I was told by a friend who works in battery chemistry that the ideal state of charge to keep my car is between 30 and 70%. There is not a problem charging to 100% if I intend to use the car and not leave it on charge holding 100% and there is no problem running the car down to 10% even 5% but don’t leave it in that low state of charge, he highly recommends recharging the car as soon as possible keeping it within the 30 to 70 rule will prolong the life of the batteries. This is keeping the battery in the sweet spot for daily use, when DC fast charging he recommended only taking it up to 80%, unless absolutely necessary to make it to the next destination and be able to charge again, so just like many things in life it seems that nothing is that bad if it’s only every now and again. Let’s also remember that these batteries have a buffer, so even when you charge to 100% it’s not actually hundred percent.
It's not worth worrying about tbh, they'll last longer than the car. Also depends on the exact battery , they differ a lot , just follow manufacturer advice in the manuals and use common sense.
I have a 27kw Kia Soul. I have covered 42k miles in 19 months. When I bought the car Summer range was 105 and Winter was 72-73. Last winter the GOM tells me I have 72 miles My daily commute is 70 miles. I dont have an option of workplace charging. So my Car is Rapid charged every day Mon-Fri and is topped off on night rate too 100% every single night, as I need the full range to get me home. I have reached the rapid charger at least 7-10 times in my 19 month with only 1% left. But that is an extreme weather day with 50mph head winds, Below zero deg temps and pouring rain. But I regularly arrive home with between 5-10% every single day over winter months. In summer GOM shows 105 range. I have had my car over 2 winters now, and I havent noticed any range loss in the winters. This winter will be interesting as it will be my 3rd winter. If I take a rough guess I have rapid chargeed between 380 and 450 times in 19 months. I have also rapid charged 5 times in a single day on a 400 mile round trip. And with the Soul having Thermal Battery management. I was abe to pull a full 120amps on every single charge and hammer the M/way at 70 mph in 25 deg heat. So the long and short of it is I dont really think it matters how you charge your car, becasue the Soul for instance has a buffer at both ends of the battery. apprently its a 30.5kw battery in the 27kw. So although I fill the car too 100%, it's not actually 100%. The Kia also give a 7yr or 100,000 mile Battery Warranty. And is replaced if the SOH falls below 75% There are EV Taxi's in Dublin that have over 200,000 KM and are Rapid charged every single day. On the Irish FB pages its been said thay dont see any range loss
Having a fair bit of experience with li-ion batteries in off grid solar storage I would suggest this. Avoid frequent 100% charges as at high voltage is when dentrite formation starts internally within the cell. I would think Hyundias sugestion to fully charge monthly will be to ballance the cells. I would also recomend that you only fully charge just before you plan to use your car so it’s not sat at a high state of charge for long. I believe avoiding frequent high and low SOC is the key to lithium happyness but they will certainly tolerate it without issue many times over their lifetime. Some sources suggest that calender life offers the largest percentage of degradation (age) but we can’t control this aspect.
I operate large drones and have to manage their Lipo batteries (Lithium-ion polymer). I will treat the Kona like I do them and will never charge to 100% unless I really need to for range on a long drive. Charging a Lipo to 100% and discharging to minium is the quickest way to kill its performance and shorten its life. The Kona Manual says to leave the battery at 100% charge if not using for a while. I TOTALLY will not do this. Only time I have puffed a Lipo was charging it to 100% and then not using it. It sat on the shelf and puffed overnight. Lipo puff due due crystals forming within the cells and can occasionally result in a dead short within the cell and a fierce fire. You only need to see a large fully charged Lipo virtually exploded into a gassing flaming blow torch type fire to respect the energy these things can store. For my 'normal' charging regime I will not discharge lower than 20% and never charge more than 80% unless I really have too. No Lipo manufacturer says to charge and store their batteries at 100%. All say to leave at around 30% for prolonged storage. The biggest stress on Battery chemistry is fast charging or fast discharging. I never charge Lipos faster than 2c (twice the max rated discharge speed for the battery) and whenever possible charge at a leisurely 1C. With the Kona you can set limit to charge amount as well as timers for when to start/stop the charge daily, weekly etc so I'll just set overnight charge to max at 80% daily. If I fly off on a holiday I will reduce this to charge daily to max of 30%. This can all be done with the Hyundai Autolink App which has been released for NZ customers and will be extended to the rest of the world soon apparently. My Kona has been registered and I collect it from dealer next week :-)
Mark this is my point, we simply don't know unless they tell us what's what. Theoretically the chemistry is different and thus 100% charging might be ok And yes I sent Bjorn a few msgs on his livestream Kona run
I agree, letting the lipo rest at 100% is bad as well, it can inflate, I saw it once on one battery of my drone. But they say to charge at 100% to make sure all cells gets charged at max level once a month, otherwhise over charge/discharge cycles, some cells could really deviate from other cells and voltage drop will be faster discharging closer to 20%, which would kill the weaker cells faster as well if if some drops to 0%..
DoD (Depth of Discharge) matters a lot. If you charge the battery only by 10% every day, it last basically forever. Don't use the EV like an ICE car and rive the 'tank' all the way down before plugging in. Best use the battery between 60-80% all the time if your trips allow that. The higher you discharge and recharge the more 'cycle' you use. Charge to 100% only if you need the range for a trip. If you go below 20%SOC recharge as soon as possible to above 30% at least. If you do rapid charging, stay below 1C of charging power, so for the 64kWh battery of the Kona you should not charge above 64kW. You can go higher but it reduces the health faster than charging slower. One cycle is from 100%-0%. The battery will last probably around 800 full cycles before the health (SoH) drops below 80%. If you go for a DoD of 10% per day, this would result in around 0.02cycles only (don't quote me on this exact cycle, but it is around this figure). A good source is this link here: batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries
You are correct about the reason for charging to 80% when using public charging stations. The best analogy I've read is to think of an empty battery like a large stadium with only a few people present. As the battery is charged, it's akin to people trickling in and moving around looking for a seat. At 80% enough people are now in the stadium that it's harder for more to get in - they are waiting longer for those inside to find a seat before they can come in and this is what we see as a slowing of the charge rate. My Kona can charge from "anything" to 80% in about 45 minutes on a DCFC. But just to add that extra 20% doubles the charge time! At a cost of 30 cents per minute, if I unplug at 80% it cost just $13.50, but if I insist on the full 100%, I'm looking at 1.5 hours for a whopping $27!
I have operated a Hyundai Ioniq for just over 18 months and have never used an en-route rapid charger. In all but one instances I have charged to 100% on a home PodPoint charger (the exception was using a 13amp home socket). I generally charge when range has diminished to about 40-50 miles but have occasionally taken the range down to about 20 miles. Apart from a period in January/February this year (when it was very cold) I get 150 miles predicted range on a 100% charge. I have kept a record of every charge, the mileage remaining and the mileage covered. I am getting virtually the same available range this summer as last, suggesting that there has been no battery degradation using my charging regime. I anticipate operating the Kona in the same way. I don't anticipate using en-route rapid charging until someone removes the stupid prepayment, membership card and mobile phone nonesense, and replaces them with a proper payment mechanism with clearly declared pricing per unit of electricity.
davidarf polar network £7.80'ish a month. Most recharges are free with occasional charge of 4p per KWh (not a problem) use any Polar charger same rate. £7.8 for as much as you can eat is a bargain. If you have a Polar charger neat you. Any car with a liquid cooled battery pack will not he damaged charging to 80% on a rapid charger occasionally. Most batteries will benefit from the occasional kick charge it seems.
William armstrong, I am afraid I cannot see paying £7.80'ish per month for nothing as a bargain. I have managed my journeys without using the Polar network and would have, so far, paid out about £150 for nothing with this network. How much more per month would I have had to pay to the various networks to ensure access to any public charge point. I have yet to see any solid well reasoned argument why charge points cannot display the price per KWH and allow for payment by cash or payment card in the same way as we do for petrol and diesel. A further charge per minute after the charge has ended would also be reasonable to ensure availability of the charge point for the next user.
I wouldn't expect to see any symptom of degradation on your range yet. Hyundai probably has a headroom in the system that they'll use to hide any degradation for a few years. After say 4 years I'd anticipate seeing some slight degradation, maybe 2% per yr. Should be a bit better than the Leaf since Ioniq has cooling. But ultimately it's just chemistry and you will see degradation. On Rapid charging, Instavolt has a good offer: 50kW charging for 35p/kWh pay as you go. I've used them on Ioniq and Leaf and they're fast (much faster than Ecotricity).
As a guy who uses 18650 batteries in my headlamp twice per shift. Let me add my 2 cents worth. First test your headlamp down to dead, how much time did it take. In my case 4.5 hours per 18650 cell. The test was run that thing down to dead, over and over on the back and front of your hardhat for months and months. So the deal is a 18650 cell will lose 15 minutes of shine over that time in 4 years. Let me take a small educated guess, your electric car will lose the same amount. I charged them to 100% and drained them to 0 every time for years. Hmmmm i think this whole electric movement will be a good thing.
Interesting, I asked Hyundai the same question and would have got more info from the local Tesco's. However some points. 50% to 80% is, in my opinion, is the perfect level. Charging to 100% has little downside if not left at that charge for any length of time. At least once a month it should be charged to 100% and left plugged in overnight to allow for battery balancing. As the car uses power when off, leaving it flat for long periods could actually kill the battery. The slower you charge a battery the less stress you put it under, I don't think anything up to 7kw is putting it to much stress, especially the Kona battery, as its 64kwh. Read somewhere that occasional rapid charging is actually good for a battery. Last but not least, EV batteries are a lot better than phone batteries.
No expert. But assuming you had to take the majority of the cells/packs to their maximum voltage to get a benchmark, then deal with the slower cells. So one of us is talking bollocks, and happy to admit it, if it's me. We learn by discussion.
william cox Hi William. The cell balancing is all about equalising the cell voltages, not capacity. I assume that is what you meant. I know each car is different, but in the case of the leaf, as I understand it, it actively uses charge from cells and dumps it into others, but it also uses resistive discharge balancing which dumps charge into resistors to reduce the voltage of higher charge cells. I assume it would do this when the cells are almost balanced. Like you, I am no expert, but have read up, over the months to satisfy my curiosity.
That makes sense, Yes to the voltage, When a battery reaches its highest voltage, it's at it's highest capacity. And i'm talking about its rest voltage.
I drive a 2018 Chevrolet Bolt (60 kw/h battery) and the owners manual makes no reference to charge parameters beyond setting hilltop reserve mode to maximize regenerative braking if you live on a hill and would like to function with one pedal driving right away. It actually states “Keep the vehicle plugged in, even when fully charged, to keep the battery temperature ready for the next drive. This is important when outside temperatures are extremely hot or cold.” Further the manual defines those ranges as above 32 Celsius or below 0 Celsius. This would lead me to believe the battery management takes care of the extremes for you. Our garage was over 32 Celsius this summer at times and the battery cooling system starts itself up to cool it down. The only mention of depleting the battery relates to storing the car for over a month. If you are away for a month, leave it plugged in. If more than a month, drive it to a 30% charge level, leave it unplugged and place a trickle charger on the 12 volt battery. There is no mention either of battery degradation with rapid charging however it warns the battery cooling system will likely engage. Online at GM it states that plugging it in will be part of your daily routine. An 8 year 160,000 km battery warranty (replacement if degradation is more than 40% in that period and there is a warning, hopefully conservative, that the battery could degrade 10% and as much as 40% - time will tell). My takeaway in all this is to put your faith in the LG battery management system and plug it in to your hearts desire.
They are offering a 8 year warranty based on full charging to 100 % so why worry. I agree that constantly using the rapid charger could shorten the long life of the battery but again you have a 8 year warranty. The question is how long are you planning to keep the car.
If the battery warranty is not pro rated, charge the battery within an inch of its life and see if you can get it down to 69% capacity the day before the warranty expires so you have a brand new pack in your 8 year old Kona. Baby the second battery pack and you should be good for 20 years total.
Hello Puzzle EV, I am a technical expert for a major tech company. I will admit that I do not have knowledge or experience regarding EVs, but my experience and knowledge of lithium ion battery would lead me to believe that it doesn’t matter if you charge it everyday or once a week. The advice that I give to everyone is that you should charge your smart phone every night irrespective of the percentage you have left, this way the device is ready for a whole days work and is less likely to run out throughout the day. This doesn’t have a negative effect on the lifespan of the battery because the device can manage the power itself and treacle charges once at 100% to avoid over charging and also because one charge cycle isn’t one charge but instead the amount of times a battery is fully charged and depleted. So if you used 10% charge and charged it back up to 100% everyday, it would take you ten days to complete one cycle. With a smart phone you can lessen the amount of charge cycles a battery experiences in its life time by charging over night because it’ll use the mains power to update and back up instead of using battery power. One of the biggest factors that can affect the lifespan of a battery is temperature, which is why very rapid charging isn’t recommended all the time. The higher the power used to charge the batteries, the more heat is created, which can cause long term damage to a battery or cause a chemical imbalance within the batteries chemistry. This naturally all depends of the battery chemical composition. I hope that helps.
