Help with understanding winter battery range

Turbo_Gecko | 2025-07-23 08:46 | 29 views

I have just bought a Dolphin (60kWh and 150kW motor) and after 3 top-up style charges to 100%, I decided to do a battery run down to <20% with a full charge to 100% as part of what I believe is a battery re-calibration. The reason is that the range estimates don't appear to add up to the usage. Here are the stats as taken from the main instrument display and the energy consumption screen from the center tablet. The context is: - Started with a freshly charged battery at 100% - Drove for 244km in 3 separate return trips with a morning and afternoon segment - Morning temperature close to 0 deg C - Afternoon temperature ~12 deg C - 10 minute scheduled warm up in the morning with temp set to 23 deg C and both heated seats activated to setting 2 - High regen braking - Normal drive mode, with minimal bursts of acceleration, i.e., normal commute style traffic - Half the trip is at 80 to 100kmhr highway driving, the other half in stop/start city traffic. - Range starts at 490km Main display: - Trip A 244km - Range 55km - Charge remaining 11% Center tablet: - Average Electricity Consumption 16.7kW-h/100 km - Cumulative Electricity Consumption 17.3kW-h/100 km (over a distance of 624.5 km) If I crunch the numbers: - 89% of battery used = 53.4kWh - 53.4kWh over 244km = 21.9kWh/100km - Difference between worst case cumulative consumption and calculated consumption for the 3 trips is 4.6kWh/100km - The car is marketed with a range of 427km WLTP which would work out to be 14.1kWh/100km with a measured winter usage of 21.9kWh/100km. Big difference! Given I understand that winter driving will reduce the range, my questions for the group are: 1. Does the winter range reduction sound correct? If not, what would you expect? 2. The range estimates in KM seem way out on the main display. Is this normal? 3. Does the estimation get better over time as the car gets charged and discharged more? 4. Should I turn on the dynamic range? 5. Any other range tips for a newbie? Thanks in advance for any replies.

Comments (6)

Jaymac460 2025-07-26 05:57

Hi, I have a Seal BEV for over a year now. Winter range really depends on the severity of the weather. In Ireland, I think we have it milder than you guys in the UK. In my experience, wind speed has almost as big affect as temperature, and of course wind speeds are typically higher in winter… Anywhere between 20 to 30% drop in winter vs summer is considered normal for most EVs. Heat pump is supposed to help in this regard, but again, it’s unclear by how much in real life usage… Definitely turn on dynamic range. Standard range will always calculate remaining range based on the WLTP figures. Dynamic range calculates based on driving history, although it’s unclear if that history is using the lifetime of the car so far, or the last x km or last trip or… Still, it’s going to be much better than Standard (WLTP)

Turbo_Gecko 2025-07-29 08:55

Thanks for your response. It was a much milder day today (~15 deg C) and the range was much closer to 14.5kW-h/100km. I have also completed a re-calibration charge so that may also have helped. It looks like dynamic range has disappeared from the system options.

Jaymac460 2025-08-02 05:12

I thought dynamic rang had disappeared too, but it’s in a menu you wouldn’t expect… I’ve forgotten exactly where it is, but go into settings, then do a search for dynamic range, and you should get a link to it.

Jaymac460 2025-08-03 05:33

Correction to above. Searching for dynamic won’t find dynamic range. Search instead for range, or go directly to it. Weirdly, it’s in the audio menus, under driver display (logically I’d expect it to be in energy). Anyway, dynamic range option is available… Hope that helps

Turbo_Gecko 2025-08-06 09:40

Jaymac460 wrote: Sun Aug 03, 2025 5:33 am Correction to above. Searching for dynamic won’t find dynamic range. Search instead for range, or go directly to it. Weirdly, it’s in the audio menus, under driver display (logically I’d expect it to be in energy). Anyway, dynamic range option is available… Hope that helps Thank you. I have changed it to dynamic so will see how it goes. The standard settings seems optimistic for winter time and the type of driving I do.

Jaymac460 2025-08-07 05:49

Your welcome. Standard is just wltp, so that’s extremely hard to achieve even in ideal conditions. No chance in winter My ‘life time’ score in the RWD Seal (after 16 months and 18k km) is 14.9 kWh/100 km (according to the car). That’s compared to the wltp of 14.5 (translates to a range of approx. 550km vs wltp of 570km). However I like to drive as efficiently as possible. I doubt many others are getting that in a seal driving normally…

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