Keeping your EV Battery Healthy

When managing an electric vehicle fleet — or purchasing an electric vehicle for personal use — it is important to ensure you are keeping the vehicle’s maintenance up to date. While this may not include your typical oil change and fuel filter replacement, EVs still have best practices to follow to ensure the long-term use of your vehicle. One of the most important examples of something to consider is your EV’s battery health. Just like any piece of battery-powered technology, it is important to monitor the battery levels of your electric vehicle. Being aware of recommended charging habits for your EV can help you maintain the battery’s health and usability. 

Identify Battery Percentage Range

We recommend identifying the optimal percentage range for your EV’s battery. For example, setting up reminders for when your battery drops below 20% allows yourself or a renter to know when it is time to charge the vehicle. You can also set up an alert to notify you when the battery has reached the recommended charging limit so that you don’t overcharge your EV. Because some electric vehicles have different battery technologies, this percentage range may vary for each EV used in your fleet. If you’re unsure of your EV’s recommended battery percentage range, a good rule of thumb is to keep the battery between 20% to 60% when not needing large amounts of range.

Monitor When Your Battery is Fully Charged

With Standard Fleet, it is easy to track your EV’s battery health with the “fully charged range” function. This function allows you to monitor your EV’s battery in order to track degradation over time. Naturally, batteries will degrade over time, but bad practices can lead to battery degradation being dramatically accelerated. Keeping an eye on the health of the battery can ensure a longer-lasting asset and help the operator better monitor and maintain confidence that the best practices are being taken to maintain the health of the battery.

Track Your Vehicle’s Temperature

We recommend preheating your EV with the air conditioner or seat heaters when the car is cold or outside temperatures begin to drop. Preconditioning your electric vehicle essentially warms or cools the battery so that it’s at the best temperature for driving and charging. This prevents the battery from being damaged and makes charging sessions efficient. 

For Teslas: Navigate to Superchargers so you can precondition the battery as much as possible. When you route to a Supercharger on its navigation system, the EV will automatically begin preconditioning accordingly.

For non-Teslas: If your car has it, precondition before fast charging or run the air conditioner or seat heater as much as possible before charging!

Frequently Asked Questions:

How does weather affect an EV battery life?

Cold weather can affect battery range dramatically. In extremely cold climates, it's best to keep your electric vehicles in a garage. However with internet-connected EVs, it's fairly simple to condition your car before you begin driving it, giving it time to warm up the battery and the cabin for a driver's comfort which will lead to better performance and protect the battery. 

Can you overcharge your EV battery?

Electric vehicles don’t allow you to charge the battery more than 100%, however charging your battery to 100% can be damaging for Nickel-based batteries — which are the usual batteries in EVs. Generally, you want to keep the range in between 20-60%, limiting it to 80% for daily use and only charging to 100% occasionally for long trips where that extra range is required. Even when charging to 100%, don’t keep the battery there for long. Only charge that high if you’re going to pretty quickly turn around and use the battery to below 90-80% again.

However, there are LFP batteries that can be charged to 100%, and are recommended to be charged to 100% at least once a week. These batteries are much rarer in the EV market currently. In short, it depends on the battery chemistry. Generally though, it likely is not good to charge your battery to 100%.

Should you charge your EV battery every night?

This is dependent on your driving schedule, and mileage that you will require from the car. Charging at night is certainly a great way to make sure you have range for your commute the next day, and electricity companies often have non-peak hours at night when electricity is cheaper, versus peak hours when electricity is more expensive. It is not necessary to charge your battery every night however, if not required. As mentioned before, keeping it within the 20-60% range and under 80% is ideal.