Honestly, I think there is definitely some issues in this comment. Comparing phones and car batteries is problematic because of different chemistry. I've had a lot of phones and I always charged them overnight. I was always able to tell some difference in battery performance after about a year of usage. I changed my charging habits with my latest phone. I am trying to never charge it to 100% (I unplug at around 90%) and try to never let it drop below 10-15%. My current phone is now about a year old and the battery is just as good as on the first day! Now I am not sure why that might be. Maybe the "battery management system" in the phone is better, maybe it's the change in my charging behavior. I like to believe that it is my change in how I charge the phone. However, I like your (EV Puzzle) approach to the problem and myths about this topic and am totally on your page with how you are planning on keeping your battery healthy. A couple thoughts: There is a company that is using Teslas to drive from LA to Las Vegas daily and they were using only quick chargers. They had the battery pack swapped once (or twice) by Tesla under warranty. Does it have to do with that? Maybe. I would like to think so. It would be nice to have a definitive answer from Korea, though.
Hyundai are very secretive about the details of their batteries band BMS so sadly they don't share. I've heard many early Teslas had their batteries swapped BUT slower charging is better for your battery generally I guess. UK 50kw CCS isn't quite Tesla speeds of charging however
A charging cycle is when you discharge below 20% or above 80%. You keep between these to numbers the battery is happy. Keeping a battery at 40% is the happiest state battery likes
The chemistry in vehicle batteries is substantially different from consumer LiPoly batteries in phones, laptops and drones/airsoft. Designed for the high discharge and charge rates, but with a lower Wh/kilo in comparison. There are a few different chemistries used, all with proprietary mixes of anode/cathode and electrolyte to optimise performance/life. From many posts, tests etc there appear to be some trends/themes/info that helps us to understand. Dont leave the cells 100% charged for extended periods, or discharged , batteries need to be worked. Charging from lower charge levels and high speed/acceleration will increase heat input to the battery. Batteries are better at mid range temperatures, 10-50C is OK 15-40C is better. BMS will limit charge and discharge rates for extremes of battery temperature (Rapidgate) Charging to 100% generally allows the BMS to re-calibrate. Hence monthly or more. Periodic Rapid charging is beneficial to electrolyte condition, and boosts SOH
Here's a few thoughts. First, the science of battery degradation is not something that is well known but the experts are hiding from you; rather the experts really know annoyingly little about what is going on precisely inside the cells, and which circumstances influence that most. A battery cell is not something one can look into, even in the lab. Also long duration, certainly an important factor, is hard to simulate in limited time experiments. Second, though degradation is a fact of life and even the best of care will not avoid it entirely, the issue is not as important as it was once feared to be. If they are now giving 8-year warranties on batteries without extensive obligations to treat the batteries in specific ways, I take that to mean that they are pretty confident that over a wide range of use cases, only a very small percentage of batteries will actually degrade enough to make the warranty apply. Because that is how manufacturers determine the duration of their warranties in general. Third, the "charge up to 100% once in a while" is a good rule for another reason than degradation. Charging up to 100% gives the BMS precious information about the individual cells that it cannot obtain while the SOC is in the middle ranges. Only when a cell is nearly full does the voltage give precise information of just how full it is; the BMS takes such charges as an opportunity to balance the cells (make sure each one holds the same charge, which is important when many of them are used in series), and also provides a calibration for the SOC (without ever touching the extreme values, the computed SOC starts drifting away from the actual SOC, As Bjørn illustrates in ruclips.net/video/v4FvBqXHbv0/видео.html). Finally here are a few rules I try to follow personally. When leaving the car unused for a week or more, try to do so at around 50% (as duration based degradation appears to be related to high concentrations of ions on either cathode or anode). When ending a trip with low battery, try to get it above 20% again (granny charging) even if a full charge is not needed again soon. Only charge at night (necessarily to 100%, as the Leaf does not provide a timer setting to stop at a lower percentage) if I am sure to use the car the next day, and for a distance that it could not do without charging. Doing this at least once a week is normally not a problem, as I can do only about 150km without charging up (but right now during the vacation I think I haven't done it for about a month, as I've been using the solar panels' peaks to charge partially on some days). All in all, I think that as long as you avoid certain extreme things, you really only should only worry about details if that makes you feel virtuous; there is very scant chance that there will every be a noticeable difference in battery health linked to the special care you gave it.
Marc van leeuwen best honest advice I think we could possibly get. Thank you so much for letting us know. I also wondered, if like USB sticks they used some of the spare kWh not used to replace worn cells this make it look like no degradation but in fact it has degraded and you're just using some of the spare capacity it already had. If that makes sense.
@@EVPuzzle no that doesnt happen, as leaf spy shows the actual capacity not the smaller capacity with margins the car shows. The car bms will always allow the same amount of buffer
Hi Nigel First let me say I don't know definitively about preserving battery life other than expecting to lose about 3% capacity/year When we bought the Leaf the sales rep suggested that once a month we should get it up to 100% using the granny charger not certain if that is for the BMS On the 2018 leaf but you have a display which shows energy usage and regen in a dial format White for energy being used then blue for regen The regen part is ghosted blue segments and bright blue when active Once you are nearing full charge the ghosted blue segments start to disappear leaving them grayed out showing that regen is limited (finally they all go grey at 100% showing no regen is possible) The thing I'm trying to get to is that the least efficient area to operate the car in is fully charged thats my reason to charge to 80% rather than 100% If at 80% , based on your driving, the GOM estimates 140 miles, it might look on the face of it that the other 20% will add another 28 miles of actual range and if you do charge to 100% the GOM will predict 168 or 170 miles Once you drive off though you wont have regen at first and after that it gradually increases so the GOM estimate will start to readjust and predicted range will drop (usually) John
I know it's recommended to charge the Zoe to 100% occasionally because some sort of cell balancing happens at around 100%. This might be what's going on with the Kona manual recommendation.
Had my 30kwh leaf for 13 months now and at home have always charged to 100% on my 3kwh home charger. Charge couple of times a month on a rapid. Had my service at 20k miles . Not noticed any degradation at all. My commute is 66 miles a day return.
hi Paul, did you get battery condition reports at every service too? Just heard Nissan provide them to explain how well looked after it is... Or isn't.
@@EVPuzzle all I got was a sheet of paper with stars on telling me my SOH was 5 🌟 this was my first service. At 18.5k miles. I was expecting a more detailed report. I'm thinking of buying an OBD connector to monitor it myself. They said they did it in stars to simplify it for people. But I'm an engineer so I'm technically minded.
I rapid charge sometimes 2 or 3 times in a 10 hour shift taxi driving. Only to 80% of course. I am not sure even LG Chem know the answer. Partly because driving style and usage is so different driver to driver. The Chemistry used is of course new and always improving. So no one really knows yet. By the time we do know the chemistry will have improved yet again.
Kona manual mentioned that you have to charge at 100% at least once a month or more(probably to equalize all cells). Better try not to discharge below 20% IMO. Edit: you mention it at 8:36 I use lipo batteries on my remote control car for about 15 years, fantastic battery type. After 80%, current decreases to avoid overvoltage of the battery, this is so called constant voltage charge. Below this is constant current charge (max push of electron the charger can do). Doing overvoltage would put the batteries on fire. The same if you leave them at 0% charge, they can also catch fire.
My 2012 leaf has 10 battery health bars and I can get a max 40 miles was original max 73. I know Ian Sampson 2013 leaf had a better battery and he D.C. Charged all the time with no problems with degradation . They say not to charge to 100 all the time or leave it at 100. I have been told to balace the battery ocassionly.
the rapid charger doesnt slow down at 80%, the car does because its programmed to. i assume its to preserve battery integrity but your point still stands. charging from 80-100% will take as long as 10-80% so in most cases it makes sense to charge to 80 and go - unless you need that extra 20% to get to the next charger or just want the buffer. 30% degradation would be awful. teslas with 200k miles are only in the 6-8% degradation range.
I don't drive my Kona EV every day. When I do, it's mostly in town so I don't have to recharge daily or sometimes not even weekly. Generally, I recharge when battery levels drop to 40%. When charging on my home Level II charger, I top up to 90%, unless I'm planning a road trip within the next day or so. Then I charge to 100%. When I do use a Level III charger -- which I try not to do unless I'm travelling -- of course I only top up to 80%. I've been driving my Kona EV for well over two years now and have noted zero drop in battery performance. For me at least, this regimen seems to be working pretty well.
Hyundai definitely recommend avoiding the top SOC but have never clarified why. The fires potentially but maybe degradation. Other cars like my mini just don't car how often you charge to 100%
I have owned an Ioniq for 9 Months and have found tha tHyundai don't seem to trust its customers with information. Lithium-polymer batteries are recommended to be charged to 3.7 volts per cell for storage and the owners manual page H6 states "If the vehicle will not be in use for extended period of time. Charge the high voltage battery once every three months to prevent it from discharging. Also if the charge amount is not enough immediately charge to full and store the vehicle. This would suggest to me that the 28KW capacity is when the battery is charged to 100% and the cell voltages will be around 3.7 as specified for storage
Exactly. The to 100% disagrees with many experts or very knowledgeable persons advise. I'm less inclined to worry after all this research and info. It'll be fine
I have a 68 plate Hyundai Ioniq with approx 16000 mls on the clock. I bought the car in May this year with 13500 mls and it had two previous owners. Fully charged the vehicle battery was capable of 135 mls and I drove the car as I normally drive with a mixture of "Granny Charging" whilst at home and D.C when away from home. Up until the last Lock Down all had been fine and the battery re charged to 135 mls without a problem. I kept the battery in a mid range % state using the three pin "Granny Charger" as I only traveled locally. However the last time I fully charged at home the millage was only 128 mls. A point to note that I do have solar panels fitted and in the summer the car charges faster with a lot more energy than the Grid supplies in the winter. I think how you drive ,when and how much you charge; play an important part in battery management. Having watched different video's with Hyundai Ioniq's some with 150mls ( 42500 miles on the clock) and some with only 122 mls fully charged makes me think it's going take a long time to figure it out. I have now changed my driving style and switched off the Re-gen completely and coast as much as possible. It seems to work, with more miles being driven and less miles battery loss. Hopefully when things get back to normal I will figure it out.
Best of luck. I find little difference in Regen or coasting but then again I adjust how I anticipate in the different modes. It's all good fun but there's an art to getting high efficiency and big Gom numbers. You've got to have the touch 😉
You can expect to see some degradation, yes. If you want to minimise it, keep away from 100% and 0%. It's just chemistry and there are two different degradation reactions that happen at each end. I take issue with Hyundai's advice to leave the car at 100% charge if leaving it idle by the way! Remember 100% on the dash isn't 100% on the battery, there's some headroom built in, and the BMS probably uses this to hide degradation for a few years on newer models like the Ioniq. For reference we're seeing around 2 to 3% degradation per year on the 2013 model Leaf, with some wide variation. We've collected data over on "speakev". DC charging might be thought of as a "bad thing" because of the higher temperatures. Good for power output, but not so good for health!
From what I know of LiIon batteries, better to keep battery topped up so it never deeply discharges and mostly stays between 50 and 80. And keeping batteries cool but not cold is best, so rapid charging might degrade battery faster IF it gets hot. There's evidence the Kona and Niro have quite a bit of hidden capacity, so the 64kWh is really 70.
I guess the battery is "happiest" around 70 %. And that it is not the best for it to store it for long at very low level, and neither for very high level of charge. But if the battery is actually larger than 64 kw, then there should not be any problem charging it to 100 %. Thank you for great content within watchable time frames 👍
You're welcome Johnny, thanks for watching and contributing. Martin left an interesting comment that cell balancing may occur at the 100% charge so it's something we would want to do and makes sense of the manuals comments.
The EV Puzzle I guess it is to make sure that you get the correct readings of the current state of remaining % of battery life. Perhaps doing so once a month or so would be more then enough.
In order to have preconditioning, whether that be in a warm climate or a cold climate would mean that you would have to plug it in. Anyway I always keep my mind plugged in to a maximum charge of 80%. I’m actually thinking of reducing that to 70% as I’m normally on a daily basis Only using 20% I can then adjust it when needed.
Hello. I drive a model 3 and I charge it WHENEVER I can. But never let it go to more than 270 miles of charge, it has a range of 310 or so. My opinion is that the rate of decline of the battery pack is only 1 to 2% a year. Maybe slightly less. Anyway, if I go someplace that has a public charger, I try to make use of that convenience, even if only for 30 minutes.
