Assessing the condition of the battery on a used EV

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Zbzz

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Hi! Noob question :)

I'm looking to buy a used EV but I find it hard to get information on the battery condition of used EVs for sale.

How would you check the actual condition of a vehicle's battery before purchasing it, to make sure that the range isn't severely impaired?

Thanks in advance!
 
What you're looking for is the state of health.

Different EVs have different methods of getting this information out. E.g. leafspy app for Nissan Leafs.
 
I think that a Chevy Bolt is new enough so that the battery should be OK, and should be under warranty anyway. You could look at displayed miles of range on a full charge, but this number depends so much on driving habits and conditions that it doesn't tell you much. That's what we looked at when we bought our used Spark EV, not knowing any better. The battery is fine, and would be covered as a warranty item if it weren't, but this was not the best approach to determine condition.

A better way is to have the car fully charged, then driven to drain the battery a fair amount. If you go to the right energy display you can see the kWh used and percent of battery used, and from these calculate battery capacity.

That still is somewhat rough, but I might be OK with it if buying. The most accurate way that I know of is to get an OBD2 bluetooth adapter and use it with the Torque Pro app. I bought the OBD2 adapter, but haven't gotten around to installing the app or really looking into it. I think it might be a little involved. You could ask the question on the chevybolt.org forum, or maybe there's something in the GM section of this forum.
 
P.S. to my last reply. In the second paragraph, I have to emphasize that the car must have been fully charged before drawing down the battery. A partial charge will mess up the numbers. And this is going off a Spark EV, but I believe that a Bolt is the same.
 
When I bought my Leaf from Nissan they also gave me battery report (not as detailed as what you get with LeafSpyPro, but better than nothing).

Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk
 
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