3 ms·
It depends on what you mean by "useful life." Say you have a 300-mile EV which averages 3 miles/kWh for a full useful capacity of 100 kWh. If the battery degra
by MrRadar 7y ago
It depends on what you mean by "useful life."
Say you have a 300-mile EV which averages 3 miles/kWh for a full useful capacity of 100 kWh. If the battery degrades to half that capacity the car would only go 150 miles which I think most people would consider well past EoL (manufacturer warranties will replace a vehicle battery once it degrades to 75-80% of original capacity).
However that battery can still hold 50 kWh which would be enough to cover my home energy use for a week (I live in a small apartment and don't run my AC much). For stationary applications the "useful life" of a battery can be much longer than for mobile applications.
- zaroth 7y agoUnfortunately the batteries degrade in other ways beyond mere capacity. I’m not an expert but a comment here says resistance also increases, so I would guess you end up with lower capacity and also slower charge/discharge rates, and lower efficiency. I would hazard a guess that the battery becomes effectively useless before “capacity” actually reaches 50%. I do wonder if this is a matter of going from 500 to 1000 cycles, or if it’s more exponential decay so we’re talking just 100 cycles between “no longer good enough for the EV” to “no longer good enough for the house/grid”.