Great reading. Well We travel 85kms each way to work. We come home and plug in everyday. Were set to start charging @ 2300 hrs and wake up with a full charge each morning for the commute. It will be interesting to see how the battery is over time. I thought with the thermo management there shouldnt be any issues. Most people have mentioned 8 year / 160,000 kms warranty. Im sure ill see the mileage before the 8 years. Well be commuting with the Kona for 2 1/2 more years
My experience with charging and battery SOC in a Renault Zoe 22kw. The car did 58000 miles charging at home or work from 30% to 100% almost everyday and lots of free rapid 43kwh charges for 5 years and when the car went back to Renault the Battery still had a 98% SOH,
That sounds really good. Problem is these health stats are from the manufacturer too. Hyundai reports 100% until it's below 70 then shows fault. You just never know. I'm so mistrusting 🤣
I think you have got the charging ideas about right. Unless you need to do so, I would say just keep the battery between 30% and 70%. You won't go far wrong with that. Battery balancing is done most of the time and does not require full charge to do this. The leaf will end it's charge at 100% with no additional Balancing at the end of charge. The charge current gradually tails off, and then stops the charge completely with no further power drawn from the socket. You will not harm the battery charging to 100% and back to zero every so often. Just do not leave at the extremes for too long. Batteries will store for a very long time at 40 - 50% charge.
Charge to 80% and down to 10% if it's standing for a long time then 50% and occasionally charge to 100% to balance the cells. Charging at a 7kw home charger is better than fast charging as this will add strain to the battery. Minimise the cycles if you can but at the end of the day drive it as you need to and not worry to much.
I had Nissan LEAF 2017 and saw its battery degrade via SoH, about 3% each year.. so after three years, it's got about 93% SoH... Now that I've got Kia Niro EV, I hope its SoH holds up better, similar to Kona Electric...
The idea that the warranty only applies if capacity falls below 70% within 8 years is pretty shocking to me and would stop me buying an ev at this stage. How can is be acceptable for an 8 year old ev to degrade from a 300 mile range to a 210 mile range (so even less usable in real world)?
Perhaps Hyundai UK have a concern over negative PR if they help propagate information that you can only keep the battery between 20% and 80% for best battery life... even if this is factually correct. I could see the ice loving press using it to say that, look, battery cars are rubbish. You can't charge it to 100% and the actual range is only 60% of the advertised range because it has to be between 20% and 80%. Either that or my foil hat is malfunctioning 😉
At a higher state of charge the current demand on the batteries is lower to provide the same KWh needed to accelerate etc. When I got my Mitsubishi phev the battery had only 88.4% original capacity. Hut in 3 years had only been charged 150 times. Now after 30k miles and over 600 recharges in 7 months my capacity is back up to 99.2% original capacity. This is a mix of rapid charges to 80% and slow charges from 25% to 100% Several other high use Phev drivers are finding the same results to ABC always be charging. No idea how this effects a fully lecie but works well on a PHEV which has a cooled battery pack ;)
Don't know how you see the %, on my Leaf I use the Leafspy app. After some 100% charges, but especially some QC and/or hard driving (and during winter), all numbers increase. Is that because the battery is getting better? No, I highly doubt it. I rather think it's a matter of the BMW getting "more data".
I understand from others that the degradation in Tesla batteries is very low, so one would expect that to be the case with other manufacturers unless Tesla are way ahead in battery tech. So if 30% loss is expected to be right at the extreme end of likely loss, why be so conservative in the warranty? Why not 80% or 90%? 70% just gives me zero confidence that I’m buying something that, when I come to sell at four or five years old, will have a residual value that’s not hammered by range loss. I do wonder whether mass adoption still needs a further step up in battery technology, improving possible range loss, capacity and charging speed. Charging is a massive issue in the UK as so many people park on the road or in a parking space well away from their home. Keep up the good work, I really enjoy your videos and have found it very interesting following your ev journey!
I agree Chris, but actual results should be better over time which will breed confidence. Who believes manufacturers these days? Tesla do have their own battery design but I bet it's similar
New to EVs having only had my Kona Electric since November 23. If the 20/80 rule should be adhered to then I feel manufacturers should be made to quote the vehicles range at 60%.
Definitely not a rule but some are more worried about battery Deg than others . The only rule I follow now is not leaving it below 15 percent when cold overnight otherwise or 100 percent for months at a time
My leaf is 6 years old with 86% health. 2.3% per year. It only had 3 DC charges in its life it was also set at 80% from Japan as an import. I worked out the owner did around 20 mile trip each journey max, based on the number of slow charges. So it’s basically sat between 80% and 55% it’s whole life. 2.3 % sounds about right. I Charge it to 100% every Friday night for weekend use where sometimes we do 120km max. I figure it should be ok at that rate. Hope to squeeze another 5 years out of it, work days are only a 20 mile round trip :) even if it drops to 30% range i can still use it. I see lots of talk about long range however it’s a bad investment if u only use that range 20 times in its life. My old clunker ICE car can take care of the long trips. I figure 5 years from now EVs will be near petrol prices.
I find it funny how leaf owners count their degradation because they can see it and Hyundai owners don't get any at all...well they can't see it lol. Need an annual full charge and trip in same conditions to prove it
Yep leafspy is my friend :) i can see the 2 miles or so a year in range :) I hope to grab a Kona in three years time when someone has done the honour of paying for the new car smell :) however, I suspect most people will hold onto them. I’ll probably go the 60kwh leaf as a Japanese import for 1/3 the cost of a three year old Kona. Mind you no warranty or service etc. I could grab a Kona, but I love a bargain :) I think there will be a huge amount of choice come three years and EV shops fitting old EVs with new long range packs.
Batteries on evs dont use their whole capacity, it is normally something like 90%max, 10% min so as not to damage the battery. Having said that Tesla recommend charging at 20% to 70/80% to maximise the life, based on the data they have on their vehicles. I think the cycles are there to give a general idea of the life based on average usage, on the regen braking the future is in using capacitors to absorb this charge as they effectively have unlimited cycles (some upto 1,000,000 cycles - way more than the life of the car) this is also to get higher regen rates and efficiency as the capacitors can charge more rapidly. I'm not sure how many, or if any vehicles use them for this at the moment. The other info to add is vehicle to grid. They have found on the leaf that the slight discharge/recharge this produces can actually increase battery health.
I tried to find the true efficiency of regen on my Leaf, it seems to be around 90%. Tests have shown that you get lower consumption when holding a steady speed in hilly terrain (use regen) rather than gaining speed downhill. That tells me that there is no point in using a capasitor for regen and high output, and battery for everything else. As for Tesla, se my respons to "Fil" further down. The Leaf shows better numbers in Leafspy after hard driving, using QC, 100% charge and during winter. I really don't believe that it's because the battery actually gets better, but that the BMS gets more data.
It's the type of charging that make the difference low level trickle charging is the best, it long and slow so the car can thermally regulate the battery better. Therefore reducing any over charging and damage to the cells.
To all those people who have a Kona on lease: please don't abuse your battery! Some poor sod like me wants to buy your car used when your lease ends. ❤
Charging to 100% once per month is so that the battery management system can balance charge each cell in the pack to exactly the same voltage. Charging to 100% every day is not good for the battery. AC charging is recommended over DC charging simply because AC charging is always at a lower charge rate than DC charging and, since the heat produced in charging is proportional to the rate of charging, less heat is produced, and therefore less battery damage occurs when the battery is charged from AC. Excessive heat over extended periods is what damages batteries, so anything that reduces that rate of heat produced while charging and heat produced when driving will be good for the battery. On the 80/20 thing- it does keep the battery in it's "goldilocks " zone and it's also the zone where DC fast charging is at it's fastest, so it can optimise journey times. This guy seems to know a thing or 2 about ev batteries ruclips.net/video/QRPze4f0gsQ/видео.html
Although I’m also highly curious about the true answer, I have to keep reminding myself to relax and just charge the vehicle & use it how I want to. This is what they want for EV adoption for the average user clearly. Will continue to charge all my lithium-ion battery products (phone, Ioniq EV etc) to 80% and only to 100% when needed (or 1xmo) only for charging “rate” reasons and not battery care reasons. But I won’t obsess about it. It’s an additional worry that’s over kill especially for people only leasing Ev’s for 2-4 years. Batteries are only becoming cheaper, greener, & lighter- they can be replaced.
I'm glad you raised this because I'm no expert on these matters and I'm struggling to find something definitive. I've reached the conclusion that there are no tablets of stone out there on this but instead just good practice with no guarantees. Ultimately if your battery is covered you have something to fall back on. My wife quite rightly tells me not to get too preoccupied with it. I do have one question though. If, for some unknown reason, your battery degrades unusually quickly but remains above the 70% SoH, would the manufacturer be prepared to repair or replace it? Food for thought!
I have a Nissan Leaf. They told me it was better to use it until it was nearly empty before charging - so charging fewer times but longer charges each time.
David, dealers are renowned for knowing very little and have the least experience themselves. Unless they're quoting the manual, I wouldn't trust them on technical issues. A salesman isn't a technology expert and he'd be the last person I trusted given his motivation. Sadly, I'm pessimistic from experience
Thanks for the warning. When I say dealer I really mean the service department of the dealer, who'd just serviced it. I'd hoped they were collecting information about battery degradation while they were servicing their Leafs - but perhaps not. I shall be wary. Thanks again.
David, it's scary how little they do or know. The reality is more like they plug it in and the computer tells them if it's ok or not. No statistics they need to understand just a yes or no and replace or not. Do they give you a battery condition report and highlight the good and bad for you? It'd be useful to have annual reports on the battery to check condition. I sound like I'm on a mission to dis dealership staff but that's not the case, they're good people just not well informed it seems by the manufacturers. Computers are definitely replacing skill in the service team also. It took me 3 months to get a simple answer from Hyundai as to how they measure their battery checks which are made at service intervals. They eventually admitted the computer decided for them.
A charging cycle is a full cycle 0-100 I can do far more part cycles than full cycles e.g 30-60 batteries don't like been full or empty . However IF the manafacturer "hides" some of the battery it isn't really going to 100% anyway. Never leave a battery at 100%. One reason mobile phone batteries don't last 2 minutes is they are always fully charged 0-100
My idea is, if the accu is fallen under 40 % i would charge to 80% at home. Only if i have a long way to do, then i go to 100% short before, so i have always enough battery for my normal drivings at every time. By the way, it seems i get a Kona in 5 weeks 🚘 And i will use sunny hours to charge with the wallbox app and the pv, as often as possible. Greetings from Austria to you and your wonderful country 🇦🇹
I recognise you name from Bjorns live stream on the marathon Kona hypermile attempt. We all were shocked when he mistakenly banned you (briefly) His sleep depravation was getting to him! :-) I'm going to attempt a 1000km hypermile attempt with my Kona but I will be having more power naps than Bjorn!!
but what about the cold freezing temperatures? Wouldn't that factor in or change the suggested "regime" of the charge ? I think low freezing temperatures Should dictate to what level the battery should be kept at. and the same for High summer temperatures... It should dictate or at least it should be taken into consideration as to the level of charging 90% or more...
Hi EV Puzzle, it is a bit of a nightmare deciding how and when to charge. You might want to look at todays EV News daily they mention 2016 Tesla used in a shuttle service with hundreds of thousands of miles rapid charged 4 times a DAY showing only 12% degradation. Ian Sampson who i followed before getting my 14reg 24kwh leaf over 2yrs ago has also done some vlogs on bar loss. When he changed his 13 reg leaf recently it had over 40k miles and still had all 12 bars and he charged at home every night up to 100%. My own experience is i lost one bar at 14K and now at 22k no further losses and range still 90 miles with eco on and aircon off in summer when i charge to 100% a couple of times a month. I think the age of the battery might also be a factor. I hope that i do not lose any more bars before i change my car to a longer range one with battery management in a couple of years but who knows as there are chemical reactions going on all the time. There will be some interesting battery advancements in the next couple of years and would not be surprised if they found a way to increase the range of older Evs. I get 5 miles per kwh in summer and if they came up with a 10kwh battery about the size of a medium suitcase giving me an extra 50 miles i would quite happily give up the boot space for it. Looking forward to your vlogs about the Kona. Would be interested to know if you can get 2 sets of golf clubs and trolleys in the back with seats down (this is easy to do in my leaf) as i am also retired so can play more these days. Thanks Tom
Adding to what Mark Jennings has said, I also use Lithium Polymer batteries for model aircraft use. If you are off for a day's flying, charge up and use straight away. If you are not going to fly for a while, 'charge' to a safe state, which with modern LiPo chargers means around 30% (please confirm Mark). These chargers actually have a 'safe mode' state option. I wonder whether any of the car chargers would incorporate such an option. Very interesting video as always. p.s. Can you get Sue to think about a Renault Zoe as a Nissan Juke? May look a little different, but many people have bought them (I am not amongst them).
