You would expect some reduction in charge capacity for any rechargeable cell. Laptops and phone do exactly this. There may be other things going on as well.Charging patterns affect battery life and there will be software between the battery and the user so it wouldn’t surprise me to find an algorithm that encourages early recharge to maintain good battery life.
Armstrong when landing on the moon with fuel gauges showing near empty is reputed to have said ‘there is always a bit left in the tank’ !

Think I’d rather chance it on Terra Firma rather than Terra Lunar🥴

. . . as just been said it’s cold.

It’s the weather. Cold weather means more energy consumed for heating and de-misting. Additionally charging and discharging efficency is poorer with cold cells.

EV batteries have longer lives than things like phones and laptops. This is because of careful charge / discharge management. They do not “fully” charge or discharge tha battery to rated capacity. This slightly reduces range but greatly increases life.

Robert.

Thing to note is “average loss”

Most EV and hybrid appear to be lease, where use and charging is more likely to be “optimum”

I’ll stick with my petrol car, even at 24mpg, I can put 300 miles in the tank in a few minutes, rather than hours….

Jimb

Winter time is the reason. Cold temps, more power usage for lights, heater, wipers as has been said. I lose about 20 to 25% range when its cold. EVs also have a winter mode for battery heating to improve performance and that also uses power.

On 7 February 2025 at 18:47 SillyOldDuffer Said:

IC engines is they produce an enormous amount of waste heat, about 70% of the fuel value.   A lot of effort goes into keeping the engine cool, and it’s easy to divert it to keep the driver warm.   Not so electric cars, which only waste about 10% of the power as heat – not enough to keep the car cosy.   Therefore the car is heated electrically, which steals power from the wheels.   And maybe all the lights and entertainment system are on too, and the battery isn’t performing top notch because it’s cold.

Back to the good old days: look at the dress-code in this picture!

🙂

Dave

 

But at least they seen to be enjoying it

I thought Historic vehicles were exempt from the ULEZ charges, a 45 year old vehicle even with a 5L diesel engine falls into this class ?

Hey Fulmen, could I do Oslo to Trondheim now in a hired electric vehicle without having to stop for a recharge ? Noel.

Mains pre-heat only helps for short journeys.
In very cold conditions the battery has to be pre-heated before it can be charged.

Robert.

Reading that percentage-claim carefully, does that mean the batteries’ degradation is like that of the cars’ monetary values: steep initially then fairly flat for some years? Weasely things, are percentages…..

Some electric cars now do recover whatever waste heat they can from the motors, for heating. I do not know its efficacy but imagine it cannot be very high or regular.

Dave –

Ironically perhaps, while early-20C Londoners were pleased to see the end (no not that end) of equine incontinence, the noise and noisome emissions from the new-fangled, petroleum-spirit fuelled cars led to those being banned from the Royal Parks.

However, the quiet, clean battery-electric cars of the time were allowed there!

Indeed, there was rapid development of such cars and light lorries in Edwardian times; in Britain, France, Germany and America at least. Paris City Council even operated over 100 Battery-Electric refuse lorries, built by Fram.

The developments seemed to involve a lot imaginative wheel re-inventing; rather as had the development of the steam-engine; but there must have been a burgeoning market for the vehicles. So it was most likely what we call “range anxiety” that saw those early BEVs off, rather than their technical aspects. Owners had to use their own chargers and mains-electricity was not yet universal and standard. Hence battery-electric propulsion was probably better suited to commercial goods-vehicles than to private cars – somewhat opposite to our situation more than 100 years later.

Drawings etc. of those early electric LGVs (“Light” – up to about 3 Ton) survive and may provide an interesting model-engineering subject replicating reality far more closely than battery-driven miniatures of Diesel lorries.

By no means all of the common illnesses among townies of the time were from ‘oss doo-doos, though that can’t have helped. Many town residents, especially in the poorer areas, lived with very basic sanitation and washing facilities indeed; and in Winter especially, in a near-constant miasma of coal smoke.

.

Noel –

Are you asking Fulmen, Winter or Summer, and by which route?

The E6 crosses a major plateau called Dovrefjell about mid-way between the two cities, which are a long way apart. An alternative route some way to the East lessens the hill-climbing.

Fulmen evidently will know better than I about electric car range and charging availability there.

Though elsewhere I have learnt that the Norwegians have embraced battery-electric cars much more than we have in the UK, despite their far harsher Winters and many more Very Big Hills. Not so much steep as very long climbs.

Dovrefjell is also crossed by the main railway line which looked at from a car on the adjacent road, must have some of the steepest gradients on any such line anywhere. It is overhead electrified, and just beyond a summit so pronounced it slightly hump-backs the train itself, both road and railway descend a valley so impressively deep and steep you wonder how on Earth an ordinary railway-line can possibly operate in it… but it does, and very effectively!

I may be wrong but gained the impression Diesel-hauled goods trains use that alternative route, with gentler climbing. Norway is roughly saw-tooth profiled in cross-section, higher down the coastal side; with very long N-S and S-N valleys. Last time I was in the country we did return via that Easterly route (by road – and petroleum-derivative).

Just to chip in on this.

Firstly, a YouTube video about a recent German study of 7,000 EVs and battery life (Watch from 4 minutes in for two minutes if your interested https://youtu.be/ThVwq2vdh0U?feature=shared ) echoed the findings of the video mentioned earlier in this thread. Namely, that after an initial period of degradation EV batteries seem to stabilise at between 80% and 90% charge retention after 200,000 km usage.

Secondly, I’ve recently leased a Nissan Leaf and am finding out about EV ownership for myself. I’ve only had one journey where range anxiety became an issue. We’d driven to Stratford from Northampton to visit the RSC (my wife is the cultured one!). I’d calculated we had enough range to comfortably get there and back without the need to charge. However, on the way back the temperature dropped to as low as -6C. This significantly reduced the car’s range and we arrived home with just 19 miles left in the battery.

Okay, we know that lower temperatures reduce an EV’s range, but when I mentioned this story to a friend of mine he had an interesting comment. I should add at this point he has two EVs, a top end Tesla and a Porche EV. He drives the Tesla to Germany and back when he visits his wife’s family and perhaps more importantly he knows a bit about cars. Until recently, he was Technical Director of McLaren Development. His comment was that the increase in air density at lower temperatures would also be reducing my range and I should drive a bit slower to go further as the wind resistance increase is cubic with an increase in speed.

I should have realised this, as when I worked testing BMW motorcycles I could get a range of over 100 miles from their electric scooters if I stuck to 30mph which dropped to only 50 miles when doing motorway speeds.

Graham

On 9 February 2025 at 07:40 jimmy b Said:

I truly understand the term EVangelist now.

 

If an EV was made available, that did the things we all take for granted, such as versatility (big boot space) and speed of “refueling”, I’d seriously consider having one. But as petrol is very unlikely to dissappear in my lifetime, I’ll carry on with it.

 

Petrol engines are still being designed/developed for future car use.

 

The argument about the environment just does not work for me. From my day job, I know about the price we all pay and will pay for the batteries. Both in their manufacture and future disposal.

Jimb

Absolutely!  The issue many people have with EV’s is “choice”.  We are gradually being forced into vehicles we don’t want because of many factors.  The relentless pursuit for “Net Zero” seems to trump common sense.