1,036 km (644 miles) on a single charge under China’s CLTC testing standard.
Does anyone know how realistic this range is? You can get some absurd range from a vehicle if you’re driving on a closed course at 60kmh with no air conditioning or entertainment.
The CLTC testing accounts for the country’s higher congestion levels with more frequent stop-and-go and lower speed limits, which lead to increased low-speed driving and longer idling times that benefits electric vehicles.
Right. Open road should be more around 770Km. I have a BYD Han 2023 that has a claimed range of 550Km, and I get just about 420Km realistically, at a steady 110Km/h with a few bursts of up to 150Km/h to get away from idiots doing 80 on a 100 (or just to show off the torque to other types of idiots like BMW and some Tesla drivers 😏). I do still get a bit over the claimed 550 if I don’t leave the city and drive as if I was afraid of tickets.
I can attest that the blade battery doesn’t seem to care if you take it all the way to 100% or drop it as low as 5% regularly. I’ve had my car for over 3 years now, and the battery degradation has been negligible. I’ve lost 1% over all this time, and both our cars (BYD HAN and Tang) are consistently allowed to drop under 10% before we decide to go charge them back to 100%. Granted, we live in the Caribbean, so we don’t have to deal with cold weather ever.
Never heard the “above 80%” thing. I’m pretty sure you’re wrong about this. With lead-acid batteries, this was optimal. I’m pretty confident that lithium ion batteries it’s best to keep the charge as high as possible. Ideally you’d only ever use it fully charged. It’s health is harmed by draining it low/fully.
I don’t own an EV, but I know enough about it that I’m pretty sure this is the case. You should look it up for your vehicle though. This advice also applies to phones and other lithium ion batteries too. Lead-acid was damaged by keeping the charge high, but lithium ion is damaged when low, and almost all devices are lithium ion now.
Lead acid batteries like to be kept fully charged all the time and don’t like to be discharged below 50% state of charge.
Lithium batteries like to be kept around half charged. They degrade quicker when kept at a high or low state of charge. Running lithium batteries from 20-80% does extend the lifespan, but charging to 100% is fine when you need to go on a longer trip. Just don’t keep it at 100% for long periods of time.
I think the BYD blade batteries can go down to 20% and up to 100% weekly. Though tbh I probably keep mine too high, I should lower it a bit closer to 80%…
Lithium ion batteries have a sweet spot of around 60 to 80 percent charge where very little wear takes place to charge or discharge. If you could keep it to just that 20-30 percent usage in that range it would pretty much last ten thousand cycles.
Charging to 100 or discharging below 50-60 percent accelerates the wear on the battery, but it is still much better than the wear rate on lead acid batteries that are cycled in a similar manner.
Expect CLTC to be advertising the best possible range.
There’s a ceramic battery hitting the market that has a marginally higher density and nothing is stopping them from adding more batteries. There’s also a new hub-motor concept that has a lot less losses, but they’re not car sized yet.
Getting to 644 would be as easy as throwing more batteries at it, but i’d expect those numbers to come down a bit, or the price to be much higher.
Adding more batteries increases the weight, though, which in turn makes the motors work harder, and therefore makes them use more energy to do the same thing.
That’s not that big of a deal for long-range trips, on which you typically don’t have to accelarate often.
Keeping the car going at a certain speed depends on several types of resistance, most importantly air resistance, but not really on weight.
More weight plays a bigger role for energy consumption in urban ares, where the weight needs to be accelerated more often than on the highway, the mileage per kWh is yet typically higher than on the highway due to the lower speed and less air resistance.
What I’m trying to say: I’d pick the bigger battery any time over the smaller one, if the price is reasonable.
EVs are already heavy. The weight from some additional batteries don’t play a big role.
Also, with breaking recovering energy, this negates some of the issues too. The inertia is used to recharge the batteries, so the losses are from friction and heat losses. Obviously lighter is better, but a lot of the issues of weight on efficiency can be reduced. Weight is bad for safety though, so there is that to consider.
It sure does. But we have to consider that recharging is less efficient than not spending the energy on acceleration in the first place, so heavier EVs are worse off than lighter ones; it’s not only losses from friction and heat losses - those come on top.
And you’re spot-on with the danger that comes from weight; being in an accident with a lot of kinetic energy that needs to be absorbed is not great.
Frequent acceleration/deceleration driving like city driving is also significantly more efficient in EVs because of regenerative braking. ICE just lose all that energy they spent accelerating when the have to stop 500m later, which destroys their efficiency.
I was comparing EVs with different weight and not comparing EVs with ICE vehicles, though.
And in that case the heavier EVs are less efficient than more leightweight versions even with regenerative breaking, because the process of accelerating and breaking cant’ regenerate all energy that was spent for accelerating.
Does anyone know how realistic this range is? You can get some absurd range from a vehicle if you’re driving on a closed course at 60kmh with no air conditioning or entertainment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Light-Duty_Vehicle_Test_Cycle
According to wiki
CTLC 509 km (316 mi)
EPA 390 km (242 mi)
So yeah take a solid 25%+ off
Right, so you’re not getting anywhere near that on the open road.