This isn't a question that can be universally answered for all EV's because of the range of battery chemistries and engineering integration. I like GM's engineering solution in the Volt because NMC chemistry, liquid cooling, battery reserve and 15 - 95 % charging cycle makes it impervious to user decisions. It just lasts. I don't have enough information on the Kona battery yet. Who makes it? What's the chemistry? How has it been integrated into the vehicle? What's the allowed charge / discharge range? What's the operating temperature range?
and 50 km a day. For the first long trip we fully charged it and had 410 km by start. Driving normaly 120km/h the Battery troped rather quikly and After about 270 Km we had only 40km left / 11 % . Do we have to be concernd? Keep on your interessting Infos. Best wishes from Heiri, Zürich, Switzerland
Technically it is all DC charging I think. The on board charger just converted AC to DC to charge the battery. Rapid charging is just DC direct as I understand it.
Here's a question for you Nigel. Is the 64kWh Kona capable of being charged at 100kWh (or thereabouts) if it had a charger capable of giving it that supply? I believe it would have to be at least 350v and at least 300 amps. I can't find detailed specs about this anywhere.
I've been thinking about getting an EV for quite a while, but , if my missus was to read all these comments (unlikely), then we will be getting a petrol VW T-Roc.
There is a video from early 2023 (link below) from Hyundai USA, where they recommend not allowing the battery going under 20% frequently and charging it more often, every 2 to 3 days, to maintain the battery topped off and not reaching under 20% to conserve battery. They also mention to avoid constantly parking the vehicle under the sun. Vídeo can be seen here: ruclips.net/video/t9bQ6OnyWtk/видео.htmlsi=emOz8bc9fnHu_Nwo
Maybe we shouldn't worry about degradation so much. Our feb 2020 Kona electric 64kWh has 110.000 kms on the clock. First two years it was charged from 60% to 100% every weekday. After that, until now once or twice a week from whatever state of charge to 100%. Did a reading on Car Scanner today and State of Health is still 100%.
No it won't kill your battery to go below 20 and above 80, if so 20 would be 0% and 80% would be 100%. If not, there would be PLENTY of Leaf's out there with dead batteries... My -13 Leaf charges to max 4.12-4.13 V pr. cell. On the top of my mind, a fully charged cell is rated at around 4.2-4.3 V, so actually 100% isn't 100%, but maby 80? And at 0% there's still more than high enough voltage to keep it far from dead. So I guess 0% already is 20%. So really, I wouldn't worry to much about it, they are made quite foolproof. But, it's said it's ideal to keep it within 40-60% all the time, exept a few times charge to 100 and discharge near zero, to "relearn" the BMS. As far as I've heard, charging 40-60% 5 times gives far less degredation than 1 time 0-100%.. Personally, with a Kona and your estemated 10% pr day use, I'd set chargelimiter to 80, drive down to 40-50%, then recharge. Once a while to 100%, especially before a long journey. There's an old saying in the EV world, charge when you can, not when you have to.. That is very true with short-range cars as the old Leaf. But with the Kona you really don't have that problem any more.. But no matter how you twist and turn, it's a car ment to be used. Suddenly you have to do a longer or an extra trip, then I would be much better off with keeping it at higher %. As for degredation, my Leaf with 50' km has around 10% degredation I believe. It's a bit hard to say as they've changed software in the car, the Leafspyapp has gotten updates so the data has changed.. Anyways, the Kona has around 3x the batterysize, so I guess it's fair to say it would have 1/3 of the degredation as you would get 1/3 the number of cycles. It will not surprise me if the battery in my Leaf lives as long as the car, and the Kona should be much better of.
It is really unclear. On the charge to 100% thing... They worded that really vaguely but I think that means it's good to occasionally charge to 100%. If they meant to go to 100% all the time they would not have mentioned "once a month". They'd just say charge to 100% all the time.
This is one of the failings of many ev, charging by dc appears to be bad for the battery , most ev have fast charging by dc, otherwise you will be restricted to home slow ac charging and on longer journeys you will be degrading you battery by charging rapidly more than once , seems a bit concerning , ie rapidgate and the new leaf . One advantage in the longer range zoe , no dc problems 43 ac down to 3kw . Even then I tend not to fully charge or drop below 25% with 22kwh pension, larger battery seems straight forward but obviously quicker fast ac charging would be advantage but no sign of that happening , seems dc , ccs likely future or Tesla dc . Chademo looks dead in the water , but onboard 7kw ac just a bit slow , on board ac 22kw as Tesla used to have would be compromise if 2 plug solution the norm in other ev
But the Tesla manages the battery quite different from other cars as I understand. 100% on my -13 Leaf is far from 100%, cellvoltage at 4.12-4.13 V, rated fully charged is around 4.2-4.3 V I think. I assume 100% on the Tesla will be the same as "range mode" or whatever Mercedes calls it. Not knowing the cellvoltage, and the differences, I will assume that around 80-90% on a Tesla is equivalent to 100% on the old Leaf. In other words, other cars play it safe, while Tesla gives you the ability to actually use the full battery when you really need it.
Nexen tyres are really hard so NO but if you wheel spin a lot of course they will. Hard usage will wear them more but standard nexen Tyres are really hard wearing
What???? I’ve never heard of this I charge to 100% sometimes and I’ve actually gotten more range up to 280 on my Hyundai Kona Electric when it’s suppose to get 258 lol
I really don’t appreciate the secrecy of companies that make EV/hybrid cars to protect their secrets. They need to help the consumer with key details to prolong the life of the vehicle “Including the BATTERY” this video is a good example of how consumers don’t have any clue about how to extend the battery life and use the vehicle as intended. Please open up on info we can’t mind read the battery chemistry and endurance.
Interesting revisiting these videos. I’d suggest as we move to mass adoption there will be less worrying about these things and drivers will just charge them and use them……..which I’ve been doing for 9 years in EVs.
Those that lease definitely will but those that own long term will care for them as best they can I'm sure. I've found my attitude has shifted somewhat since owning a Mini Electric
@@EVPuzzle new car ownership I probably agree, but as they move into used car territory…….well people don’t do oil changes or service used ICE as they should 🤔
If you want an expert opinion just look here. ruclips.net/video/QRPze4f0gsQ/видео.html Euan is an Electro chemist with over a decades worth of experience with EVs and EV batteries. 80/20 is only relevant for rapid charging and more to do with heat at the low end and the fact it gets so slow over 80. Staying above 20 will help a bit but again more down to the heat at low SOC. You need to charge to 100% fairly regularily to properly balance the pack. Not doing this will eventually lead to cells becoming badly out of balance dragging the rest of the pack down with them. Also occasional rapid charging is good for the battery not bad. Look at the example of the Leaf taxi that done 170000 miles in nothing but rapids and only lost 2 battery bars.
The best research I have seen so far has been done by Battery University: batteryuniversity.com/index.php/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries And they have done the tests you are asking about. You will get about 10.000 cycles before your battery degrades 15% if you do 25%-75% charging. So if you would charge twice per week (every 3,5 days on average), you could charge 10.000 / 365 * 3,5 = 96 years. Or something in the range of 30.000 cycles if you charge only 10% each time. That number is actually an extrapolation because nobody had the time to make so many tests by charging once per day, because this would mean 30.000 / 365 = 82 years. Even by doing 10 cycles per day, this is 8 years of testing. Of course these numbers are theoretical. Actually your battery will have lower capacity just by ageing. A process you cannot change. You can slow it down if you could keep the battery between 0°C and 20°C, but a few degrees outside that range won't do serious harm either. If I summarize, you can do pretty much anything within 25% and 75% SOC. And reasonable battery temperatures under 30°C, but this is something what the thermal management in your car should care for. Every charging cycle slightly misalignes the BMS, it may not exactly know where 0% and 100% is, therefore about every hundred cycles it is recommended to do a 100% - 0% - 100% to let it learn where the boundaries are. I think there are some videos about this on the net, explaining details. So, to come to an conclusion: if possible, you could set your top state of charge to 70 or 75% and charge whenever you want, 1, 2 or 3 times per week. If I were in your place, I'd do it twice. An then the battery alignment once or twice per year, maybe in spring and autumn. Do well !
I've seen someone collecting data from customs for the Ioniq. It'll come soon once the data values are understood. Hyundai should be open as it would help well the car if we could see more data and truth
Wow Hyundai NZ just confirmed the battery warranty on my 64Kwh Kona will be 10 years and unlimited KM's. Beat that Tesla! (Why is Hyundai UK different? you need to check on that) heres a link to warranty facebook.com/KonaElectric/ And it will be at my door in only 4 days from now!!
Only listen to science. batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries I think idiots wrote the manual. Unlike Lead acid, nickel cadmium, etc, li-ion batteries have no special charging requirements but can be damaged by over charging and excessive discharging. They are also best stored at 30% charge. Edit: There is a chart showing that it is optimal to charge to 60-65% but that assumes 100% is 4.2V, and EV batteries are probably designed with 100% being near 3.9V because that's optimal, and EV batteries focus on long life: batteryuniversity.com/index.php/learn/article/bu_808b_what_causes_li_ion_to_die So maybe it doesn't make a big difference. 80%-20% is a good rule of thumb but it must depend on the battery and what the manufacturer calls 100% and 0%. If the manufacturer doesn't give information, then I guess we will never know.
You should definitely look at the BMW Mini manual. It encourages 100% charging frequently leaving car not just at 100% but plugged in to keep topping up. The reason for saying this can only be fear of greater degradation at very low SOC ???
@@EVPuzzle I just remembered that some things like cell phones recommend fully cycling the battery a few times when newly manufactured because the capacity will increase by a few percent after a dozen or so charges. Also there are a lot of different types of lithium batteries and EV batteries are unique and I don't know a lot about them. It seems unlikely multiple manuals for expensive cars were written carelessly and I might be another ignorant know it all. My research will continue. But many comments sound like they did their own research in their daily life and have some hard data. Mainly leaf owners. I remember being curious about those. I don't know why I'm curious when I don't think an EV is practical for me right now. Maybe a hybrid.
@@EVPuzzle Long term that probably makes sense. But I was thinking of an old prius. It's a small investment (as little as $3000 if you are american) and they are extremely reliable and long range. Unfortunately I have other considerations and probably will pick something more conventional but cheap. I'll do the math and won't make a careless decision.
My advice is drive whatever is the cheapest overall, save your money and buy the EV that works for you. If Prius is the cheapest stop gap then so be it. . Depends on your mileage I suppose as to where your costs are.
The only myth is the word electricity . I think of heat only, the charger is a compressor of heat , with associated stresses of compressing and decompressing something it subject's it to mechanical stress. I thinking that working at lower charges and more frequent charges probably has less stress? There again Iam only a plumber ?
Caution to everyone, as an qualified battèry experts I must warn everyone considering buying ev cars,..... seriously consìder battery degradation which is in average %1.5 a year. %1.5 a year equates to whooping %7.5 in 5 years....that literally means that you got to change the battery and pay £5000., or more for a new battery. Just bear that in mind and carefully workout all this before plunging into uncharted territory. With advent of new technology this has been greatly improved though. Thanks
Definitely won't buy a battery you worked on then. Which company is that? That is alarmingly bad . Haven't seen that sort of degradation since my first Smart Phone. PS what car are you driving ?
I was told by a friend who works in battery chemistry that the ideal state of charge to keep my car is between 30 and 70%. There is not a problem charging to 100% if I intend to use the car and not leave it on charge holding 100% and there is no problem running the car down to 10% even 5% but don’t leave it in that low state of charge, he highly recommends recharging the car as soon as possible keeping it within the 30 to 70 rule will prolong the life of the batteries. This is keeping the battery in the sweet spot for daily use, when DC fast charging he recommended only taking it up to 80%, unless absolutely necessary to make it to the next destination and be able to charge again, so just like many things in life it seems that nothing is that bad if it’s only every now and again. Let’s also remember that these batteries have a buffer, so even when you charge to 100% it’s not actually hundred percent.
It's not worth worrying about tbh, they'll last longer than the car. Also depends on the exact battery , they differ a lot , just follow manufacturer advice in the manuals and use common sense.
I have a 27kw Kia Soul. I have covered 42k miles in 19 months. When I bought the car Summer range was 105 and Winter was 72-73. Last winter the GOM tells me I have 72 miles My daily commute is 70 miles. I dont have an option of workplace charging. So my Car is Rapid charged every day Mon-Fri and is topped off on night rate too 100% every single night, as I need the full range to get me home. I have reached the rapid charger at least 7-10 times in my 19 month with only 1% left. But that is an extreme weather day with 50mph head winds, Below zero deg temps and pouring rain. But I regularly arrive home with between 5-10% every single day over winter months. In summer GOM shows 105 range. I have had my car over 2 winters now, and I havent noticed any range loss in the winters. This winter will be interesting as it will be my 3rd winter. If I take a rough guess I have rapid chargeed between 380 and 450 times in 19 months. I have also rapid charged 5 times in a single day on a 400 mile round trip. And with the Soul having Thermal Battery management. I was abe to pull a full 120amps on every single charge and hammer the M/way at 70 mph in 25 deg heat. So the long and short of it is I dont really think it matters how you charge your car, becasue the Soul for instance has a buffer at both ends of the battery. apprently its a 30.5kw battery in the 27kw. So although I fill the car too 100%, it's not actually 100%. The Kia also give a 7yr or 100,000 mile Battery Warranty. And is replaced if the SOH falls below 75%
There are EV Taxi's in Dublin that have over 200,000 KM and are Rapid charged every single day. On the Irish FB pages its been said thay dont see any range loss
Really useful . Thank you.
