EV ignoramus question- long term storage

[RDMcG]

I have had countless ICE cars in my life and have driven most of the major EV brands, but have never owned one.

I travel a lot and leave cars for months at a time:

In Canada:
Deep winters of course but cars are stored in heated garage space apart from winter cars that are used when I am there. Could put a charger in driveway; could I leave an EV for weeks in -20 while plugged in?

In Arizona:
Cars there are stored in garage where temps reach 110c in the summer. Cars on battery maintainers but battery life is alway half of that in Canada. Could not store outside at they would reach boiling point in summer.

I would imagine there is commercial storage if I opted for an EV there. IN general, because of distances being so great I expect I will stay with ICE but in the city centre of Toronto there is dense traffic and short distances. I often use a 2005 Smart Fortwo in the city as parking is at a premium and performance does not matter; thus an EV might be a good replacement.

Does anyone have experience ?....in a few years this query might require me to turn in my VoltageHeads badge here.,

[NDA]

I have left mine for a month plugged in whilst I was away travelling - no problem at all. Maybe set the charge limit to 50% to go easy on the batteries.

As for the heat - Tesla have a cabin protect setting to keep the temperature within a set range. You could use that feature - it depends which marque you go for whether that feature is available. I would also be tempted to buy some blinds to keep the temperature down inside the cabin - I'd do the same in an ICE car too.

[RDMcG]

NDA said:

I have left mine for a month plugged in whilst I was away travelling - no problem at all. Maybe set the charge limit to 50% to go easy on the batteries.

As for the heat - Tesla have a cabin protect setting to keep the temperature within a set range. You could use that feature - it depends which marque you go for whether that feature is available. I would also be tempted to buy some blinds to keep the temperature down inside the cabin - I'd do the same in an ICE car too.

All LT storage is indoors, though I also have a slight concern about EVs indoors anyway. In the unlikely event of a fire my garage in Canada is right under a three storey Victorian house and the whole thing would be gone in a flash. My instinct is to store an EV outside and have a charger on the driveway.

Edited by RDMcG on Tuesday 2nd May 16:07

[so called]

Interesting question.
I used to leave ICE cars at airports for 4 or 5 weeks at a time and often had flat batteries.

I have a potential job coming op which would only see me home every 10 to 12 weeks and hadn't considered my EV situation.

[TheDeuce]

so called said:

Interesting question.
I used to leave ICE cars at airports for 4 or 5 weeks at a time and often had flat batteries.

I have a potential job coming op which would only see me home every 10 to 12 weeks and hadn't considered my EV situation.

I'm not sure how accurate this info is, but it suggests that you could leave an EV for an extremely long time:https://www.boxt.co.uk/electric-car-charging/guides/do-electric-cars-lose-charge-when-parked

So long as you can afford to lose a small portion of your charge then it looks like the EV could be a better solution than the ICE cars that do run the risk of coming back to a fully flat battery.

[RDMcG]

That's very helpful. Many thanks!

[CheesecakeRunner]

This video shows an unsold EV that’s more than ten years old and hadn’t been moved in that time. Its battery still had 30% charge and it ran.

https://youtu.be/AGiEBXyTh04

[OutInTheShed]

Storing EV cells at high temperature is not good for battery life.
Lots of background on the i3 forum about this.

Another thing to check out is potential problems with the 12V battery going flat, which seems comical, but can immobilise some EVs!

So, personally, I'd be wanting specific info for the cars I was interested in before buying.

[TheDeuce]

OutInTheShed said:

Storing EV cells at high temperature is not good for battery life.
Lots of background on the i3 forum about this.

How does that tally with the millions of EV's in some of the warmer parts of the world, that haven't presented a significant enough abnormal drop in range to raise an headlines? California being the obvious example of a place with heavy EV adoption going back a decade, and now huge upset caused by temperature - I assume the majority of those EV's are stored outdoors and therefore not protected from the heat at all.

Can leaving an EV at an airport car park for 2-3 months really have the potential to do enough battery damage to even be detectable by the owner?