A massive new study has shown that electric vehicle batteries don’t drain as quickly as many people fear.
On average, cars lose two percent of their capacity per year. That means that at 10 years old they would still have 82 percent of their capacity – in other words, a 320-mile car would become a 262-mile car.
The report also reveals ways a driver can make the deterioration even less severe, the Telegraph reports.
The data comes from fleet management company Geotab. It used detailed telematics data from 22,700 electric vehicles across 21 different models.
Some were vans, and they skewed the data a little bit downward – vans lose 2.7 percent of their range on average per year, largely because they have a shorter real-world range and so need to be charged more often, and those charges are more likely to be fast. Both of those things are not good.
So here are the key tips. First, avoid frequent DC fast charging. The report looked at those vehicles (cars and vans) for which fast charging accounted for less than one in eight of all charges. They saw a degradation of just 1.5 percent per year.
Those that charged faster than that saw an average of 2.2 percent if those fast charges were less than 100 kW. Those that used charging above 100 kW lost 3.0 percent per year.
So if you do 8,000 miles a year and go 250 real miles between charges, that’s 32 charges a year. So four trips of up to 500 miles, starting full and with a quick charge along the way, gives you one in eight charges that are quick.
The study shows some interesting data about charging to 100 percent and discharging to zero indicated. Most cars have warnings on the instrument display against this, but the data shows that it doesn’t really matter.
Well, it doesn’t really matter if you don’t park for a long time in. If the vehicle spends 80 percent in an extreme battery state, it degrades 0.5 percent faster. So, charge it and start driving. Charge the car with electricity and start charging.
Very hot climates accelerated the rate of degradation by 0.4 percent. So try to park in the shade.
The statistics are expressed as degradation per year. But what about mileage? It’s no surprise that when we look at vehicles that go through more charge cycles – that is, drive more miles per year – there’s an effect.
The average degradation is 1.5 percent per year for vehicles that do less than one cycle per week, which is a generous figure of 13,000 kilometers for our 250-mile car.
That’s 2.3 percent per year for a cycle every one to two days, which likely means a loaded van with a short electric range doing a lot of miles.
However, as a fleet advisory company, Geotab says, basically, don’t worry. The logic is that it’s more profitable to work hard with your electric vehicles, driving lots of miles and not wasting time charging slowly, in order to maximize the value you get from the asset. /Telegraph/
