How does this square with the often quoted battery balancing between 99 and 100%? Surely this is very important?

Well i’ve defo had ‘experiences’ with most of the mentioned topics in this video…

* someone else unplugged my car mid charge cycle (Nissan LEAF on my 7 day test drive and not my Zoe as you cant unplug that without the keycard)

* A taxi firm uses the heston M4 chargers as their permanent charging base with the BYD e6 cars which have a massive 75 kWh battery. the car plus 3 of his pals were hogging the single AC/DC charge point. i asked politely if i could charge for 20mins and be on my way, only to be told “this is our charge point f*** off”

* A BMW i3 left his car plugged in (and not charging at a single AC/DC charger) for over an hour – while i was there. not sure how long he had been there before i got there…

* At least 1 out of 10 visits to an Ecotricity Ac/DC charger i find the screen left on “anonmoly” which is basically the last person not being bothered to follow the correct steps to stop the charge. this means a nice call to Ecotricity for them to reset the machine… waste of 5 mins!

* ICE car in EV space – no more said. its a regular issue and there is no enforcement at all from the owners…

* Members of public pulling/prodding the cable and charge points… 🙁

So I met an interesting man at Toddington Services this evening who was charging his Tesla who has a company involved with battery testing ie. electric and regular cars.

He has tested all the batteries going and suggests we charge to 80% regularly and 100% when you want to or when you need to so long as you drive it there are then and don’t leave it fully charged and then sitting about for more than a few hours. That depletes the battery capacity and causes harm (not technical speak but I am conveying the sense of what he said)…he mentioned half life etc.

Hope that makes sense. Essentially he said use it and down’t worry about it but your battery will go on longer and you’ll have better capacity if you charge to 80% or 100% if you use it.

The Nissan encourages you to charge to 80% normally.

+

… Click of the power button. … shot of dash board and battery ‘full’ showing 100 mile range. shot of serene driver glancing at it as he selects drive, not quite a smile but a shot of his square shaped jaw held just-so with a glint of satisfaction in his eye. just enough to present an aura of supreme confidence….

Thank you for the hint…

Since my battery is due for renewal, I paid a visit today to my dealer, and it seems that Renault is slowly changing their policy; Its still early in the negotiating process, but they might sell me the battery under certain conditions. (nothing for sure, but theres a small chance…)

They also confirm that they are probably moving in the same direction with the zoe.

Great blog, I was inspired to get a solar array too. Months after buying my renault I went with 14 LG panels at 300w each and enphase micro inverters because it lasts longer… Hopefully on a good day I can use 3kw while 4kw is grid powered (soz)…
Still not bad and it was priced at 8 grand but I added a extra panel for a battery storage project(plus it now covers the roof in stead of leaving a blank spot). Which powers my entertainment system and gaming computer… I’ll probably make a video about it later on…
Anyway thanks for sharing…

There have been dozens of ‘battery breakthroughs’ since the current new gen of EVs started hitting the streets. Reality is that Li batteries are a mature market and any improvements are going to be teeny incremental ones. After making literally billions, possibly trillions, of Li cells you’d have though it’d have dawned on someone so far to try different electrode materials.

Good luck to them, and I am sure improvement are possible. But this isn’t ‘EV news’ for another 10 years. Sorry to disappoint.

Incidentally, there are no ‘anodes’ or ‘cathodes’ in rechargeable cells. The ‘anode’ in discharging is the ‘cathode’ in charging. For primary cells, the ‘anode’ is the -ve terminal.

An ‘anode’ is the terminal of a device into which conventional positive charge flows. As a cell is the emitter of the positive charge, it only ‘enters’ the battery on its return, thus the -ve terminal. When charging, positive charge enters the +ve terminal, and in that situation it is then the ‘anode’.

Conclusion – any journalist who discusses anodes and cathodes for secondary batteries probably doesn’t understand batteries!

I noticed this was asked on ze forums, I figure I might as well add my response here too in case any other visitors here are also thinking the same question:-

I think you are pushing the range at 85 miles. You will be OK in summer, unless you aim to drive assertively at full motorway speeds, it’s raining, and/or you find your battery health deteriorating in a few years to come.

In winter, you will be on the ragged edge of its range, and it won’t make it after a few years of range degradation, though what that actually is, and how quickly it happens, remains an unknown for the moment. You really want to start asking your employer where you can get a top-up of your battery. You won’t need that much to get home, but you may find you need a few extra kWh to be ‘safe’.

In regards getting held up on the motorway, this is the least of your issues. Your car works at its most efficient when it is driving slowly in traffic, whether stop/start or just slow. In fact, if you find you have range issues, you’ll have to pretend like you are in slow traffic to get further!

What can be said is that if you can make the car work for you on that trip, and I am sure you can but you may well have to find yourself driving along with the trucks to do that, then you’ll save a pile of money on fuel costs. The bigger your commute you can practically achieve, it follows the more you save.

Perhaps contrary to the other responses, personally I would be comfortable with that range expectation, but I would know that I will have to keep the speed quite low when the range-impacting issues (mainly – winter!) come to bite. I’m happy pottering along a motorway at 50mph when I need to to extend the effective range, but others have concerns that the practice is in some way dangerous.