Reply To: Excellent video about EV battery degradation

#146974
gothitjulie
Participant

    Good clear video, and highlights the large capacity liquid cooled vs small capacity air cooled batteries nicely.

    Air cooled batteries also have another problem. When you do long journeys you need to rapid charge many times & as you do the batteries warm up considerably, but with an air cooled battery they don’t get to cool down enough & you get the “rapidgate” effect where the car will limit charging speeds considerably. Now in something like the 64kW Leaf you’d need to be doing in the region of 400 miles before this becomes a big problem, so normal trips in the UK aren’t much of an issue, but if you’re driving to Spain then it could be.

    Liquid cooled batteries can also “rapidgate” but they can also “coldgate” where they are too cold for rapid charging early in the day as they cool down overnight in countries with cooler temperatures. With mild UK winters this isn’t a big problem & on my e2008 adds about 1 minute to rapid charge times at zero centigrade, the big problem being the battery not being able to hold as much at these temperatures which means a lot less range in winter.