A few months ago I bought a new Peugeot 3008 Hybrid4. It is a fantastic car and I’m really happy with it in almost every way. It is a plug-in hybrid SUV with some nice bells and whistles.
However, I am beginning to worry about the battery. The dealer and everything I see online promises 50 km (30 miles) on a full charge. That is about average for the class. And the car did get this when I first started driving it in June. Some mornings the battery level would even say 54 or 56 km. But during the last month or so, the morning charge level is usually around 46, and today it started at 42. But that’s not the worst of it. If I actually track the odometer, I see that I am only covering about 35-40 km on the ground in a day before it switches over to hybrid. This is in electric-only mode in mixed rural/town driving without any hills. Yesterday I got 34 km. So that is only 68% of what the manufacturer promised.
Should I be concerned? I have an appointment with the garage on Monday to put on my winter tires and have asked them to look into it.
Aside from the concern, I would love to hear any advice you have on how to maximise the performance of PHEV batteries. On most days I use up all of the electric-only charge and recharge the car overnight from zero.
Your comment about winter tires prompts me to ask where you live, and have you started turning on the heat in your car? My KIA Niro PHEV uses up more of the initial charge if I turn on the fan/AC/heat. You might also take a look at the on-line forum for this model: 3008 Hybrid4 | Peugeot Forums
Even without using the heat, the batteries are noticeably less efficient in colder weather. My Volt would get about 40 miles in the summer and only 30 in the cooler months.
Holey smokes! I have a Kia Niro PHEV! In two years I’ve seen exactly one other on the road. All us Niro owners should hire a cloakroom and have a convention.
Anyway, my battery always charges to 24 (sometimes 26) year-round. I’d be concerned if that went under 20 even during an Upstate New York winter.
I live in western Switzerland. The high temp today was 14C (about 55 F). The battery said 42 km and that is exactly what I got today. I do tend to use either the heat or the AC as I am a bit of a daisy about temperature. I am changing the tires a month early because I knew I needed to go to the garage about the battery. Winters in our part of the country are actually pretty mild.
Thanks. I have been to the Peugeot forum. I see that some folks have had big problems with the battery, but I saw these were more than 6 months ago, before I bought the car. I kind of hoped they had been fixed…
Just from my experience. Although I have read (no cite) that the efficiency goes down with temperature.
Actually, here’s a cite
“Batteries are like humans,” says Anna Stefanopoulou, director of the University of Michigan’s Energy Institute. They prefer the same sort of temperature range that people do. Anything below 40 or above 115 degrees Fahrenheit and they’re not going to deliver their peak performance. They like to be around 60 to 80 degrees. As the temperature drops, the electrolyte fluid inside the battery cells becomes more sluggish
I’ve seen one other Niro in the 1.5 years I’ve been paying attention, but it wasn’t a hybrid. They seem to be a much more popular model in Europe.
So how old is yours, and has it been behaving? I have a 2019 model, EX Premium trim, and it’s been pretty good so far, though with COVID I haven’t been driving much. The only flaw I’ve encountered is the steering wheel grinding noise that the Forum indicates is a known bearing problem. I haven’t had it fixed because it’s not that noticeable (yet) and because I really, really hate setting foot in a dealership.
It’s a great little car and I could never have afforded all of the extras I got if I’d bought a Lexus or Tesla.
I have the same 2019 EX Premium. It turned out to be the perfect car for Covid-time. We almost never went farther than the electric charge could take us. Got gas maybe a half-dozen times all 2020. When we did need to drive with gas, the result was something fantastic, like 50mpg. It’s a small car but we didn’t need anything larger.
Never heard the grinding noise. The biggest problem is the total lack of oomph, although it will respond if you push the pedal to the floor. We also hadn’t realized that the heat will not work with electric, so it has to be set to start with gas in the winter.
