That's not how I do things that, I absolutely need my cars to last a decent amount of time.
Current car I've owned since 2016, 130k on it so far. If I don't get 10 years that would be classed as a financial disaster for me.
-
Notice regarding image hosts and attachments. See here.
EV general discussion
- Thread starter Ricochet J
- Start date
Current car I've owned since 2016, 130k on it so far. If I don't get 10 years that would be classed as a financial disaster for me.
You're not going to ruin the battery by charging to 80% instead of 60%, you're massively over thinking this, they're not as fragile as the FUD lords online would have you worrying about.
Just don't charge it to 100% and leave it like that for days on end and it'll be fine.
Modern cars are engineered in a way to cater for the near lowest common denominator and that person is an idiot.
There are old Tesla’s kicking around which are on 250,000 - 500,000 miles and have been rapid charged every day since the day they rolled off the production line.
You’ll be fine, don’t over think it, just use the car like it’s a car.
Last edited:
Cheers everyone, it's good getting feedback of people that actually use EVs day in day out, reviews never seem to paint an accurate picture.
Kia EV4 still seems to be first choice for me based on specs and price. See how much longer my car lasts, but it's good to get an idea as once my cars die I want to sort a replacement within a couple of days.
Kia EV4 still seems to be first choice for me based on specs and price. See how much longer my car lasts, but it's good to get an idea as once my cars die I want to sort a replacement within a couple of days.
Last edited:
If you haven't bought a car for 10 years you might be in for a shock as dealers don't tend to have them lying around waiting for customers any more
I don't buy new cars, 3 or 6 month old usually.
Man of Honour
- Joined
- 12 Jul 2005
- Posts
- 22,174
- Location
- Aberlour, NE Scotland
After a lot of messing about (again) I have finally got the OHME app to recognise that I have seven hours of off peak on EDF's EV tariff instead of the five hours it was saying I had. I had to take drastic action and delete my OHME account for the fourth or fifth time and start from scratch again. It is the only way I could manually enter the tariff times and prices otherwise it defaults to the only EDF tariff it has, EDF Go which is only off peak from 00.00-05.00 and 8p per kWh with a peak rate of 15p per kWh, if only that were true. Yet another reason to avoid OHME. Oh yes, it still refuses to pair with the car to get the correct battery SoC even though it used to. At this point I am so close to biting the bullet and replacing it with a quality charger from a decent brand.
Yeah, if you really really want to baby the battery, then 50% is the way to go.
But as B2SK8 said, the difference is likely to be not as significant as you'd expect it to be. Perhaps 1% (2 at a push) over the next 5 years or so. Just use the EV as you normally would and don't worry about it.
Though fwiw, I don't charge mine above 70% lol, and I don't let it go below 30% either
Except when I'm going on a roadtrip, then it's a 100% charge on the night prior.
Keeping the battery at 100% for days on end is bad, as is draining the battery too low frequently.
Last edited:
Live a little!Yeah, if you really really want to baby the battery, then 50% is the way to go.
But as B2SK8 said, the difference is likely to be not as significant as you'd expect it to be. Perhaps 1% (2 at a push) over the next 5 years or so. Just use the EV as you normally would and don't worry about it.
Though fwiw, I don't charge mine above 70% lol, and I don't let it go below 30% either
Except when I'm going on a roadtrip, then it's a 100% charge on the night prior.
Keeping the battery at 100% for days on end is bad, as is draining the battery too low frequently.
What we know so far for Li-ion batteries (NMC/NCA, not LFP) and capacity degradation
Calendar age is usually the main determinant
Followed by usage over time
Other factors:
Kept at 100% charge for long periods of time
Deep discharges
Hot batteries
Fast charging when below freezing
Less/minor significance:
Fast DC charging = worse
Small amounts of deep cycles are worse than multiple small charges
There is a reasonable amount of variation between each battery (presumably because there's thousands of cells per battery) so not all will age equally. Goes without saying that batteries with weaker cells will degrade faster.
Calendar age is usually the main determinant
Followed by usage over time
Other factors:
Kept at 100% charge for long periods of time
Deep discharges
Hot batteries
Fast charging when below freezing
Less/minor significance:
Fast DC charging = worse
Small amounts of deep cycles are worse than multiple small charges
There is a reasonable amount of variation between each battery (presumably because there's thousands of cells per battery) so not all will age equally. Goes without saying that batteries with weaker cells will degrade faster.
Last edited:
Well, it's basically the same battery, just the quantities of cells are an order of magnitude higher!
The thing which can really kill the cells, and the battery management should normally prevent it, is deep discharge. Even a couple of times can destroy the battery. This could happen if you run the battery down to a low percentage and leave the car in that state for an extended period or if unlucky when running the battery down to a low percentage coinciding with significant temperature changes.
Which is fine for an unmanaged or poorly managed cell but as I mentioned in my post, the car will be engineered for users who are idiots.
The state of charge displayed to the end user is not the actual state of charge. The BMS cuts you off before you have any chance of damaging the battery.
You can drive it down to 0% if you really want and it will be fine, just plug it in when you are done because you are not going anywhere else otherwise.
This really isn’t something you need to overthink. Cars give guidance within their menus also and give you who knows how many bongs and warnings if you are about to run out of electricity. Not to mention other things like power limits to protect the battery.
There's no limit to a human's ability to be stupid.
As I said in my post battery management will normally prevent it but it isn't 100% - the battery will still naturally self-discharge (1-3% a month typical for a EV battery - though in my experience it is often less than that), significant temperature changes can also alter the chemistry. When the car says discharged and prevents you driving it depending on model the battery is still at 3-15% state of charge but that can deplete below the cut off threshold and if that happens too many times, and it can be as little as a couple of times, it will permanently degrade the battery by a significant amount if not render it effectively useless.
If you parked an EV up at say 5% displayed state of charge and left it 6 months there is a good chance the battery would be done for.
Last edited:
Soldato
- Joined
- 19 May 2010
- Posts
- 2,666
- Location
- Cheltenham
The default satnav software in the Polestar 2 is Google maps - it’s fully integrated into the car’s electrics and knows predicted range etc, while having all the public chargers in the system and a full route planner with charging times and speeds etc.
Just to further the battery comments, my MG4 is a company car and I therefore have paid absolutely zero regards to the battery health or charging limits etc (albeit while I dont care about charging beyond 80% it was maybe only charged completely once every couple of weeks). My battery health at 3 years old is 97%. No idea if this is good, bad or indifferent but certainly doesn't appear disastrous