Thank you for this :)
Glad to help with these videos
@@VaderLord001 my Kia Soul ended up selling with 76000 miles in 33 months. Kia tested it for degradation. It only lost 3% 👍
Having a fair bit of experience with li-ion batteries in off grid solar storage I would suggest this. Avoid frequent 100% charges as at high voltage is when dentrite formation starts internally within the cell. I would think Hyundias sugestion to fully charge monthly will be to ballance the cells. I would also recomend that you only fully charge just before you plan to use your car so it’s not sat at a high state of charge for long. I believe avoiding frequent high and low SOC is the key to lithium happyness but they will certainly tolerate it without issue many times over their lifetime. Some sources suggest that calender life offers the largest percentage of degradation (age) but we can’t control this aspect.
I operate large drones and have to manage their Lipo batteries (Lithium-ion polymer). I will treat the Kona like I do them and will never charge to 100% unless I really need to for range on a long drive. Charging a Lipo to 100% and discharging to minium is the quickest way to kill its performance and shorten its life. The Kona Manual says to leave the battery at 100% charge if not using for a while. I TOTALLY will not do this. Only time I have puffed a Lipo was charging it to 100% and then not using it. It sat on the shelf and puffed overnight. Lipo puff due due crystals forming within the cells and can occasionally result in a dead short within the cell and a fierce fire. You only need to see a large fully charged Lipo virtually exploded into a gassing flaming blow torch type fire to respect the energy these things can store. For my 'normal' charging regime I will not discharge lower than 20% and never charge more than 80% unless I really have too. No Lipo manufacturer says to charge and store their batteries at 100%. All say to leave at around 30% for prolonged storage. The biggest stress on Battery chemistry is fast charging or fast discharging. I never charge Lipos faster than 2c (twice the max rated discharge speed for the battery) and whenever possible charge at a leisurely 1C.
With the Kona you can set limit to charge amount as well as timers for when to start/stop the charge daily, weekly etc so I'll just set overnight charge to max at 80% daily. If I fly off on a holiday I will reduce this to charge daily to max of 30%. This can all be done with the Hyundai Autolink App which has been released for NZ customers and will be extended to the rest of the world soon apparently.
My Kona has been registered and I collect it from dealer next week :-)
Mark this is my point, we simply don't know unless they tell us what's what. Theoretically the chemistry is different and thus 100% charging might be ok
And yes I sent Bjorn a few msgs on his livestream Kona run
I agree, letting the lipo rest at 100% is bad as well, it can inflate, I saw it once on one battery of my drone.
But they say to charge at 100% to make sure all cells gets charged at max level once a month, otherwhise over charge/discharge cycles, some cells could really deviate from other cells and voltage drop will be faster discharging closer to 20%, which would kill the weaker cells faster as well if if some drops to 0%..
The big difference here is that a car has a very sophisticated BMS that looks after the battery, a drone does not.
As a complete aside @Mark Jennings - This is the first I've heard of the Kona having an app for possible use in Europe. Any chance of some more info?
Maybe tgye rely on chargemap or develop their own based on tomtom app?
DoD (Depth of Discharge) matters a lot. If you charge the battery only by 10% every day, it last basically forever. Don't use the EV like an ICE car and rive the 'tank' all the way down before plugging in. Best use the battery between 60-80% all the time if your trips allow that. The higher you discharge and recharge the more 'cycle' you use. Charge to 100% only if you need the range for a trip. If you go below 20%SOC recharge as soon as possible to above 30% at least.
If you do rapid charging, stay below 1C of charging power, so for the 64kWh battery of the Kona you should not charge above 64kW. You can go higher but it reduces the health faster than charging slower.
One cycle is from 100%-0%. The battery will last probably around 800 full cycles before the health (SoH) drops below 80%. If you go for a DoD of 10% per day, this would result in around 0.02cycles only (don't quote me on this exact cycle, but it is around this figure).
A good source is this link here: batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries
You are correct about the reason for charging to 80% when using public charging stations. The best analogy I've read is to think of an empty battery like a large stadium with only a few people present. As the battery is charged, it's akin to people trickling in and moving around looking for a seat. At 80% enough people are now in the stadium that it's harder for more to get in - they are waiting longer for those inside to find a seat before they can come in and this is what we see as a slowing of the charge rate. My Kona can charge from "anything" to 80% in about 45 minutes on a DCFC. But just to add that extra 20% doubles the charge time! At a cost of 30 cents per minute, if I unplug at 80% it cost just $13.50, but if I insist on the full 100%, I'm looking at 1.5 hours for a whopping $27!
I have operated a Hyundai Ioniq for just over 18 months and have never used an en-route rapid charger. In all but one instances I have charged to 100% on a home PodPoint charger (the exception was using a 13amp home socket). I generally charge when range has diminished to about 40-50 miles but have occasionally taken the range down to about 20 miles. Apart from a period in January/February this year (when it was very cold) I get 150 miles predicted range on a 100% charge. I have kept a record of every charge, the mileage remaining and the mileage covered. I am getting virtually the same available range this summer as last, suggesting that there has been no battery degradation using my charging regime. I anticipate operating the Kona in the same way.
I don't anticipate using en-route rapid charging until someone removes the stupid prepayment, membership card and mobile phone nonesense, and replaces them with a proper payment mechanism with clearly declared pricing per unit of electricity.
davidarf polar network £7.80'ish a month. Most recharges are free with occasional charge of 4p per KWh (not a problem) use any Polar charger same rate. £7.8 for as much as you can eat is a bargain. If you have a Polar charger neat you. Any car with a liquid cooled battery pack will not he damaged charging to 80% on a rapid charger occasionally. Most batteries will benefit from the occasional kick charge it seems.
William armstrong, I am afraid I cannot see paying £7.80'ish per month for nothing as a bargain. I have managed my journeys without using the Polar network and would have, so far, paid out about £150 for nothing with this network. How much more per month would I have had to pay to the various networks to ensure access to any public charge point. I have yet to see any solid well reasoned argument why charge points cannot display the price per KWH and allow for payment by cash or payment card in the same way as we do for petrol and diesel. A further charge per minute after the charge has ended would also be reasonable to ensure availability of the charge point for the next user.
I won't be subscribing to any.
I wouldn't expect to see any symptom of degradation on your range yet. Hyundai probably has a headroom in the system that they'll use to hide any degradation for a few years. After say 4 years I'd anticipate seeing some slight degradation, maybe 2% per yr. Should be a bit better than the Leaf since Ioniq has cooling. But ultimately it's just chemistry and you will see degradation. On Rapid charging, Instavolt has a good offer: 50kW charging for 35p/kWh pay as you go. I've used them on Ioniq and Leaf and they're fast (much faster than Ecotricity).
As a guy who uses 18650 batteries in my headlamp twice per shift. Let me add my 2 cents worth. First test your headlamp down to dead, how much time did it take. In my case 4.5 hours per 18650 cell. The test was run that thing down to dead, over and over on the back and front of your hardhat for months and months. So the deal is a 18650 cell will lose 15 minutes of shine over that time in 4 years. Let me take a small educated guess, your electric car will lose the same amount. I charged them to 100% and drained them to 0 every time for years. Hmmmm i think this whole electric movement will be a good thing.
Interesting, I asked Hyundai the same question and would have got more info from the local Tesco's.
However some points.
50% to 80% is, in my opinion, is the perfect level.
Charging to 100% has little downside if not left at that charge for any length of time.
At least once a month it should be charged to 100% and left plugged in overnight to allow for battery balancing.
As the car uses power when off, leaving it flat for long periods could actually kill the battery.
The slower you charge a battery the less stress you put it under, I don't think anything up to 7kw is putting it to much stress, especially the Kona battery, as its 64kwh.
Read somewhere that occasional rapid charging is actually good for a battery.
Last but not least, EV batteries are a lot better than phone batteries.
William , read Marc van leeuwen comment. I think this is closest to best advice
william cox
Battery balancing is going on most of the time and you do not need to charge to 100% to balance. This is a myth.
No expert. But assuming you had to take the majority of the cells/packs to their maximum voltage to get a benchmark, then deal with the slower cells. So one of us is talking bollocks, and happy to admit it, if it's me. We learn by discussion.
william cox
Hi William. The cell balancing is all about equalising the cell voltages, not capacity. I assume that is what you meant. I know each car is different, but in the case of the leaf, as I understand it, it actively uses charge from cells and dumps it into others, but it also uses resistive discharge balancing which dumps charge into resistors to reduce the voltage of higher charge cells. I assume it would do this when the cells are almost balanced. Like you, I am no expert, but have read up, over the months to satisfy my curiosity.
That makes sense, Yes to the voltage, When a battery reaches its highest voltage, it's at it's highest capacity. And i'm talking about its rest voltage.
I drive a 2018 Chevrolet Bolt (60 kw/h battery) and the owners manual makes no reference to charge parameters beyond setting hilltop reserve mode to maximize regenerative braking if you live on a hill and would like to function with one pedal driving right away. It actually states “Keep the vehicle plugged in, even when fully charged, to keep the battery temperature ready for the next drive. This is important when outside temperatures are extremely hot or cold.” Further the manual defines those ranges as above 32 Celsius or below 0 Celsius. This would lead me to believe the battery management takes care of the extremes for you. Our garage was over 32 Celsius this summer at times and the battery cooling system starts itself up to cool it down. The only mention of depleting the battery relates to storing the car for over a month. If you are away for a month, leave it plugged in. If more than a month, drive it to a 30% charge level, leave it unplugged and place a trickle charger on the 12 volt battery. There is no mention either of battery degradation with rapid charging however it warns the battery cooling system will likely engage. Online at GM it states that plugging it in will be part of your daily routine. An 8 year 160,000 km battery warranty (replacement if degradation is more than 40% in that period and there is a warning, hopefully conservative, that the battery could degrade 10% and as much as 40% - time will tell). My takeaway in all this is to put your faith in the LG battery management system and plug it in to your hearts desire.
Thanks 170maa sounds sensible
They are offering a 8 year warranty based on full charging to 100 % so why worry. I agree that constantly using the rapid charger could shorten the long life of the battery but again you have a 8 year warranty. The question is how long are you planning to keep the car.
If the battery warranty is not pro rated, charge the battery within an inch of its life and see if you can get it down to 69% capacity the day before the warranty expires so you have a brand new pack in your 8 year old Kona. Baby the second battery pack and you should be good for 20 years total.
Hello Puzzle EV,
I am a technical expert for a major tech company. I will admit that I do not have knowledge or experience regarding EVs, but my experience and knowledge of lithium ion battery would lead me to believe that it doesn’t matter if you charge it everyday or once a week.
The advice that I give to everyone is that you should charge your smart phone every night irrespective of the percentage you have left, this way the device is ready for a whole days work and is less likely to run out throughout the day. This doesn’t have a negative effect on the lifespan of the battery because the device can manage the power itself and treacle charges once at 100% to avoid over charging and also because one charge cycle isn’t one charge but instead the amount of times a battery is fully charged and depleted. So if you used 10% charge and charged it back up to 100% everyday, it would take you ten days to complete one cycle.
With a smart phone you can lessen the amount of charge cycles a battery experiences in its life time by charging over night because it’ll use the mains power to update and back up instead of using battery power.
One of the biggest factors that can affect the lifespan of a battery is temperature, which is why very rapid charging isn’t recommended all the time. The higher the power used to charge the batteries, the more heat is created, which can cause long term damage to a battery or cause a chemical imbalance within the batteries chemistry. This naturally all depends of the battery chemical composition.
I hope that helps.
Aw some, thanks
Honestly, I think there is definitely some issues in this comment. Comparing phones and car batteries is problematic because of different chemistry. I've had a lot of phones and I always charged them overnight. I was always able to tell some difference in battery performance after about a year of usage. I changed my charging habits with my latest phone. I am trying to never charge it to 100% (I unplug at around 90%) and try to never let it drop below 10-15%. My current phone is now about a year old and the battery is just as good as on the first day!
Now I am not sure why that might be. Maybe the "battery management system" in the phone is better, maybe it's the change in my charging behavior. I like to believe that it is my change in how I charge the phone.
However, I like your (EV Puzzle) approach to the problem and myths about this topic and am totally on your page with how you are planning on keeping your battery healthy.
A couple thoughts: There is a company that is using Teslas to drive from LA to Las Vegas daily and they were using only quick chargers. They had the battery pack swapped once (or twice) by Tesla under warranty. Does it have to do with that? Maybe. I would like to think so.
It would be nice to have a definitive answer from Korea, though.
Hyundai are very secretive about the details of their batteries band BMS so sadly they don't share.
