Battery Life

The promoter of racing's wackiest series wants to include EVs. A new report from the International Energy Agency shows greenhouse gas emissions set new records in 2018. And our latest Twitter poll shows which upcoming electric SUV our readers most want to buy. All this and more on Green Car...

Some electric-car owners go to great lengths to preserve the battery life in their electric cars. Others just plug them in every time they're finished driving and charge them up to full. Maybe, according to new research announced earlier this week, the durability of batteries can be determined...

A Woburn, Massachusetts, company may be attracting big name attention for its solid-state technology that it says can withstand higher temperatures and offer higher capacity. For battery makers, producing a stable solid to withstand the rigors of charging and discharging has proved elusive. Ionic...

Over the seven years modern, mass-priced electric cars have been on sale, various bits of wisdom have emerged among their fans, advocates, and owners. One might be how much battery range is "enough" to prevent drivers from worrying constantly about whether they need to charge. Another might be...

The Nissan Leaf, at least for the moment, remains the highest-volume electric car produced in history, with more than 300,000 sold. One of the measures that kept its cost down was the use of passive air cooling for its battery pack, rather than the pricier liquid cooling used by other makers to...

We tend to take batteries for granted. Day after day, we recharge batteries and expect them to work without giving a thought to how they work or to their state of health. But Akira Yoshino is different. He's one of the pioneers of lithium-ion battery technology. DON'T MISS: Lithium-ion battery...

As more battery-electric cars are sold and more drivers become aware of them, the question of battery life recurs among pretty much every potential buyer. How long will the battery last? Will I have to replace it every 18 months as I do in my smartphone? Data on the liquid-cooled battery packs of...

The latest reports on Tesla Model S durability and reliability should likely be considered a win for the Silicon Valley automaker. High-mileage cars aren't unusual, but we're only now starting to see the first truly high-mileage examples of electric cars. With less maintenance required compared to...

The 2018 Nissan Leaf will likely be revealed within the next three months, but more than 100,000 older Leaf electric cars are still silently in use on U.S. roads. Some of them, especially the lowest-range cars from the two earliest model years (2011 and 2012), have started to see significant...

Tesla has given its used electric-car sales a jolt and sweetened the deals for potential buyers. CEO Elon Musk announced changes to the Tesla Model S sedan's warranty structure and major price cuts on used examples during the annual shareholder meeting held June 6. "Maybe somebody wants to buy a...

In designing, testing, and producing the Nissan Leaf, the first modern electric car sold in volume, Nissan made a design decision that some other companies didn't. It chose not to build an active thermal-conditioning system (otherwise known as cooling) into its battery pack. Instead, it relies on...

Being a pioneer isn't easy. When you're pioneering new automotive technology, it can be challenging and sometimes costly. Just ask anyone who owned an early turbocharged sport sedan, for instance. That also applies, in some cases, to some of the first modern electric cars, and in particular the...

When's the last time you sat down and read large parts of an owner's manual for a car? If it's been a few years—or a few decades—you may be surprised how frustrating they are if you're actually searching for specific information. By and large, their indexes are atrocious (often using...

The first time may have been a Pyrrhic victory. In April, an updated 90D emerged with a kinda, sorta 300-mile range and a new face. Tuesday, Tesla announced that a new 100-kilowatt-hour battery would deliver 315 miles on the EPA cycle and accelerate up to 60 mph faster than falling off the roof...

"Sure, but what do the batteries cost to replace?" is a question frequently posed to hybrid and electric vehicle owners. It's true that batteries aren't cheap, and at some point down the line they'll have expended their useful life and require replacement. But what do these packs actually cost, if...

Every once in a while, other media outlets will ask for advice from Green Car Reports on various fuel economy or car technology questions. We recently received one concerning a 2008 Ford Escape Hybrid, which the owner had left unused for several months. The car wouldn't start after that, and when...

Last summer, I wrote in this space about an apparent loss of battery capacity in my 2013 Tesla Model S after a three-month Supercharging binge. I wondered whether, despite assurances from Tesla Motors, the two events might have been related. My doubts had started when I noticed that, after a...

One of the things electric-car owners worry about is long-term battery degradation. It’s a well-established fact that lithium-ion batteries gradually lose capacity as they undergo numerous charge/discharge cycles. We owners understand that our range will gradually decline over the life of the...

Researchers at Nanyang Technological University claim a new anode can dramatically improve battery performance.

A new study indicates fast-charging isn't as bad for batteries as originally believed.