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As a 7+ year driver of a pure electric BMW i3, not the range extender version, in a HOT climate its last four years, far more overlooked is the degeneration of
by jjtheblunt 4y ago
As a 7+ year driver of a pure electric BMW i3, not the range extender version, in a HOT climate its last four years, far more overlooked is the degeneration of battery capacity when run and charged in heat.
I mean 40+ Celsius summers have been brutal on the battery which is a cooled pack.
Possibly this has improved a ton since our i3 was the original model year, and BMW replaced the original pack and sent it back to Germany for analysis, consistent with the i3 being an experiment by design.
It’s made me curious if this is purposefully overlooked by the EV bandwagon.
- galangalalgol 4y agoThe nissan leaf demonstrated this problem in Phoenix immediately upon release, it is a known thing. Tesla seems to take yhe cooling loop very seriously. The batteries in the early model s had some issues but after that they seem to asymptote at 20% range loss and stay there. At least so far. I don't know who else takes cooling that seriously. I'd look for liquid cooling but also phase change hooked into the ac system, as liquid and a radiator only gets you down to ambient, which is too hot in an increasingly large number of locations much of the year.
- jjtheblunt 4y agoYep, our i3 battery is cooled as a pack, but degraded fast north of Phoenix (higher altitude, still hot as hell for 4 months, super nice for 8 months including freezing and occasional snow). Turned out the cooling system for the original pack broke, but it was unclear if that happened in Arizona or was a one-off quirk, so the degradation of the original pack happened for sure in Arizona.
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoThe original LEAF was also susceptible to heat degredation as it was purely air cooling the pack. People who lived in places like Arizona had issues.