New 2020 Club Car Onward HP Li-Ion

[shortspark]

I have treated my HP Li-Ion the exact same way I did my previous lead acid battery cart. I play a round of golf and put it in my cart room where I plug the charger to it. The next day when I go to play golf again I unplug it and it says 100% charge. After the round it shows about 60 or 70% and I go through the whole routine again. Because the cart is always on the charger it never goes below 100% until my next use so I never have a discharge while sitting in my cart room. How long it maintains 100% during use is not important to me because as I say, at the end of the round I still have plenty left to play a second round if I wanted to.

[NewinPTC]

Originally Posted by MrGrmpy

I have been following your post & just recently took possession of a new 2020 LI cart. I’ve only had it for a few days but noticed the battery discharging over night. I charged it yesterday to 100% after a day of riding. I went out this morning and the battery indicator is at 90%. Do you see the same thing?

As posted before, mine discharges as well. The dealer has brought it up with Club Car. Apparently there are around ten of us with this issue. No known fix but my cart is on record for this problem for warranty reasons. My wife is pushing for a replacement but I’m thinking that’s a bit premature. You might want to have your dealer report yours as well. The more known cases, the more serious they may take it.

[relcead]

If you unplug it for a week after charging and it still reads 90% it would be fine. There is a technical reason for that indicator to show 90% after one night. LiIon batteries are known to drop a little in voltage after charging. They should still have the full Ah although it reads 90%.

https://www.orionbms.com/troubleshoo...rge-completes/

[shortspark]

I still have difficulty understanding why you would ever unplug the charger while the cart is sitting there. Why take it off of charger? As I said in my previous post, I play a round of golf and when I'm done I have about 60 to 70% showing so I plug it in and the next morning when I go to play again I have 100%. Maybe if I did not use the cart for months at a time there might be a different method as a matter of maintenance and storage but as I understand it you really can't overcharge these things thanks to the monitor system. If the battery indicator shows 100% and then it shows something less overnight while still plugged in something is obviously not right. I don't think you can go wrong by keeping the charger plugged in all the time while the cart is not in use.

[Volt_Ampere]

Lithiums will last longer if you don't keep them fully charged all the time. I play three rounds of golf between charges on mine. I never leave my charger hooked up.

[MrGrmpy]

Originally Posted by NewinPTC

As posted before, mine discharges as well. The dealer has brought it up with Club Car. Apparently there are around ten of us with this issue. No known fix but my cart is on record for this problem for warranty reasons. My wife is pushing for a replacement but I’m thinking that’s a bit premature. You might want to have your dealer report yours as well. The more known cases, the more serious they may take it.

Does it continue to discharge a little each day? I’ve been track the voltage since the post on 24th. I charged it fully, 100%, the next day it dropped to 90% but had stayed since. I guess I’m not that concerned if it hasn’t dropped farther in 3 days. I drove it around for 30 min today, parked it and it’s still 90%.. so I guess that’s good.

[fstop]

Originally Posted by Volt_Ampere

Lithiums will last longer if you don't keep them fully charged all the time. I play three rounds of golf between charges on mine. I never leave my charger hooked up.

This is correct.

I chose to skip the LiOn route on my Onward, but have a sophisticated E bike that of course is LiOn, and purchased a sophisticated programmable charger and I have a charge profile that only charges the 52V pack to 80% by default. I programmed the controller in the bike to begin cutting power at 20%.

So basically if you have a large enough LiOn pack, you can stay between 80% and 20% and the pack will last a very long time and likely die due to chronological age before excess cycling or "use" kills it.

Probably the Club Car BMS is only charging it to 85-90% anyway if I had to guess, but probably tells the user it is 100%. This is how Tesla etc... does it.

You can put a volt meter on the pack and see what the "real" SOC is (google LiOn 48v 100% charge voltage) if you are curious, and see how that compares to the Club Car meter %.

LiOn cells prefer to be around 50% but will last a very long time if they stay between 80-20%. it's the extreme state of charges that degrade cell life, so I wouldn't leave a LiOn cart on the charger unless you use most of the available range each time you use it.

[shortspark]

Well, I guess that all makes sense. I could not figure out why you would ever want to take the charger off since it was automatic and I was unaware that a fully charged battery was not a good thing. I have lived 71 years thinking the best thing for a battery was to keep it charged but I guess these Lithium batteries are different. I will try it as a few people have suggested. I can go one round of golf from 100% charge to 70%. I suppose I could go a second round from 70% down to 30% or so and then put it on charge. I'll try that for a while and see what happens in terms of performance.

I do know, according to the manual, that if you store the cart for a long period you should switch to tow/stow and then put the charger on it. The tow/stow setting will not allow the charger to go beyond 50% charge or below 30%. Based on that, it does look like fully charged batteries in these carts is not the best way to insure battery life.

[Volt_Ampere]

Originally Posted by shortspark

Well, I guess that all makes sense. I could not figure out why you would ever want to take the charger off since it was automatic and I was unaware that a fully charged battery was not a good thing. I have lived 71 years thinking the best thing for a battery was to keep it charged but I guess these Lithium batteries are different. I will try it as a few people have suggested. I can go one round of golf from 100% charge to 70%. I suppose I could go a second round from 70% down to 30% or so and then put it on charge. I'll try that for a while and see what happens in terms of performance.

I do know, according to the manual, that if you store the cart for a long period you should switch to tow/stow and then put the charger on it. The tow/stow setting will not allow the charger to go beyond 50% charge or below 30%. Based on that, it does look like fully charged batteries in these carts is not the best way to insure battery life.

Yes - Lithium is different than FLA in this respect. Best thing for FLA batteries is to keep them fully charged - and they self discharge pretty rapidly so you need to keep them on a charger if you are not using them for a long time. Lithium batteries last longest if they are kept between 20 and 80% charge and in cool temps. I run mine between 95% and 35% pretty much always which is a bit of a tradeoff so that I don't have to charge them as often. Only reason I charge at 35% is that I would run them down too far if I played a round starting at 35%. I set up my charger voltage to give me 95% SOC when the charger tapers down to low current.

[shortspark]

Thanks, good info and I will go to that method of charging and see how it works out. Like you I could play three rounds on a single charge but that third one would probably run the battery down farther than I would like. I will play two rounds on a fully charged battery which puts me at about 30 to 40% and then charge up from there.