I've heard many early Teslas had their batteries swapped BUT slower charging is better for your battery generally I guess. UK 50kw CCS isn't quite Tesla speeds of charging however
A charging cycle is when you discharge below 20% or above 80%. You keep between these to numbers the battery is happy. Keeping a battery at 40% is the happiest state battery likes
The chemistry in vehicle batteries is substantially different from consumer LiPoly batteries in phones, laptops and drones/airsoft. Designed for the high discharge and charge rates, but with a lower Wh/kilo in comparison.
There are a few different chemistries used, all with proprietary mixes of anode/cathode and electrolyte to optimise performance/life.
From many posts, tests etc there appear to be some trends/themes/info that helps us to understand.
Dont leave the cells 100% charged for extended periods, or discharged , batteries need to be worked.
Charging from lower charge levels and high speed/acceleration will increase heat input to the battery.
Batteries are better at mid range temperatures, 10-50C is OK 15-40C is better.
BMS will limit charge and discharge rates for extremes of battery temperature (Rapidgate)
Charging to 100% generally allows the BMS to re-calibrate. Hence monthly or more.
Periodic Rapid charging is beneficial to electrolyte condition, and boosts SOH
Here's a few thoughts. First, the science of battery degradation is not something that is well known but the experts are hiding from you; rather the experts really know annoyingly little about what is going on precisely inside the cells, and which circumstances influence that most. A battery cell is not something one can look into, even in the lab. Also long duration, certainly an important factor, is hard to simulate in limited time experiments.
Second, though degradation is a fact of life and even the best of care will not avoid it entirely, the issue is not as important as it was once feared to be. If they are now giving 8-year warranties on batteries without extensive obligations to treat the batteries in specific ways, I take that to mean that they are pretty confident that over a wide range of use cases, only a very small percentage of batteries will actually degrade enough to make the warranty apply. Because that is how manufacturers determine the duration of their warranties in general.
Third, the "charge up to 100% once in a while" is a good rule for another reason than degradation. Charging up to 100% gives the BMS precious information about the individual cells that it cannot obtain while the SOC is in the middle ranges. Only when a cell is nearly full does the voltage give precise information of just how full it is; the BMS takes such charges as an opportunity to balance the cells (make sure each one holds the same charge, which is important when many of them are used in series), and also provides a calibration for the SOC (without ever touching the extreme values, the computed SOC starts drifting away from the actual SOC, As Bjørn illustrates in ruclips.net/video/v4FvBqXHbv0/видео.html).
Finally here are a few rules I try to follow personally. When leaving the car unused for a week or more, try to do so at around 50% (as duration based degradation appears to be related to high concentrations of ions on either cathode or anode). When ending a trip with low battery, try to get it above 20% again (granny charging) even if a full charge is not needed again soon. Only charge at night (necessarily to 100%, as the Leaf does not provide a timer setting to stop at a lower percentage) if I am sure to use the car the next day, and for a distance that it could not do without charging. Doing this at least once a week is normally not a problem, as I can do only about 150km without charging up (but right now during the vacation I think I haven't done it for about a month, as I've been using the solar panels' peaks to charge partially on some days).
All in all, I think that as long as you avoid certain extreme things, you really only should only worry about details if that makes you feel virtuous; there is very scant chance that there will every be a noticeable difference in battery health linked to the special care you gave it.
Marc van leeuwen best honest advice I think we could possibly get. Thank you so much for letting us know.
I also wondered, if like USB sticks they used some of the spare kWh not used to replace worn cells this make it look like no degradation but in fact it has degraded and you're just using some of the spare capacity it already had. If that makes sense.
Jesus that's a really good explanation!
@@EVPuzzle no that doesnt happen, as leaf spy shows the actual capacity not the smaller capacity with margins the car shows. The car bms will always allow the same amount of buffer
A leaf battery isn't likely to be how all batteries work, in fact I know this to be true. The leaf is a very old system now
Hi Nigel
First let me say I don't know definitively about preserving battery life other than expecting to lose about 3% capacity/year
When we bought the Leaf the sales rep suggested that once a month we should get it up to 100% using the granny charger not certain if that is for the BMS
On the 2018 leaf but you have a display which shows energy usage and regen in a dial format
White for energy being used then blue for regen
The regen part is ghosted blue segments and bright blue when active
Once you are nearing full charge the ghosted blue segments start to disappear leaving them grayed out showing that regen is limited (finally they all go grey at 100% showing no regen is possible)
The thing I'm trying to get to is that the least efficient area to operate the car in is fully charged thats my reason to charge to 80% rather than 100%
If at 80% , based on your driving, the GOM estimates 140 miles, it might look on the face of it that the other 20% will add another 28 miles of actual range and if you do charge to 100% the GOM will predict 168 or 170 miles
Once you drive off though you wont have regen at first and after that it gradually increases so the GOM estimate will start to readjust and predicted range will drop (usually)
John
I know it's recommended to charge the Zoe to 100% occasionally because some sort of cell balancing happens at around 100%. This might be what's going on with the Kona manual recommendation.
Interesting
seems reasonable.. cell balancing and calibration?
But remember B mode is ineffective if there’s no room in the battery.
Had my 30kwh leaf for 13 months now and at home have always charged to 100% on my 3kwh home charger. Charge couple of times a month on a rapid. Had my service at 20k miles . Not noticed any degradation at all. My commute is 66 miles a day return.
hi Paul, did you get battery condition reports at every service too? Just heard Nissan provide them to explain how well looked after it is... Or isn't.
@@EVPuzzle all I got was a sheet of paper with stars on telling me my SOH was 5 🌟 this was my first service. At 18.5k miles. I was expecting a more detailed report. I'm thinking of buying an OBD connector to monitor it myself. They said they did it in stars to simplify it for people. But I'm an engineer so I'm technically minded.
@@EVPuzzle are you on twitter or messenger I could send you a pic of the report.
Paul, email and Facebook links are at the bottom of the video descriptions.
facebook.com/Hyundai-Kona-Electric-EV-216339399093902/
I rapid charge sometimes 2 or 3 times in a 10 hour shift taxi driving. Only to 80% of course.
I am not sure even LG Chem know the answer. Partly because driving style and usage is so different driver to driver.
The Chemistry used is of course new and always improving. So no one really knows yet. By the time we do know the chemistry will have improved yet again.
William, awesome must've missed you run a BEV taxi. Good on ya, we need more
Kona manual mentioned that you have to charge at 100% at least once a month or more(probably to equalize all cells).
Better try not to discharge below 20% IMO.
Edit: you mention it at 8:36
I use lipo batteries on my remote control car for about 15 years, fantastic battery type.
After 80%, current decreases to avoid overvoltage of the battery, this is so called constant voltage charge.
Below this is constant current charge (max push of electron the charger can do).
Doing overvoltage would put the batteries on fire.
The same if you leave them at 0% charge, they can also catch fire.
My 2012 leaf has 10 battery health bars and I can get a max 40 miles was original max 73.
I know Ian Sampson 2013 leaf had a better battery and he D.C. Charged all the time with no problems with degradation . They say not to charge to 100 all the time or leave it at 100. I have been told to balace the battery ocassionly.
40 miles, yikes that's sounds close the warranty parameters
the rapid charger doesnt slow down at 80%, the car does because its programmed to. i assume its to preserve battery integrity but your point still stands. charging from 80-100% will take as long as 10-80% so in most cases it makes sense to charge to 80 and go - unless you need that extra 20% to get to the next charger or just want the buffer. 30% degradation would be awful. teslas with 200k miles are only in the 6-8% degradation range.
I don't drive my Kona EV every day. When I do, it's mostly in town so I don't have to recharge daily or sometimes not even weekly. Generally, I recharge when battery levels drop to 40%. When charging on my home Level II charger, I top up to 90%, unless I'm planning a road trip within the next day or so. Then I charge to 100%. When I do use a Level III charger -- which I try not to do unless I'm travelling -- of course I only top up to 80%.
I've been driving my Kona EV for well over two years now and have noted zero drop in battery performance. For me at least, this regimen seems to be working pretty well.
Hyundai definitely recommend avoiding the top SOC but have never clarified why. The fires potentially but maybe degradation. Other cars like my mini just don't car how often you charge to 100%
I have owned an Ioniq for 9 Months and have found tha tHyundai don't seem to trust its customers with information.
Lithium-polymer batteries are recommended to be charged to 3.7 volts per cell for storage and the owners manual page H6 states
"If the vehicle will not be in use for extended period of time. Charge the high voltage battery once every three months to prevent it from discharging.
Also if the charge amount is not enough immediately charge to full and store the vehicle.
This would suggest to me that the 28KW capacity is when the battery is charged to 100% and the cell voltages will be around 3.7 as specified for storage
Exactly. The to 100% disagrees with many experts or very knowledgeable persons advise. I'm less inclined to worry after all this research and info. It'll be fine
I have a 68 plate Hyundai Ioniq with approx 16000 mls on the clock. I bought the car in May this year with 13500 mls and it had two previous owners. Fully charged the vehicle battery was capable of 135 mls and I drove the car as I normally drive with a mixture of "Granny Charging" whilst at home and D.C when away from home. Up until the last Lock Down all had been fine and the battery re charged to 135 mls without a problem. I kept the battery in a mid range % state using the three pin "Granny Charger" as I only traveled locally. However the last time I fully charged at home the millage was only 128 mls.
A point to note that I do have solar panels fitted and in the summer the car charges faster with a lot more energy than the Grid supplies in the winter.
I think how you drive ,when and how much you charge; play an important part in battery management. Having watched different video's with Hyundai Ioniq's some with 150mls ( 42500 miles on the clock) and some with only 122 mls fully charged makes me think it's going
take a long time to figure it out.
I have now changed my driving style and switched off the Re-gen completely and coast as much as possible. It seems to work, with more miles being driven and less miles battery loss.
Hopefully when things get back to normal I will figure it out.
Best of luck. I find little difference in Regen or coasting but then again I adjust how I anticipate in the different modes. It's all good fun but there's an art to getting high efficiency and big Gom numbers. You've got to have the touch 😉
You can expect to see some degradation, yes. If you want to minimise it, keep away from 100% and 0%. It's just chemistry and there are two different degradation reactions that happen at each end. I take issue with Hyundai's advice to leave the car at 100% charge if leaving it idle by the way! Remember 100% on the dash isn't 100% on the battery, there's some headroom built in, and the BMS probably uses this to hide degradation for a few years on newer models like the Ioniq. For reference we're seeing around 2 to 3% degradation per year on the 2013 model Leaf, with some wide variation. We've collected data over on "speakev". DC charging might be thought of as a "bad thing" because of the higher temperatures. Good for power output, but not so good for health!
From what I know of LiIon batteries, better to keep battery topped up so it never deeply discharges and mostly stays between 50 and 80. And keeping batteries cool but not cold is best, so rapid charging might degrade battery faster IF it gets hot.
There's evidence the Kona and Niro have quite a bit of hidden capacity, so the 64kWh is really 70.
I guess the battery is "happiest" around 70 %. And that it is not the best for it to store it for long at very low level, and neither for very high level of charge. But if the battery is actually larger than 64 kw, then there should not be any problem charging it to 100 %. Thank you for great content within watchable time frames 👍
You're welcome Johnny, thanks for watching and contributing.
Martin left an interesting comment that cell balancing may occur at the 100% charge so it's something we would want to do and makes sense of the manuals comments.
The EV Puzzle I guess it is to make sure that you get the correct readings of the current state of remaining % of battery life. Perhaps doing so once a month or so would be more then enough.
In order to have preconditioning, whether that be in a warm climate or a cold climate would mean that you would have to plug it in. Anyway I always keep my mind plugged in to a maximum charge of 80%. I’m actually thinking of reducing that to 70% as I’m normally on a daily basis Only using 20% I can then adjust it when needed.
Hello. I drive a model 3 and I charge it WHENEVER I can. But never let it go to more than 270 miles of charge, it has a range of 310 or so. My opinion is that the rate of decline of the battery pack is only 1 to 2% a year. Maybe slightly less. Anyway, if I go someplace that has a public charger, I try to make use of that convenience, even if only for 30 minutes.
Great reading. Well We travel 85kms each way to work. We come home and plug in everyday. Were set to start charging @ 2300 hrs and wake up with a full charge each morning for the commute.
It will be interesting to see how the battery is over time. I thought with the thermo management there shouldnt be any issues.
Most people have mentioned 8 year / 160,000 kms warranty. Im sure ill see the mileage before the 8 years.
Well be commuting with the Kona for 2 1/2 more years
My experience with charging and battery SOC in a Renault Zoe 22kw. The car did 58000 miles charging at home or work from 30% to 100% almost everyday and lots of free rapid 43kwh charges for 5 years and when the car went back to Renault the Battery still had a 98% SOH,
That sounds really good. Problem is these health stats are from the manufacturer too. Hyundai reports 100% until it's below 70 then shows fault. You just never know. I'm so mistrusting 🤣
I think you have got the charging ideas about right. Unless you need to do so, I would say just keep the battery between 30% and 70%. You won't go far wrong with that.
