4 key points you should know about the battery of your electric car

It has always been said that a traditional car consumes proportionally more in the city due to the use of low gears and sudden acceleration. In the case of the electric vehicle, the exact opposite occurs here, since they spend much less within towns than on the highway, where they have to maintain sustained speeds.

But, what questions do we have about this type of vehicle? The truth is that there are usually several, which is why we are going to answer four key questions about the battery that mounts your electric car, as we will see in the following lines.

What is the useful life of an electric car battery and how to extend it?

First of all, here it is clear to mention that it depends on the case, but above all on how the car is used, the frequency of use, the temperatures to which it is exposed, or the number of charging cycles. In the case of the most modern, thanks to the intense tests to which the batteries are subjected, a minimum of 160,000 kilometers or 8 years of useful life guarantee is usually guaranteed.

As for how to extend that useful life, the batteries have a key that lies in keeping the electric vehicle in the best possible conditions. Therefore, it is advisable to minimize the number of fast charges, because this way we avoid the battery temperature getting too high. Sustaining its state of charge between 40% and 80% also helps extend its useful life beyond the minimum warranty criteria.

Do they have a second life?

In electric vehicles, once 160,000 km or 8 years have elapsed, the state of health of the battery is around 80% of its capacity. This implies that in the daily use of the car, we can experience a reduction in its autonomy and, therefore, in the distance that we can travel with it after a charge.

But it does not mean that this battery is not more useful, since that 80% capacity can be used in other applications that require less power, such as static energy storage. This new function guarantees that the same battery can be reused and thus extend its life.

The differences between the batteries of an electric and a hybrid

The answer lies in the energy storage capacity, as we can see. This is, above all, due to the technologies that we have in each of the two vehicles. In the electric one, since we do not have a combustion engine like in the hybrid, we need the battery to have more capacity to travel the same distance.

This translates into an increase in cells, where a hybrid battery has about 100 cells, while an electric one has about 300.

How often are they uploaded?

Bearing in mind that the battery of an average electric car offers an average range of between 300 and 400 kilometers and that in Spain an average of 240 kilometers are traveled per week, one recharge per week would be sufficient.

With this data, the myth of having to constantly recharge the car is broken, unless we are talking about a plug-in hybrid. In this case, we should recharge it almost daily, since we are talking about a daily average of 34 kilometers being traveled in our country and the PHEV models offer about 50 kilometers of 100% electric autonomy.