"A heat wave will cook your EV battery, if you let it" - Article

[Tooney]

“The worst case really is a car that sits in an unconditioned garage in Phoenix all summer without being plugged in,” says Scott Case, co-founder and chief executive officer of Recurrent, a startup that generates battery health reports for EV customers and dealers. “That will cook the battery really quickly.” If the car is plugged in, it can use charging power to keep its battery cool.

Cold weather also impacts EV batteries. The colder it is, the slower the chemical reactions and the less charge a battery holds. But those losses are short-term; come spring, a battery in snowy Michigan or chilly Maine will recover its full function, whereas heat can bring down maximum range in perpetuity.

“You can coach people, but you can’t say ‘Don’t live in Phoenix,’” Case says. “That one feels a little bit unfair.”
...
California, Florida, Texas, Arizona and Georgia are home to 56% of the nation’s battery-powered cars, according to the Department of Energy. Fortunately, nurture can neutralize much of nature’s heat handicap.

“Anywhere I can find shade in a hot Texas summer, I try to find it,” says Skyler Williams, an Austin-based entrepreneur who boned up on battery chemistry and maintenance before buying his Rivian R1S last August. “It doesn’t matter if I’m going to be in the grocery store for 10 minutes or two hours. Better safe than sorry.”

Williams also follows other good rules of thumb: He only charges at fast stations when he has to, always leaves his truck plugged in when it’s parked in the garage, seldom charges the battery past 80% and uses Rivian’s app to open the windows if he’s away from the truck on a hot day. After almost a year, his car hasn’t lost any range, which bodes well for resale value.
...
An EV that has slogged through a handful of Texas summers, for example, may score lower than the same model with the same mileage in a temperate climate. Conversely, a Texas driver who took all the right precautions for her EV could see a higher Recurrent score than an equivalent car in a cooler climate that’s routinely driven to empty then recharged to full, practices that add wear and tear to a lithium-ion battery.
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/a-heat-wave-will-cook-your-electric-car-battery-if-you-let-it-1.1944148

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[ciaranob]

Yep - biggest detrimental impact on SoH is extreme hot climate - even more so than cold climate effects albeit the article is correct in that other factors like charging cycle durations etc also important - as in the SoH thread.

 

[Porsche-Guru]

Oh my... the joy of longevity of ICE engines.

Swiss weather:
+35C in summer and -20C in winter
wash, rinse, repeat... year on year.... what degradation !

 

[CaliPorsche]

Interesting …. So what is the advised protocol here?

I have a non conditioned garage that in the summer can often sit at 110-120 degrees. I do not plan on this but it could easily happen, if I was to leave the car for 3 summer months at 100 to 120f, should you :-
A) leave EVSE unplugged and with AC set on then have someone plug it in to charge for a day every month or so.
B) plug in the EVSE for AC.
C) EVSE unplugged but plug in a maintainer for the 12v battery, and monitor car SoC.
D) both EVSE and battery maintainer plugged in.

Any thoughts? ( sorry if that has been debated before I joined the cult )….

 

[TDinDC]

A volcanic eruption will melt your car, if you let it . . .

I have zero evidence to back up my assumption here, but I guess that leaving a car out in the sun for a longer period of time without it being plugged in so that it could manage the temperatures of the car could damage the battery, but . . . even if the surface temperature is very high, it is hard to imagine that the internal battery temps of a parked car would get high enough to make a material difference, even if the car is left out for long periods of time. Would it be worse than a car kept in ideal conditions? Sure. So, keep it in the shade if you are going away on a trip? Super hard to believe that a car kept in the shade would hit battery temps high enough to materially reduce range.

 

[violuma]

Any thoughts?

I vote B, and here's why.

To borrow a phrase from the inimitable @daveo4EV, an EVSE is simply a glorified extension cord. The car is totally in charge of the conversation about how much current flows through it. It's not like a petrol pump where the car is a passive recipient and the pump calls the shots.

With that in mind,

• B > A because the car does the work that a person would have to do for A.
• B > C because it actually prevents the problem from happening as opposed to telling you that it already happened.
• B > D because the high-voltage battery is capable of taking care of everybody else as needed, so entities have been multiplied unnecessarily.