I used to have a Lexus hybrid, and obviously no direct comparison can be made. My wife and I were going down to one car after her retirement and we fell in love with the idea of a PHEV. The only real competition in that category is a Prius, and we just didn’t like the car as much. The EX Premium had almost all the same bells and whistles that the Lexus had five years earlier and some new ones in the safety category, which were pretty much all we cared about. Plus New York State was offering thousands in incentives, which I don’t think they do anymore for this model.
BTW, is your car silver? That would be the final coincidence.
Ah, my automotive soul mate! The one I test drove was some dark color (blue? gray?) with a charcoal interior, but I live near Sacramento, and the summer heat would have made that car an oven on wheels. So I insisted on the silver one with light grey leather interior.
I would have test-driven a Lexus hybrid, but there were absolutely none to be had when I was car shopping. The Teslas were so popular that the feds & CA weren’t offering rebates any more.
I haven’t noticed acceleration problems, but the IC engine does kick in when I enter the freeway. Living in CA, I run the AC a lot more than the heat. I’ve filled the tank 4 times in 1.5 years, about 5500 miles, and I have solar panels, so charging is virtually free. It’s been the perfect car so far.
I would hardly call it cold here (13/14C this week), so I wouldn’t expect the ambient temp to affect the battery capacity much yet. But I have been using the heater…
The decreasing numbers aren’t necessarily a sign of battery degradation. The displayed range is an estimate, and out of the factory it tends to be optimistic. The computer will adjust expected driving distance over time, based on the car’s “experience”. Factors that decrease estimated range include driving speed, driving style (sudden accelerations, etc.), use of climate control, ambient (outside) temperature, hilly terrain, tire resistance, outside accessories increasing air resistance, heavy loads in the trunk, …
Is there an alternate display, something that would show the level of charge in kWh perhaps ?
thanks. I hadn’t realised that the car was adapting the estimates based on my driving, but that makes sense. So I guess it is a good news/bad news situation.
The good news is that there is probably nothing wrong with my car. The bad news is that I have to live with getting less out of a charge than I had expected. Oh well…
So that raises two other questions for me:
if I wanted to, will it be possible to change the battery for a better one in a few years? I know that they are saying that the batteries are good for 10-12 years, but what if the battery capacity doubles in 5 years? Could I voluntarily swap it for the better one?
as I described, I do all of my driving in electric mode until the charge is exhausted. Is this the right strategy? Are there situations when I would choose to use hybrid mode even when I have a full battery?
I’m no expert, but I think you don’t get as much from hybrid mode when you have a full battery, as it charges less when full or close to full. Whether you should switch when half full, I have no idea.
It might climb back up over time. For reasons no one understands. Or warmer weather.
FYI, I found this very useful article via the Peugeot forum. It confirms that auxiliary heating/cooling is the biggest culprit behind range loss. It also recommends using pre-conditioning while plugged in to reduce the need to heat/cool while driving.
On an related note, when I took my car into the garage today, I also mentioned that there seems to be a water leak coming from my motor, possibly from the radiator. The garage guy then patiently explained to me that cars haven’t used water as a radiator coolant for several decades.
I was concerned about battery degradation too when I was shopping for a hybrid, but apparently it’s really not anything to worry about these days. The battery controller in hybrids is much more sophisticated than, say, what goes into a smart phone. They almost always use your battery within the 20-80% charge range (which slows down degradation significantly) and use other techniques to preserve the life of the batteries. I think I read that they did a survey of hybrid taxis - I believe they were ford escape hybrids - and after 200,000 miles they had only lost about 8% of their overall battery life on average, or something near that. It’s not like a phone where your battery is going to be 30-40% gone after 3 years since the battery is managed differently and longevity is a bigger design consideration.
2021 Prius Prime. I don’t charge, so I run in hyrid mode most of the time. My mileage efficiency tanked this summer with the heat and needing to run my AC. I expect that when it is cold, I will have similar issues. And honestly the efficiency in the sales materials is in ideal situations. YMMV
