What Happens When An EV Battery Is Empty?

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FordAnglia

Well-known member
Joined
Jul 30, 2019
Messages
185
Greetings,

An ICE vehicle will stall when there's no more fuel. You can get a tow, or call for road side service, or perhaps you brought a Jerry Can and can get it running again.

What happens when an EV's high voltage battery is empty? Will a fully charged EV go as far as the manufacturer claims? What other conditions affect the real-world range? For example, extra passengers add weight, cold or hot climate may require the HVAC, which takes battery power, and if the outside temp is too hot or too cold the high voltage battery will likely have reduced range. Even if you bundle up and turn off the heater, the high voltage battery may still be heated up by the "Coolant system", that uses even more energy from the high voltage battery. Thus reducing the range.

Someone on You Tube did a little test with six of the latest model EVs available in the UK. Ride along with Pat Watson (carwow) and find out which EV has the longest range, and which one has the most honest claim for distance traveled on a full charge.

Manufacturer's Range Claims:
Nissan Leaf 239 miles
Jaguar i-Pace 292 miles
Mercedes EQC 259 miles
Audi e-tron 255 miles
Kia e-Niro 282 miles
Tesla Model 3 LR 348 miles

Watch the video here. (28 minutes long)

Peter,
 
Peter,

Thanks for posting as I watched this video about a week ago and it is informative in a number of ways.

First, HAH, the Guess-O-Meter (GOM) is almost always wrong, not to mention how difficult it is to achieve Manufacturers range numbers. In this test, they mainly drove on highway at speed which is not the best for range (my experience). However, this is where range comes to play, no, i.e. getting somewhere far away.

Second, confirmed what I knew from nail biting experience, zero miles left or 0% battery means you are in trouble and had better plug in straightaway.

Third, newer cards provide more warnings it seems than ours does. We likely all have experienced the alert when dipping below 12% and then watched the range and battery meter drop. After that, nothing that I can remember.

Fourth, the video does not show but draining both batteries, the big one and the 12v one can cause fault messages that need to be reset.

Fifth, this was a controlled test (Do not try this at home!). Each time one of the cars shut down, they were within sight of the charger they were circling and the issue was could the car be pushed or not. Not going to spoil this but frankly, I can't remember which car was the most troublesome.

Happy 2020 everyone.
 
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