Battery balancing is done most of the time and does not require full charge to do this.
The leaf will end it's charge at 100% with no additional Balancing at the end of charge. The charge current gradually tails off, and then stops the charge completely with no further power drawn from the socket.
You will not harm the battery charging to 100% and back to zero every so often. Just do not leave at the extremes for too long.
Batteries will store for a very long time at 40 - 50% charge.
Charge to 80% and down to 10% if it's standing for a long time then 50% and occasionally charge to 100% to balance the cells. Charging at a 7kw home charger is better than fast charging as this will add strain to the battery. Minimise the cycles if you can but at the end of the day drive it as you need to and not worry to much.
I had Nissan LEAF 2017 and saw its battery degrade via SoH, about 3% each year.. so after three years, it's got about 93% SoH... Now that I've got Kia Niro EV, I hope its SoH holds up better, similar to Kona Electric...
The idea that the warranty only applies if capacity falls below 70% within 8 years is pretty shocking to me and would stop me buying an ev at this stage. How can is be acceptable for an 8 year old ev to degrade from a 300 mile range to a 210 mile range (so even less usable in real world)?
Chris, but that an extreme case where it's at fault not an expected level. I'm confident very few if any will hit that level
Here in the USA, Hyundai states the battery warranty as "lifetime". So what does THAT really mean?
It'll fall to bits before the battery stops working
Perhaps Hyundai UK have a concern over negative PR if they help propagate information that you can only keep the battery between 20% and 80% for best battery life... even if this is factually correct.
I could see the ice loving press using it to say that, look, battery cars are rubbish. You can't charge it to 100% and the actual range is only 60% of the advertised range because it has to be between 20% and 80%.
Either that or my foil hat is malfunctioning 😉
Good conspiracy theory Martin. Hopefully we'll get something more concrete as some point
At a higher state of charge the current demand on the batteries is lower to provide the same KWh needed to accelerate etc. When I got my Mitsubishi phev the battery had only 88.4% original capacity. Hut in 3 years had only been charged 150 times. Now after 30k miles and over 600 recharges in 7 months my capacity is back up to 99.2% original capacity. This is a mix of rapid charges to 80% and slow charges from 25% to 100%
Several other high use Phev drivers are finding the same results to ABC always be charging.
No idea how this effects a fully lecie but works well on a PHEV which has a cooled battery pack ;)
That's great news . Reinvigorating the battery!
Don't know how you see the %, on my Leaf I use the Leafspy app.
After some 100% charges, but especially some QC and/or hard driving (and during winter), all numbers increase.
Is that because the battery is getting better? No, I highly doubt it. I rather think it's a matter of the BMW getting "more data".
I understand from others that the degradation in Tesla batteries is very low, so one would expect that to be the case with other manufacturers unless Tesla are way ahead in battery tech. So if 30% loss is expected to be right at the extreme end of likely loss, why be so conservative in the warranty? Why not 80% or 90%? 70% just gives me zero confidence that I’m buying something that, when I come to sell at four or five years old, will have a residual value that’s not hammered by range loss. I do wonder whether mass adoption still needs a further step up in battery technology, improving possible range loss, capacity and charging speed. Charging is a massive issue in the UK as so many people park on the road or in a parking space well away from their home. Keep up the good work, I really enjoy your videos and have found it very interesting following your ev journey!
I agree Chris, but actual results should be better over time which will breed confidence. Who believes manufacturers these days?
Tesla do have their own battery design but I bet it's similar
New to EVs having only had my Kona Electric since November 23. If the 20/80 rule should be adhered to then I feel manufacturers should be made to quote the vehicles range at 60%.
Definitely not a rule but some are more worried about battery Deg than others . The only rule I follow now is not leaving it below 15 percent when cold overnight otherwise or 100 percent for months at a time
I will charge my ev car to 💯% bmwi3.. starting today. Thanks mate
My leaf is 6 years old with 86% health. 2.3% per year. It only had 3 DC charges in its life it was also set at 80% from Japan as an import. I worked out the owner did around 20 mile trip each journey max, based on the number of slow charges. So it’s basically sat between 80% and 55% it’s whole life. 2.3 % sounds about right. I Charge it to 100% every Friday night for weekend use where sometimes we do 120km max. I figure it should be ok at that rate. Hope to squeeze another 5 years out of it, work days are only a 20 mile round trip :) even if it drops to 30% range i can still use it. I see lots of talk about long range however it’s a bad investment if u only use that range 20 times in its life. My old clunker ICE car can take care of the long trips. I figure 5 years from now EVs will be near petrol prices.
I find it funny how leaf owners count their degradation because they can see it and Hyundai owners don't get any at all...well they can't see it lol.
Need an annual full charge and trip in same conditions to prove it
Yep leafspy is my friend :) i can see the 2 miles or so a year in range :) I hope to grab a Kona in three years time when someone has done the honour of paying for the new car smell :) however, I suspect most people will hold onto them. I’ll probably go the 60kwh leaf as a Japanese import for 1/3 the cost of a three year old Kona. Mind you no warranty or service etc. I could grab a Kona, but I love a bargain :) I think there will be a huge amount of choice come three years and EV shops fitting old EVs with new long range packs.
Most in our group intend keeping the Kona
Batteries on evs dont use their whole capacity, it is normally something like 90%max, 10% min so as not to damage the battery. Having said that Tesla recommend charging at 20% to 70/80% to maximise the life, based on the data they have on their vehicles.
I think the cycles are there to give a general idea of the life based on average usage, on the regen braking the future is in using capacitors to absorb this charge as they effectively have unlimited cycles (some upto 1,000,000 cycles - way more than the life of the car) this is also to get higher regen rates and efficiency as the capacitors can charge more rapidly. I'm not sure how many, or if any vehicles use them for this at the moment.
The other info to add is vehicle to grid. They have found on the leaf that the slight discharge/recharge this produces can actually increase battery health.
I tried to find the true efficiency of regen on my Leaf, it seems to be around 90%. Tests have shown that you get lower consumption when holding a steady speed in hilly terrain (use regen) rather than gaining speed downhill. That tells me that there is no point in using a capasitor for regen and high output, and battery for everything else.
As for Tesla, se my respons to "Fil" further down.
The Leaf shows better numbers in Leafspy after hard driving, using QC, 100% charge and during winter. I really don't believe that it's because the battery actually gets better, but that the BMS gets more data.
It's the type of charging that make the difference low level trickle charging is the best, it long and slow so the car can thermally regulate the battery better. Therefore reducing any over charging and damage to the cells.
Totally agree. EVs prefer AC charging . Not always as efficient but better for the battery
To all those people who have a Kona on lease: please don't abuse your battery! Some poor sod like me wants to buy your car used when your lease ends. ❤
Charging to 100% once per month is so that the battery management system can balance charge each cell in the pack to exactly the same voltage. Charging to 100% every day is not good for the battery.
AC charging is recommended over DC charging simply because AC charging is always at a lower charge rate than DC charging and, since the heat produced in charging is proportional to the rate of charging, less heat is produced, and therefore less battery damage occurs when the battery is charged from AC.
Excessive heat over extended periods is what damages batteries, so anything that reduces that rate of heat produced while charging and heat produced when driving will be good for the battery.
On the 80/20 thing- it does keep the battery in it's "goldilocks " zone and it's also the zone where DC fast charging is at it's fastest, so it can optimise journey times.
This guy seems to know a thing or 2 about ev batteries ruclips.net/video/QRPze4f0gsQ/видео.html
Thanks Bruce
Although I’m also highly curious about the true answer, I have to keep reminding myself to relax and just charge the vehicle & use it how I want to. This is what they want for EV adoption for the average user clearly. Will continue to charge all my lithium-ion battery products (phone, Ioniq EV etc) to 80% and only to 100% when needed (or 1xmo) only for charging “rate” reasons and not battery care reasons. But I won’t obsess about it. It’s an additional worry that’s over kill especially for people only leasing Ev’s for 2-4 years. Batteries are only becoming cheaper, greener, & lighter- they can be replaced.
I'm glad you raised this because I'm no expert on these matters and I'm struggling to find something definitive. I've reached the conclusion that there are no tablets of stone out there on this but instead just good practice with no guarantees. Ultimately if your battery is covered you have something to fall back on. My wife quite rightly tells me not to get too preoccupied with it. I do have one question though. If, for some unknown reason, your battery degrades unusually quickly but remains above the 70% SoH, would the manufacturer be prepared to repair or replace it? Food for thought!
I have a Nissan Leaf. They told me it was better to use it until it was nearly empty before charging - so charging fewer times but longer charges each time.
David will will, "they"? Hopefully not the dealer.
Yes, it was the dealer. Why ‘hopefully not’?
David, dealers are renowned for knowing very little and have the least experience themselves. Unless they're quoting the manual, I wouldn't trust them on technical issues. A salesman isn't a technology expert and he'd be the last person I trusted given his motivation. Sadly, I'm pessimistic from experience
Thanks for the warning. When I say dealer I really mean the service department of the dealer, who'd just serviced it. I'd hoped they were collecting information about battery degradation while they were servicing their Leafs - but perhaps not. I shall be wary. Thanks again.
David, it's scary how little they do or know. The reality is more like they plug it in and the computer tells them if it's ok or not. No statistics they need to understand just a yes or no and replace or not.
Do they give you a battery condition report and highlight the good and bad for you? It'd be useful to have annual reports on the battery to check condition.
I sound like I'm on a mission to dis dealership staff but that's not the case, they're good people just not well informed it seems by the manufacturers. Computers are definitely replacing skill in the service team also. It took me 3 months to get a simple answer from Hyundai as to how they measure their battery checks which are made at service intervals. They eventually admitted the computer decided for them.
A charging cycle is a full cycle 0-100 I can do far more part cycles than full cycles e.g 30-60 batteries don't like been full or empty . However IF the manafacturer "hides" some of the battery it isn't really going to 100% anyway. Never leave a battery at 100%. One reason mobile phone batteries don't last 2 minutes is they are always fully charged 0-100
My idea is, if the accu is fallen under 40 % i would charge to 80% at home. Only if i have a long way to do, then i go to 100% short before, so i have always enough battery for my normal drivings at every time.
By the way, it seems i get a Kona in 5 weeks 🚘
And i will use sunny hours to charge with the wallbox app and the pv, as often as possible.
Greetings from Austria to you and your wonderful country 🇦🇹
I recognise you name from Bjorns live stream on the marathon Kona hypermile attempt. We all were shocked when he mistakenly banned you (briefly) His sleep depravation was getting to him! :-)
I'm going to attempt a 1000km hypermile attempt with my Kona but I will be having more power naps than Bjorn!!
but what about the cold freezing temperatures? Wouldn't that factor in or change the suggested "regime" of the charge ? I think low freezing temperatures Should dictate to what level the battery should be kept at. and the same for High summer temperatures... It should dictate or at least it should be taken into consideration as to the level of charging 90% or more...
Hi EV Puzzle, it is a bit of a nightmare deciding how and when to charge. You might want to look at todays EV News daily they mention 2016 Tesla used in a shuttle service with hundreds of thousands of miles rapid charged 4 times a DAY showing only 12% degradation.
Ian Sampson who i followed before getting my 14reg 24kwh leaf over 2yrs ago has also done some vlogs on bar loss. When he changed his 13 reg leaf recently it had over 40k miles and still had all 12 bars and he charged at home every night up to 100%.
My own experience is i lost one bar at 14K and now at 22k no further losses and range still 90 miles with eco on and aircon off in summer when i charge to 100% a couple of times a month. I think the age of the battery might also be a factor. I hope that i do not lose any more bars before i change my car to a longer range one with battery management in a couple of years but who knows as there are chemical reactions going on all the time. There will be some interesting battery advancements in the next couple of years and would not be surprised if they found a way to increase the range of older Evs. I get 5 miles per kwh in summer and if they came up with a 10kwh battery about the size of a medium suitcase giving me an extra 50 miles i would quite happily give up the boot space for it.
Looking forward to your vlogs about the Kona. Would be interested to know if you can get 2 sets of golf clubs and trolleys in the back with seats down (this is easy to do in my leaf) as i am also retired so can play more these days. Thanks Tom
Thanks Tom
Treat it the same as the li ion in your phone, ie keep it between 80 and 20 where you can. The warranty will only cover you if you lose more than 30%
Very good, read the manual and have same thoughts.Thanks!
Adding to what Mark Jennings has said, I also use Lithium Polymer batteries for model aircraft use. If you are off for a day's flying, charge up and use straight away. If you are not going to fly for a while, 'charge' to a safe state, which with modern LiPo chargers means around 30% (please confirm Mark). These chargers actually have a 'safe mode' state option. I wonder whether any of the car chargers would incorporate such an option.