I should probably note that my Taycan is not expected to be delivered for another 3 months, so I'm probably not the world's most informed source.

 

[daveo4EV]

Interesting …. So what is the advised protocol here?

I have a non conditioned garage that in the summer can often sit at 110-120 degrees. I do not plan on this but it could easily happen, if I was to leave the car for 3 summer months at 100 to 120f, should you :-
A) leave EVSE unplugged and with AC set on then have someone plug it in to charge for a day every month or so.
B) plug in the EVSE for AC.
C) EVSE unplugged but plug in a maintainer for the 12v battery, and monitor car SoC.
D) both EVSE and battery maintainer plugged in.

Any thoughts? ( sorry if that has been debated before I joined the cult )….

D should be un-necessary - 12V is charged from the big battery as required - leaving the car plugged in doesn't matter - car will turn EVSE on/off and pull power as needed based on timers/profiles

I'd just leave teh car plugged in - with a profile set to 60% or less - car wil maintain the battery while you are away…

 

[CaliPorsche]

D should be un-necessary - 12V is charged from the big battery as required - leaving the car plugged in doesn't matter - car will turn EVSE on/off and pull power as needed based on timers/profiles

I'd just leave teh car plugged in - with a profile set to 60% or less - car wil maintain the battery while you are away…

Thanks - did I not read somewhere that when on EVSE the main battery stops charging the 12v after 8 cycles or so - and thy ended up with a drained 12v - hence needing the battery maintainer ?
I may have misunderstood that ….

 

[TXAG]

“The worst case really is a car that sits in an unconditioned garage in Phoenix all summer without being plugged in,” says Scott Case, co-founder and chief executive officer of Recurrent ...

I wish authors would interview those of us who live in the Phoenix area before publishing. I would have asked them to investigate battery health of EVs parked outside versus in an enclosed garage because I haven't seen much range drop in 14 months.

My garage isn't air conditioned, and its temperature stays between 100 to 110 °F (38 to 43 °C) during the summer.

When I start my 2022 RWD in the morning, the battery compartment temperature is seldom above 100 °F (38 °C). I suspect parking outside where driving surfaces easily exceed 150 °F (66 °C) would accelerate battery decline. (Perhaps this could be studied at the Phoenix dealerships because Taycans sit outside and sales are soft?)

As an aside, car batteries with 3-year warranties around here periodically die after 2.5 years because of the heat.

My Taycan's fans blow like crazy when I charge in the garage. I charge from 9 AM to 3 PM because my solar panels generate 7.6 kW while I set the PMC+ charger to 50% to charge my Taycan at 4.4 kW (should be 4.8 kW, but 0.4 kW are lost enroute). The PMC+ hasn't overheated under these conditions.

In the chart below, the blue diamonds are summer 2023 data (10,000 miles were reached on 5/31/2023). I haven't seen much range drop on the guess-o-meter yet.

 

[Archimedes]

All these negative EV articles are laughable. They take an extreme situation and project it across all use cases to insinuate’EV Bad!’ I’m not even an EV zealot and it’s easy to spot the nonsense.

 

[Fish Fingers]

All these negative EV articles are laughable. They take an extreme situation and project it across all use cases to insinuate’EV Bad!’ I’m not even an EV zealot and it’s easy to spot the nonsense.

I have come to the conclusion that anti ev articles are just very good click bait material.

A lot of people have been told (certainly in the UK) that they can't buy a new ICE car from 2030 (which I've no doubt will get amended/delayed).

They then look at the price of EVs and realise they can't afford one. So they go anti ev. The press know this and fuel the fire to get more readers. And more advertising revenue.

I read the comments on the articles and it's a proper 'burn the witch' mentality. Mostly ill Informed bull5hit stoked by the press.

I expect the situation to get worse before it gets better.

Very reminiscent of the smart phone radio waves giving you brain damage about 15 years ago.
Suddenly dissapeared when everyone got a smart phone.

 

[violuma]

A lot of people have been told (certainly in the UK) that they can't buy a new ICE car from 2030 (which I've no doubt will get amended/delayed).

Even if there's no amendment or delay, you've got to have very few concerns in your life if you can spare bandwidth to worry about your automotive purchasing options six years in the future.

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