Key Tips for Maximising your EVs Efficiency in Summer
High temperatures impact your EVs performance by significantly reducing your electric car’s battery performance, as your car’s range gets drastically reduced in peak summer temperatures above 35 Degree.
But don’t worry as we share some unique tips that you can implement to improve your EVs efficiency and maximise your car’s range even at higher temperatures.
The Impact of Intense Heat on Your EVs
Let us explain to you how intense heat affects your EVs.
- High temperatures decrease your EVs performance by reducing the range, But how? This is because your EVs batteries try to keep themselves at an optimum temperature in hot summers, and for this, they take more energy, thus reducing your range, which results in travelling less distance as your EV usually does.
- The main component of EVs is lithium-ion batteries, and at hot climates, they are at a risk of overheating. If your battery gets hot, then it can affect the cell chemistry, leading to premature battery damage.
Tips to Maximise your EV’s Range in Summer
Use Eco Mode:- Many EVs have an option of Eco Mode, a feature which helps to increase the range of your car by conserving energy spent on other functions that eat away your car’s battery. This feature can also prevent you from aggressive driving by restricting the power of EV, which in turn helps you to preserve battery life.
Travel with Minimal Luggage: Electric cars are significantly heavy, so by keeping excess luggage, a higher amount of energy is utilised to move the additional weight. So it is recommended to drive with less luggage during summers, which helps to save the energy of the car.
Park your Car in a Shade: The easiest way to prevent overheating in your EV is to park the car in a shade or garage. Avoid parking EVs in direct sunlight as parking the EVs in a garage stops your EVs battery from overheating and will maximise the range too as your EV won’t use extra energy to cool down the batteries.
Only Charge to 80%: Industry experts say that maintaining your EVs battery level between 20%-80% helps in conserving the health of the batteries, and it is extremely important to maintain during summers.
Just like mobile phones, the longer you charge, the hotter your battery gets, and during the combination of sunny weather, it gets extremely hot, therefore it is advisable to maintain the battery level up to specific limits.
Restrict Fast Charging: As mentioned above, constant charging can affect your EV battery’s performance, as it can overheat the batteries. The Fast chargers surely decrease the amount of charging time but higher kW increases the temperature of your EV battery significantly.
To prevent this, there is a general rule of sticking to 7kW fast charging during peak summer seasons and avoiding fast charging. By this we mean to use either public chargers or your home EV charger, as they are usually rated at 7kW.
NOTE: We don’t recommend charging your EVs on a rapid charger during the hottest times of the day and also we don’t suggest charging your EV to 100% during summers.
Thus following these techniques can increase your EV’s efficiency in peak summer months, while protecting your batteries from overheating and conserving your car’s energy, so as to use it optimally while driving and not affecting the car’s standard range.
