Electric Car Battery Retention

[VicParticipant @vic]

I spoke to a woman today who was charging her Renault BEV at Tesco. She said she wouldn’t buy another (good reason to lease?) She loved driving the car but said it had a range of about 240 miles some months ago and now it only does 190 miles. After reading about the figures some little while ago I wonder what’s going on? Is her car faulty and can she expect Renault to do anything?

A quick Google on the topic and you get stuff like this.

[Dave SParticipant @daves59043]

It’s cold is the most likely reason.

 

[Martin KyteParticipant @martinkyte99762]

You would expect some reduction in charge capacity for any rechargeable cell. Laptops and phone do exactly this. There may be other things going on as well.Charging patterns affect battery life and there will be software between the battery and the user so it wouldn’t surprise me to find an algorithm that encourages early recharge to maintain good battery life.
Armstrong when landing on the moon with fuel gauges showing near empty is reputed to have said ‘there is always a bit left in the tank’ !

Think I’d rather chance it on Terra Firma rather than Terra Lunar🥴

[Mike HurleyParticipant @mikehurley60381]

Highly complicated subject with a LOT of variables. There won’t be a one-size-fits-all answer at the end of the day. But as with most things,  stating the obvious, they’ll obviously perform worse over time.

[Martin KyteParticipant @martinkyte99762]

. . . as just been said it’s cold.

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

By coincidence on another forum in the last 24 hrs someone posted on an American forum that his wife doesn’t use their Tesla for her commute in winter and instead uses his IC engined ATV. Saving the planet one gas guzzler at a time.

[Robert Atkinson 2Participant @robertatkinson2]

It’s the weather. Cold weather means more energy consumed for heating and de-misting. Additionally charging and discharging efficency is poorer with cold cells.

EV batteries have longer lives than things like phones and laptops. This is because of careful charge / discharge management. They do not “fully” charge or discharge tha battery to rated capacity. This slightly reduces range but greatly increases life.

Robert.

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

IC engines is they produce an enormous amount of waste heat, about 70% of the fuel value.   A lot of effort goes into keeping the engine cool, and it’s easy to divert it to keep the driver warm.   Not so electric cars, which only waste about 10% of the power as heat – not enough to keep the car cosy.   Therefore the car is heated electrically, which steals power from the wheels.   And maybe all the lights and entertainment system are on too, and the battery isn’t performing top notch because it’s cold.

Back to the good old days: look at the dress-code in this picture!

🙂

Dave

 

[jimmy bParticipant @jimmyb]

Thing to note is “average loss”

Most EV and hybrid appear to be lease, where use and charging is more likely to be “optimum”

 

I’ll stick with my petrol car, even at 24mpg, I can put 300 miles in the tank in a few minutes, rather than hours….

 

Jimb

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