Retired, so not much need to go anywhere and living in a Covid area have been staying home (Costco/Insticart is great). Have had my Niro EV sitting for about a week. A couple notes: Checked today and UVO was unable to communicated with the car from either the desktop web access or via the phone access. Car was at 66% battery when last used. Went out and plugged it in and was then able to access via UVO. No appreciable battery use just sitting there. Interesting that UVO had shut down, though. Will keep it plugged in set to 80% until I need to go somewhere. Not good to let the battery run down too much, but did not seem to be an issue at this point. Good to keep in touch while 'distancing'
Weird, I left the car for 2.5 weeks on a trip and was able to ping it using UVO. It was unplugged and at ~70%. I checked it three or four times because I was curious if the battery SoC would go down. It stayed at ~70%, and didn't drop, as I recall.
Main battery will not decrease just sitting there parked. Unlike a Tesla, there is virtually zero vampire drain on the propulsion battery. What will decrease quickly is the 12V battery. After a couple short spurts, the Battery Saver + function gives up and no longer maintains the 12V battery. If car remains unused for long periods, the 12V battery will completely discharge. Leaving it plugged in does nothing for the 12V battery. The car needs to be actively charging in order to charge the 12V battery. Giant thread over in the Kona forum discussing dead 12V batteries.
If the Niro has a similar "fuse switch" in the cabin fuse block, turning it off [along with "battery saver", which seems to be kind of the inverse] will reduce 12V quiescent drain to a bare minimum, like 5 mA. My Kona sat for over a month in cold weather and when I got back to it, it was still fine. You'll probably have to use the metal key to get into it and reset a couple of things, no biggie. Main pack SOC basically hadn't budged. _H*
"Actively charging" means driving around? Wondering if I should put the 12V my battery charger at some point. Thanks!
Does it need to be charging, or does turning the car on also recharge the 12V? (And anyone know why there even needs to be a separate 12V? What is wrong with tapping the propulsion battery for everything with a voltage divider if needed ?)
The car needs to be powered "on" for the 12V battery to charge from the main propulsion battery. You don't need to drive it. Leaving it in "Park" gear also charges the 12V battery. Normal charging does as well but it's very slow from what I've observed. The slow 110V portable EVSE that came with the car seems to extend charging times to the point where it always seems to fully replenish the 12V battery for me.
As soon as you power on the car, the 12V will recharge. I've gone on 1.5 week trips since getting the car and never had an issue with the 12V battery. If you go to your car once a week and power it on and then off, you can be sure you won't have any 12V issues.
