, around 50 Amp/Hours in our case. This is referred to as one 'C'. For this type of cell it's generally agreed that you can go up to a discharge rate of 3C (three times the 'one hour rate') without causing any damage to the cells. You may have noticed the charge-discharge 'power' meter on the dash. It has three divisions on the power (discharge, right-most) side of the meter roughly corresponding to 50, 100 and 150 Amps. So the system is built so you can't go much beyond 150 Amps (3C) regardless. That's also why the acceleration ramps up somewhat slowly when you tromp on the 'go' pedal. This keeps the peak current draw down to a non-damaging level and also keeps the tires from disappearing in a cloud of smoke ...and you stay on the road. You'll also find the system automatically reduces the current when you reach 'Turtle' mode (near-empty), and that's a good thing. We can, however, be a Nicer Turtle and avoid going above the 100Amp line when we're down below four bars on the battery gauge.
Charging: The amount of charge, how fast, temperature and how long it sits fully charged are all important variables in this equation. Generally speaking a relatively slow rate of charge (8-15 Amps) at a relatively mild temperature (40-85 Deg.F) is kindest to the battery. Since the built in charger is limited to 3300 Watts (about 13A at 240V in.) anything it can do is fine. All we really need to do is control temperature and amount of charge.
Over the last couple years it's become pretty obvious that high charge (or discharge) rates at very high (over 100) or very low (below 20 Deg.F) temps is not so good for the battery. What is perhaps more surprising is that it's also quite bad to leave the car fully charged when it's going to sit at relatively high temperatures for any extended length of time (over a couple hours or on a regular basis) People have managed to knock 20% or more off their battery life (also referred to as 'degradation') in a year or so of leaving their LEAF out fully charged or just completing full charge in areas of Arizona that have high daily temps. (110F or above.) "So what should I do in that situation?" Don't charge above 80% (14 bars) if it's real hot out or you're going to let it heat-soak in a very hot parking lot for a long period. "But I need all of that full charge to get home with the AC on!"
Sounds like you bought the wrong car.
Granted the iMiEV has a certain amount of thermal management (basically running the AC during charge to keep the battery cooler) on models equipped with Fast Charging [CHAdeMO, some 2012's and all 2014 and 2016's.] How effective is it? We don't really know, and it doesn't fix the hot-soak after charging problem regardless. This is something it's at least possible to track, see the CaniOn post.
Another thing that's not completely obvious is that the folks who only drive a short distance and then plug it right in every day and let it charge fully are probably not doing their battery a favor... as you might have guessed from the above. Even in cooler climates having it basically sit all the time at full charge probably won't help the battery life much and may actually shorten the life somewhat. If they were charging to only 80% (14 bars) all the time then there wouldn't be a problem. [The 2012 and 2013 LEAF's actually have a setting that allows that to be the default behavior. This got dropped in 2014 due to some stupidity at the EPA.] No problem though, iMiEV's come with a remote control.
"So to sum up, how do you plan to keep your iMiEV running to 200K miles?"
I don't think I will reach 200K. At 9-10K per year that would be well over 20 years. I strongly suspect it will be done in by simple chemical aging, partially due to unavoidable thermal cycling, before then.
Having it sit in an air-conditioned/heated garage kinda defeats the whole purpose, no?
That said, I'll try to get it to last as long as possible:
Mostly I'm a 'Nicer Turtle.'
I don't run it hard when the battery is low.
I only rarely let it get below 4-5 bars on the battery gauge.
I rarely let it charge over 14 bars (out of 16)
About once a month (or two) I run it down to 2 bars and then give it a full charge. "But you said... uh, why?"
Running it down to Two, where the display starts flashing, causes the battery gauge to reset it's 'expectations' when it gets a full charge immediately after. Granted the factory folks only want you to do that once a year or so, but it seems to happen, just in real life every month or two. ...and you DO want to give it a full charge occasionally (I let it go to 'full' every week or two) since that's when the cell-to-cell equalization system kicks in. See the old battery post for details on equalization.
