Article on batteries from another thread

The 2008 Prius we owned, now being driven by my son, is over 10 years old and pushing close to 200,000 miles. From what we can tell the battery is just as good today as it was on day one.
 
Richard_arch74 said:
Just wanted to make sure you all noticed this.
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Thanks for posting this! I hadn't noticed it in any other thread.

That goes into some detail about a rather confusing subject about which I've often posted at length. If you read the whole thing, I think you'll come away with a better understanding than any other essay I've seen on the subject, including my own. In fact, I learned a few things myself!

But even that doesn't cover everything. There's a current article at InsideEVs News ("Tesla’s New Stance On Charging Habits + Elon Responds") that says a Tesla Model 3 battery pack needs to be charged to 100% at least once every 3 months or so, to prevent what the Clean Technica article calls the "virtual battery"* from being improperly downgraded, due to what appears (at least to me) to be a calibration issue with the pack's BMS (Battery Management System).

So, altho li-ion battery cells don't suffer from any "memory effect", it appears that at least in some BEVs, the BMS's calibration may suffer from something similar to a memory effect.

Now, whether or not this is any way relevant to the Clarity PHEV, or whether it even applies to Tesla's other models, I have no idea. This is the first I've seen of anything along that line officially from Tesla, so my guess is it applies only to the Model 3... but that's just a guess on my part.

*that is, the usable battery capacity as distinct from the full battery capacity
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Ray B said:
Dude, you had several posts... Great EV Battery article - good advice

lol - just teasing. :p
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I plead guilty to, sometimes, responding to individual posts, rather than reading an entire thread from the beginning and following the link to the article referenced in the OP. ;)

In this case, I really should have read the entire thing! I could have saved myself several lengthy posts by just linking to, or referring to, that excellent article. It's bookmarked now!
:)
 
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jdonalds said:
The 2008 Prius we owned, now being driven by my son, is over 10 years old and pushing close to 200,000 miles. From what we can tell the battery is just as good today as it was on day one.
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I believe the 2008 Prius used a NIMH (Nickle metal hydride) battery and not a LI (Lithium Ion). The article include in this post only applies to LI.
 
Richard_arch74 said:
Props to @RichL for posting this interesting article on battery life.

The Secret Life Of An EV Battery - CleanTechnica

Just wanted to make sure you all noticed this.

Thanks for the article. This and all others (including academic articles) show the dramatic effects of shallow charges and discharges on battery longevity. In other words, you can extend more than five times the number of miles from the battery simply by never charging fully and never fully fully discharging. In my case, because I run multiple short errands during the day, I only use 10 - 20% of the battery each run and then I add back that amount, keeping the charge at or below 80%. I fully charge once every couple of weeks or so when I have a longer trip. That, as another poster pointed out, is needed to balance the cells. Even if you commute 50 miles a day, there's no need to fully charge and deplete. You can charge to 80%, use EV in town and switch to HV when you get on the highway. Using this approach, you can have half your miles in EV without coming close to depleting the battery (slow speeds are very efficient for the battery) and extend the battery longevity to near the max. PHEVs are not meant to be driven as pure EVs. That's why most have such short ranges. If people insist on pushing the batteries to the max (full charges and full discharges), they will degrade faster and you will be unhappy with the reduced range shortly like this guy:



He drives his Outlander PHEV in a way that's harmful to the battery, charging full and discharging fully every day. The Outlander has a small battery and a 22 mile range. It was never meant to be driven as a pure EV. He blames Mitsubishi but it's his own fault for the amount of battery degradation, which really isn't bad considering how he drives the car. Yes, you have a long warranty on the traction battery but it needs to degrade quite a lot before Honda will service it.
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