Battery Life

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740EVTORQUES

Original Poster:

805 posts

4 months

Thursday 13th June
quotequote all
Rechecked my KIA EV6 GT battery after 18 months and 20,000 miles (normally charged to 80% but freely charged to 100% for long journeys and topped up with fast DC charging)

Bearing in mind that degradation is normally faster in the first year than the subsequent years and stabilises until the battery is much more worn.

98.8% state of health. So for the battery to reach 70% state of health (at which point it would still be very useable) the car would need to cover around 500,000 miles.

I wonder what the residual value of a car with 500,000 miles and a 70% battery would be? Probably far higher than the actual value of a leggy petrol car since the battery still has uses as off grid storage, not to mention the recycling value.

Anyway barring accidents or sporadic failure (which is less common after a battery has bedded in) it’s clear the the battery will likely outlive the car.

(Before you ask, the real world range is identical to when I bought it so the OBD readings are very likely to be correct.)

Edited by 740EVTORQUES on Thursday 13th June 17:40

740EVTORQUES

Original Poster:

805 posts

4 months

Thursday 13th June
quotequote all
Evanivitch said:
I'm surprised the EV6 gives an honest SoH. The Niro just seems to report 100% to everyone.
You can use an OBD scanner to read the capacity of the individual battery modules so I think it’s pretty accurate. Certainly the real world range has not suffered

740EVTORQUES

Original Poster:

805 posts

4 months

Friday 14th June
quotequote all
What this also suggests is that here is likely to be real merit in repurposing functional batteries as grid storage farms once the traditional car bits of EVs have reached end of life.

For a static battery, 70% functionality is fine as the charge density is unimportant. Obviously they will eventually reach a stage where they simply don’t work but that’s likely to be much further down the line, and their second life with constant low rates of charge is likely to be gentler too than when used in a car.

Maybe this will be the fate of used batteries rather than recycling?