Newbies:
In fact if I had a new iMiEV that had been sitting on the dealer's lot for awhile, I'd tend to make the first ten or so charges 'all-the-way-to-full' one's (just however much you happen to use it every day then let it charge full) and then have ONE run-it-down-to-two and then full charge during the first couple weeks of ownership just to make sure the battery cells were equalized and the system was properly reset.
Then shift over to staying in the 4-14 bar range as much as possible.
"How do I keep the charge from going over 14 bars?" That's what the little remote control is for. With my particular car and my charger I know I need a bit over 6 hours to go from 4-5 bars to 14. I just set the start and end times to get that result. You'll learn all this over the first couple weeks.
And BTW: Don't freak out, unless you're running it deep into turtle mode every day for weeks, you're unlikely to do serious lasting damage. They did a pretty good job on the design.
Maybe not much new, but there's been enough learning (and failures) out there to get a little more nuanced impression regarding what's working and what is not. The greatest depth and variety of information comes (pretty obviously) from the Nissan LEAF universe, since in the U.S. there about a hundred LEAF's running around for every one iMiEV. People will argue that since the battery configuration and chemistry and battery management systems aren't the same we can't make 100% exact comparisons with 'our' car. True, but it's close enough (90-95%?) that we can sure learn stuff from there.
Some people have done 'everything right' and still had their battery packs fail. Hey, there's a lot of cells in each pack. Even with REALLY good quality control you're going to have the occasional outright failure. That doesn't mean you shouldn't treat your pack at least somewhat nicely, just that it won't guarantee zero failures.
No surprise.
Other people appear to abuse their battery pack consistently with no consequences (yet). How can that be? Well, that's probably due to the design engineers not being completely stupid. Their job was to make the pack last through the 8 year 100,000 mile warranty. They know that letting you charge absolutely completely full and then discharge to absolutely completely empty will result in a pack that only lasts a couple hundred cycles at best. So to achieve their goal they have made it so you can't really charge up all the way (even though it says 'full') or discharge all the way. Basically you're allowed to run your pack from about 95% full down to about 10% full. Actually it's about 15-20% when the Turtle kicks in and you only get 80% full if you're on fast charge, but you get the idea.
"So how come it's called a 16 KWh (kilo watt hour) pack if I only get to use 13-14 KWh out of it?" 16 KWh is the minimum that qualifies you for the full federal tax credit. Yes it's really that simple.
Even if the engineering whiz kids have designed the whole system so that making it to 100K miles or 8 years is highly probable, we gotta ask ourselves "How do I get to 12 years or 200K Miles?"
Let's back up for a minute:
If the cells that make up our battery pack are 'rated' for say 1000 cycles (I don't know what the actual number is, 1000? 2000? this is just an example) even that is probably under some sort of 'ideal' conditions that have no connection with reality. This doesn't matter much. Why not? Because we already know the battery is good for hundreds of thousands of 'cycles.' It just depends on how you define cycle. While driving, every time you let off the 'go' pedal or step lightly on the brake the regenerative braking system is charging the battery. Then you start accelerating again, you're discharging. This happens a LOT of times per day for most of us. It's a real world example of something battery engineers have known for a long time: The deeper the discharge, the fewer cycles you'll get. Fortunately much of the 'life reduction' occurs near the limits of fully charged or fully discharged. ...and the engineers already won't let us play too close to those limits, though it turns out we can be nicer than that.
Another thing we can look at is how much current (power) we can pull out of the batteries all at once. We look at this in relation to the total battery pack capacity, around 50 Amp/Hours in our case. This is referred to as one 'C'. For this type of cell it's generally agreed that you can go up to a discharge rate of 3C (three times the 'one hour rate') without causing any damage to the cells. You may have noticed the charge-discharge 'power' meter on the dash. It has three divisions on the power (discharge, right-most) side of the meter roughly corresponding to 50, 100 and 150 Amps. So the system is built so you can't go much beyond 150 Amps (3C) regardless. That's also why the acceleration ramps up somewhat slowly when you tromp on the 'go' pedal. This keeps the peak current draw down to a non-damaging level and also keeps the tires from disappearing in a cloud of smoke ...and you stay on the road. You'll also find the system automatically reduces the current when you reach 'Turtle' mode (near-empty), and that's a good thing. We can, however, be a Nicer Turtle and avoid going above the 100Amp line when we're down below four bars on the battery gauge.