Right. Open road should be more around 770Km. I have a BYD Han 2023 that has a claimed range of 550Km, and I get just about 420Km realistically, at a steady 110Km/h with a few bursts of up to 150Km/h to get away from idiots doing 80 on a 100 (or just to show off the torque to other types of idiots like BMW and some Tesla drivers 😏). I do still get a bit over the claimed 550 if I don’t leave the city and drive as if I was afraid of tickets.
Came across this which I’ve not validated but does seem to make sense at a glance: Comparison of WLTP and CLTC
Based on that the WLTP range would be 828-900km (515-560 miles).
Real world, 6-700km at a guess?
Sounds about right. My experience in range difference is very similar.
The WLTP is pretty accurate to the actual range I get on my BYD.
Yeah, the EV range is frustrating.
270 miles? Pretty good. Except you shouldn’t drive it below 20% or above 80%, so really the range is like 170. Cold winter? Now it’s like 75.
No regrets on our EV, but I would feel a whole more more comfortable with 2x the capacity.
Too bad we can’t buy BYD here.
I can attest that the blade battery doesn’t seem to care if you take it all the way to 100% or drop it as low as 5% regularly. I’ve had my car for over 3 years now, and the battery degradation has been negligible. I’ve lost 1% over all this time, and both our cars (BYD HAN and Tang) are consistently allowed to drop under 10% before we decide to go charge them back to 100%. Granted, we live in the Caribbean, so we don’t have to deal with cold weather ever.
Never heard the “above 80%” thing. I’m pretty sure you’re wrong about this. With lead-acid batteries, this was optimal. I’m pretty confident that lithium ion batteries it’s best to keep the charge as high as possible. Ideally you’d only ever use it fully charged. It’s health is harmed by draining it low/fully.
I don’t own an EV, but I know enough about it that I’m pretty sure this is the case. You should look it up for your vehicle though. This advice also applies to phones and other lithium ion batteries too. Lead-acid was damaged by keeping the charge high, but lithium ion is damaged when low, and almost all devices are lithium ion now.
confidently incorrect.
You could disabuse yourself with a quick search.
Lead acid batteries like to be kept fully charged all the time and don’t like to be discharged below 50% state of charge.
Lithium batteries like to be kept around half charged. They degrade quicker when kept at a high or low state of charge. Running lithium batteries from 20-80% does extend the lifespan, but charging to 100% is fine when you need to go on a longer trip. Just don’t keep it at 100% for long periods of time.
I think the BYD blade batteries can go down to 20% and up to 100% weekly. Though tbh I probably keep mine too high, I should lower it a bit closer to 80%…
Lithium ion batteries have a sweet spot of around 60 to 80 percent charge where very little wear takes place to charge or discharge. If you could keep it to just that 20-30 percent usage in that range it would pretty much last ten thousand cycles.
Charging to 100 or discharging below 50-60 percent accelerates the wear on the battery, but it is still much better than the wear rate on lead acid batteries that are cycled in a similar manner.
Batteries also need to be balanced. If you constantly keep your battery packs in that small range they’ll drift out of balance over time.
You should charge to 100% occasionally to allow the BMS to balance all the packs.
Expect CLTC to be advertising the best possible range.
There’s a ceramic battery hitting the market that has a marginally higher density and nothing is stopping them from adding more batteries. There’s also a new hub-motor concept that has a lot less losses, but they’re not car sized yet.
Getting to 644 would be as easy as throwing more batteries at it, but i’d expect those numbers to come down a bit, or the price to be much higher.
Adding more batteries increases the weight, though, which in turn makes the motors work harder, and therefore makes them use more energy to do the same thing.
That’s not that big of a deal for long-range trips, on which you typically don’t have to accelarate often.
Keeping the car going at a certain speed depends on several types of resistance, most importantly air resistance, but not really on weight.
More weight plays a bigger role for energy consumption in urban ares, where the weight needs to be accelerated more often than on the highway, the mileage per kWh is yet typically higher than on the highway due to the lower speed and less air resistance.
What I’m trying to say: I’d pick the bigger battery any time over the smaller one, if the price is reasonable.
EVs are already heavy. The weight from some additional batteries don’t play a big role.
Also, with breaking recovering energy, this negates some of the issues too. The inertia is used to recharge the batteries, so the losses are from friction and heat losses. Obviously lighter is better, but a lot of the issues of weight on efficiency can be reduced. Weight is bad for safety though, so there is that to consider.
It sure does. But we have to consider that recharging is less efficient than not spending the energy on acceleration in the first place, so heavier EVs are worse off than lighter ones; it’s not only losses from friction and heat losses - those come on top.
And you’re spot-on with the danger that comes from weight; being in an accident with a lot of kinetic energy that needs to be absorbed is not great.
Frequent acceleration/deceleration driving like city driving is also significantly more efficient in EVs because of regenerative braking. ICE just lose all that energy they spent accelerating when the have to stop 500m later, which destroys their efficiency.
I was comparing EVs with different weight and not comparing EVs with ICE vehicles, though.
And in that case the heavier EVs are less efficient than more leightweight versions even with regenerative breaking, because the process of accelerating and breaking cant’ regenerate all energy that was spent for accelerating.