johnnloki
Drag Racing Champion
- Location
- Bowmanville ON
Started reading a bit, but stopped when I saw someone bringing up batteries. Critical thing with EVs (speaking as co-owner of an EV): Batteries and degradation. People wrongly assume that quick charging is the main cause of degradation. It's a slight contributor, but you're better off only using quick chargers if you're not overcharging.
Just like your cell phone or your laptop, you want to keep your EV battery generally between 20% and 70%. If you top up your cellphone to 100% every night, you're wrecking the battery and you'll hate the remaining battery life within 2 years.
Don't deep drain it to under 20% and don't charge it above 70% and you won't experience degradation. This means you're using 50% of the battery's capacity and that realistically, you need a stated range that is actually double of your typical daily requirement.
Also, if you highway drive in actual winter conditions (think -15C and worse) then your mileage suffers due to parasitic losses in battery and other equipment, as well as heating. In that case, you need to be able to make due with really only 33% of stated range.
The whole point of this is to avoid a situation where a car meets your needs for 2 or 3 years, then starts to fail at meeting your needs and becomes near useless. If you properly size the battery by the above math, and not by the 'skin of your teeth' math, then you won't have much, if any, battery degradation even after a decade.
The leafs that you've heard about that have horrible range degradation are always leafs that are charged to 100% at night, and very often also then hooked up to a charger at work too.
Don't charge your EV to 100% every night, and it'll be fine long term. Feel free to charge to 100% when you know you'll need the extra range, and use quick chargers whenever needed.
Just like your cell phone or your laptop, you want to keep your EV battery generally between 20% and 70%. If you top up your cellphone to 100% every night, you're wrecking the battery and you'll hate the remaining battery life within 2 years.
Don't deep drain it to under 20% and don't charge it above 70% and you won't experience degradation. This means you're using 50% of the battery's capacity and that realistically, you need a stated range that is actually double of your typical daily requirement.
Also, if you highway drive in actual winter conditions (think -15C and worse) then your mileage suffers due to parasitic losses in battery and other equipment, as well as heating. In that case, you need to be able to make due with really only 33% of stated range.
The whole point of this is to avoid a situation where a car meets your needs for 2 or 3 years, then starts to fail at meeting your needs and becomes near useless. If you properly size the battery by the above math, and not by the 'skin of your teeth' math, then you won't have much, if any, battery degradation even after a decade.
The leafs that you've heard about that have horrible range degradation are always leafs that are charged to 100% at night, and very often also then hooked up to a charger at work too.
Don't charge your EV to 100% every night, and it'll be fine long term. Feel free to charge to 100% when you know you'll need the extra range, and use quick chargers whenever needed.