Charging: The amount of charge, how fast, temperature and how long it sits fully charged are all important variables in this equation. Generally speaking a relatively slow rate of charge (8-15 Amps) at a relatively mild temperature (40-85 Deg.F) is kindest to the battery. Since the built in charger is limited to 3300 Watts (about 13A at 240V in.) anything it can do is fine. All we really need to do is control temperature and amount of charge.
Over the last couple years it's become pretty obvious that high charge (or discharge) rates at very high (over 100) or very low (below 20 Deg.F) temps is not so good for the battery. What is perhaps more surprising is that it's also quite bad to leave the car fully charged when it's going to sit at relatively high temperatures for any extended length of time (over a couple hours or on a regular basis) People have managed to knock 20% or more off their battery life (also referred to as 'degradation') in a year or so of leaving their LEAF out fully charged or just completing full charge in areas of Arizona that have high daily temps. (110F or above.) "So what should I do in that situation?" Don't charge above 80% (14 bars) if it's real hot out or you're going to let it heat-soak in a very hot parking lot for a long period. "But I need all of that full charge to get home with the AC on!"
Sounds like you bought the wrong car.
Granted the iMiEV has a certain amount of thermal management (basically running the AC during charge to keep the battery cooler) on models equipped with Fast Charging [CHAdeMO, some 2012's and all 2014 and 2016's.] How effective is it? We don't really know, and it doesn't fix the hot-soak after charging problem regardless. This is something it's at least possible to track, see the CaniOn post.
Another thing that's not completely obvious is that the folks who only drive a short distance and then plug it right in every day and let it charge fully are probably not doing their battery a favor... as you might have guessed from the above. Even in cooler climates having it basically sit all the time at full charge probably won't help the battery life much and may actually shorten the life somewhat. If they were charging to only 80% (14 bars) all the time then there wouldn't be a problem. [The 2012 and 2013 LEAF's actually have a setting that allows that to be the default behavior. This got dropped in 2014 due to some stupidity at the EPA.] No problem though, iMiEV's come with a remote control.
"So to sum up, how do you plan to keep your iMiEV running to 200K miles?"
I don't think I will reach 200K. At 9-10K per year that would be well over 20 years. I strongly suspect it will be done in by simple chemical aging, partially due to unavoidable thermal cycling, before then.
Having it sit in an air-conditioned/heated garage kinda defeats the whole purpose, no?
That said, I'll try to get it to last as long as possible:
Mostly I'm a 'Nicer Turtle.'
I don't run it hard when the battery is low.
I only rarely let it get below 4-5 bars on the battery gauge.
I rarely let it charge over 14 bars (out of 16)
About once a month (or two) I run it down to 2 bars and then give it a full charge. "But you said... uh, why?"
Running it down to Two, where the display starts flashing, causes the battery gauge to reset it's 'expectations' when it gets a full charge immediately after. Granted the factory folks only want you to do that once a year or so, but it seems to happen, just in real life every month or two. ...and you DO want to give it a full charge occasionally (I let it go to 'full' every week or two) since that's when the cell-to-cell equalization system kicks in. See the old battery post for details on equalization.
Newbies:
In fact if I had a new iMiEV that had been sitting on the dealer's lot for awhile, I'd tend to make the first ten or so charges 'all-the-way-to-full' one's (just however much you happen to use it every day then let it charge full) and then have ONE run-it-down-to-two and then full charge during the first couple weeks of ownership just to make sure the battery cells were equalized and the system was properly reset.
Then shift over to staying in the 4-14 bar range as much as possible.
"How do I keep the charge from going over 14 bars?" That's what the little remote control is for. With my particular car and my charger I know I need a bit over 6 hours to go from 4-5 bars to 14. I just set the start and end times to get that result. You'll learn all this over the first couple weeks.
And BTW: Don't freak out, unless you're running it deep into turtle mode every day for weeks, you're unlikely to do serious lasting damage. They did a pretty good job on the design.
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