Very interesting video as always.
p.s. Can you get Sue to think about a Renault Zoe as a Nissan Juke? May look a little different, but many people have bought them (I am not amongst them).
This isn't a question that can be universally answered for all EV's because of the range of battery chemistries and engineering integration. I like GM's engineering solution in the Volt because NMC chemistry, liquid cooling, battery reserve and 15 - 95 % charging cycle makes it impervious to user decisions. It just lasts. I don't have enough information on the Kona battery yet. Who makes it? What's the chemistry? How has it been integrated into the vehicle? What's the allowed charge / discharge range? What's the operating temperature range?
Check out Plug life television, this guy knows about batteries.
Cheers mate
Hi, we own our Kona since Feb. 20th and have driven it with lot pleshure.
Mostly fast chartching once a week and driven between 15 t
and 50 km a day.
For the first long trip we fully charged it and had 410 km by start. Driving normaly 120km/h the Battery troped rather quikly and After about 270 Km we had only 40km left / 11 % . Do we have to be concernd?
Keep on your interessting Infos. Best wishes from Heiri, Zürich, Switzerland
Weather and hills make a huge difference. I trust the km/kWh number X 64
Technically it is all DC charging I think. The on board charger just converted AC to DC to charge the battery. Rapid charging is just DC direct as I understand it.
Here's a question for you Nigel. Is the 64kWh Kona capable of being charged at 100kWh (or thereabouts) if it had a charger capable of giving it that supply? I believe it would have to be at least 350v and at least 300 amps. I can't find detailed specs about this anywhere.
Alan. No, I beleive it's limited to about 71kw. Confusing marketing though keeps mentioning 100kw chargers.
Thanks. Not that it matters at the moment as there are only 50kWh chargers available anyway. Just interested.
I've been thinking about getting an EV for quite a while, but , if my missus was to read all these comments (unlikely), then we will be getting a petrol VW T-Roc.
There is a video from early 2023 (link below) from Hyundai USA, where they recommend not allowing the battery going under 20% frequently and charging it more often, every 2 to 3 days, to maintain the battery topped off and not reaching under 20% to conserve battery. They also mention to avoid constantly parking the vehicle under the sun. Vídeo can be seen here:
ruclips.net/video/t9bQ6OnyWtk/видео.htmlsi=emOz8bc9fnHu_Nwo
Maybe we shouldn't worry about degradation so much.
Our feb 2020 Kona electric 64kWh has 110.000 kms on the clock. First two years it was charged from 60% to 100% every weekday. After that, until now once or twice a week from whatever state of charge to 100%.
Did a reading on Car Scanner today and State of Health is still 100%.
No it won't kill your battery to go below 20 and above 80, if so 20 would be 0% and 80% would be 100%. If not, there would be PLENTY of Leaf's out there with dead batteries... My -13 Leaf charges to max 4.12-4.13 V pr. cell. On the top of my mind, a fully charged cell is rated at around 4.2-4.3 V, so actually 100% isn't 100%, but maby 80? And at 0% there's still more than high enough voltage to keep it far from dead. So I guess 0% already is 20%.
So really, I wouldn't worry to much about it, they are made quite foolproof.
But, it's said it's ideal to keep it within 40-60% all the time, exept a few times charge to 100 and discharge near zero, to "relearn" the BMS. As far as I've heard, charging 40-60% 5 times gives far less degredation than 1 time 0-100%..
Personally, with a Kona and your estemated 10% pr day use, I'd set chargelimiter to 80, drive down to 40-50%, then recharge. Once a while to 100%, especially before a long journey.
There's an old saying in the EV world, charge when you can, not when you have to.. That is very true with short-range cars as the old Leaf. But with the Kona you really don't have that problem any more.. But no matter how you twist and turn, it's a car ment to be used. Suddenly you have to do a longer or an extra trip, then I would be much better off with keeping it at higher %.
As for degredation, my Leaf with 50' km has around 10% degredation I believe. It's a bit hard to say as they've changed software in the car, the Leafspyapp has gotten updates so the data has changed.. Anyways, the Kona has around 3x the batterysize, so I guess it's fair to say it would have 1/3 of the degredation as you would get 1/3 the number of cycles. It will not surprise me if the battery in my Leaf lives as long as the car, and the Kona should be much better of.
Rayner, it so rare to hear a Leaf owner talk so honestly about the Kona. Thank you
The Leaf (old and new) is a great car, but by all means, no point in upselling it versus another great EV :)
It is really unclear. On the charge to 100% thing... They worded that really vaguely but I think that means it's good to occasionally charge to 100%. If they meant to go to 100% all the time they would not have mentioned "once a month". They'd just say charge to 100% all the time.
I now know it's actually essential to balance the cells and allow recalibration of SOC
Do you know about the Torque App?
Yes but can't be bothered fiddling with its setup. I will one day
@@EVPuzzle Please, let me know. I coded my BMW 328i using Bimmercode.
This is one of the failings of many ev, charging by dc appears to be bad for the battery , most ev have fast charging by dc, otherwise you will be restricted to home slow ac charging and on longer journeys you will be degrading you battery by charging rapidly more than once , seems a bit concerning , ie rapidgate and the new leaf . One advantage in the longer range zoe , no dc problems 43 ac down to 3kw . Even then I tend not to fully charge or drop below 25% with 22kwh pension, larger battery seems straight forward but obviously quicker fast ac charging would be advantage but no sign of that happening , seems dc , ccs likely future or Tesla dc . Chademo looks dead in the water , but onboard 7kw ac just a bit slow , on board ac 22kw as Tesla used to have would be compromise if 2 plug solution the norm in other ev
If I charge the Tesla to 100% too many times I get a warning on the screen to stop doing it
Really! Interesting for sure
But the Tesla manages the battery quite different from other cars as I understand.
100% on my -13 Leaf is far from 100%, cellvoltage at 4.12-4.13 V, rated fully charged is around 4.2-4.3 V I think.
I assume 100% on the Tesla will be the same as "range mode" or whatever Mercedes calls it. Not knowing the cellvoltage, and the differences, I will assume that around 80-90% on a Tesla is equivalent to 100% on the old Leaf.
In other words, other cars play it safe, while Tesla gives you the ability to actually use the full battery when you really need it.
do your kona front wheel drive, wear out your tires fast
Nexen tyres are really hard so NO but if you wheel spin a lot of course they will. Hard usage will wear them more but standard nexen Tyres are really hard wearing
What???? I’ve never heard of this I charge to 100% sometimes and I’ve actually gotten more range up to 280 on my Hyundai Kona Electric when it’s suppose to get 258 lol
Look after your 🔋
I really don’t appreciate the secrecy of companies that make EV/hybrid cars to protect their secrets. They need to help the consumer with key details to prolong the life of the vehicle “Including the BATTERY” this video is a good example of how consumers don’t have any clue about how to extend the battery life and use the vehicle as intended. Please open up on info we can’t mind read the battery chemistry and endurance.
haha try rapid charging a leaf multiple times with no thermal management :-( Kia ahead of Nissan here and I have a Leaf
Yes a name change is good if the Kona is the mainstay for the channel. I think you'll get better following
Interesting revisiting these videos. I’d suggest as we move to mass adoption there will be less worrying about these things and drivers will just charge them and use them……..which I’ve been doing for 9 years in EVs.
Those that lease definitely will but those that own long term will care for them as best they can I'm sure.
I've found my attitude has shifted somewhat since owning a Mini Electric
@@EVPuzzle new car ownership I probably agree, but as they move into used car territory…….well people don’t do oil changes or service used ICE as they should 🤔
If you want an expert opinion just look here. ruclips.net/video/QRPze4f0gsQ/видео.html Euan is an Electro chemist with over a decades worth of experience with EVs and EV batteries. 80/20 is only relevant for rapid charging and more to do with heat at the low end and the fact it gets so slow over 80. Staying above 20 will help a bit but again more down to the heat at low SOC. You need to charge to 100% fairly regularily to properly balance the pack. Not doing this will eventually lead to cells becoming badly out of balance dragging the rest of the pack down with them.
Also occasional rapid charging is good for the battery not bad. Look at the example of the Leaf taxi that done 170000 miles in nothing but rapids and only lost 2 battery bars.
The best research I have seen so far has been done by Battery University:
batteryuniversity.com/index.php/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries
And they have done the tests you are asking about.
You will get about 10.000 cycles before your battery degrades 15% if you do 25%-75% charging. So if you would charge twice per week (every 3,5 days on average), you could charge 10.000 / 365 * 3,5 = 96 years.
Or something in the range of 30.000 cycles if you charge only 10% each time. That number is actually an extrapolation because nobody had the time to make so many tests by charging once per day, because this would mean 30.000 / 365 = 82 years. Even by doing 10 cycles per day, this is 8 years of testing.
Of course these numbers are theoretical. Actually your battery will have lower capacity just by ageing. A process you cannot change. You can slow it down if you could keep the battery between 0°C and 20°C, but a few degrees outside that range won't do serious harm either.
If I summarize, you can do pretty much anything within 25% and 75% SOC.
And reasonable battery temperatures under 30°C, but this is something what the thermal management in your car should care for.
Every charging cycle slightly misalignes the BMS, it may not exactly know where 0% and 100% is, therefore about every hundred cycles it is recommended to do a 100% - 0% - 100% to let it learn where the boundaries are. I think there are some videos about this on the net, explaining details.
So, to come to an conclusion: if possible, you could set your top state of charge to 70 or 75% and charge whenever you want, 1, 2 or 3 times per week. If I were in your place, I'd do it twice.
An then the battery alignment once or twice per year, maybe in spring and autumn.
Do well !
80 percent if dc fast charger is used
Perhaps it’s time for KONA spy?
I've seen someone collecting data from customs for the Ioniq. It'll come soon once the data values are understood. Hyundai should be open as it would help well the car if we could see more data and truth
Ask LG Chem
Wow Hyundai NZ just confirmed the battery warranty on my 64Kwh Kona will be 10 years and unlimited KM's. Beat that Tesla! (Why is Hyundai UK different? you need to check on that) heres a link to warranty facebook.com/KonaElectric/
And it will be at my door in only 4 days from now!!
Only listen to science. batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries
I think idiots wrote the manual. Unlike Lead acid, nickel cadmium, etc, li-ion batteries have no special charging requirements but can be damaged by over charging and excessive discharging. They are also best stored at 30% charge.
Edit: There is a chart showing that it is optimal to charge to 60-65% but that assumes 100% is 4.2V, and EV batteries are probably designed with 100% being near 3.9V because that's optimal, and EV batteries focus on long life:
batteryuniversity.com/index.php/learn/article/bu_808b_what_causes_li_ion_to_die
So maybe it doesn't make a big difference. 80%-20% is a good rule of thumb but it must depend on the battery and what the manufacturer calls 100% and 0%. If the manufacturer doesn't give information, then I guess we will never know.
You should definitely look at the BMW Mini manual. It encourages 100% charging frequently leaving car not just at 100% but plugged in to keep topping up. The reason for saying this can only be fear of greater degradation at very low SOC ???
@@EVPuzzle I just remembered that some things like cell phones recommend fully cycling the battery a few times when newly manufactured because the capacity will increase by a few percent after a dozen or so charges. Also there are a lot of different types of lithium batteries and EV batteries are unique and I don't know a lot about them. It seems unlikely multiple manuals for expensive cars were written carelessly and I might be another ignorant know it all. My research will continue. But many comments sound like they did their own research in their daily life and have some hard data. Mainly leaf owners. I remember being curious about those. I don't know why I'm curious when I don't think an EV is practical for me right now. Maybe a hybrid.
No no no don't go Hybrid all that extra tech and negligible benefit, just wait and go fully Electric as soon as you can. You won't regret it
@@EVPuzzle Long term that probably makes sense. But I was thinking of an old prius. It's a small investment (as little as $3000 if you are american) and they are extremely reliable and long range. Unfortunately I have other considerations and probably will pick something more conventional but cheap. I'll do the math and won't make a careless decision.
My advice is drive whatever is the cheapest overall, save your money and buy the EV that works for you. If Prius is the cheapest stop gap then so be it. . Depends on your mileage I suppose as to where your costs are.
The only myth is the word electricity . I think of heat only, the charger is a compressor of heat , with associated stresses of compressing and decompressing something it subject's it to mechanical stress.
I thinking that working at lower charges and more frequent charges probably has less stress?
There again Iam only a plumber ?
Ask LG
Caution to everyone, as an qualified battèry experts I must warn everyone considering buying ev cars,..... seriously consìder battery degradation which is in average %1.5 a year.
%1.5 a year equates to whooping %7.5 in 5 years....that literally means that you got to change the battery and pay £5000., or more for a new battery.
Just bear that in mind and carefully workout all this before plunging into uncharted territory.
With advent of new technology this has been greatly improved though. Thanks
Definitely won't buy a battery you worked on then. Which company is that? That is alarmingly bad . Haven't seen that sort of degradation since my first Smart Phone.
PS what car are you driving ?
Nonsense..