The biggest concern that EV owners have is the range of the vehicle. And even though with the new battery technology the range has been improved, there is still a concern among customers and today we will address this issue. There are different ways by which you can increase the electricity reserves in your vehicle and today we will discuss some of these tips.
First, we will talk about the battery size, it’s pretty obvious that if the battery is bigger that means the range will be higher as well. Some devices allow you to upgrade the cells once they have been built like a laptop. For example, the Nissan Leaf is available with either a 61 kWh battery or a 39 kWh battery, where the former gives an impressive range of 234 miles and the latter gives a range of 163 miles. But a larger battery means you’ll have to pay more, you will have to charge more and the cost of charging will also be higher.
Now we will talk about regenerating braking, as all EVs have them. It is a system that sends energy back into the battery every time you push the accelerator or push the brakes, by using the electric motor as a generator. Most of the time only a small amount of electricity is generated, but if you use the setup well enough, you can add more miles to the range. So this is a good option. This can be done easily, especially in those EVs that enable you to change the level of resistance from the generator which will allow you to deliver a strong braking effect resulting in releasing more energy into the batter. Examples of the cars in which this can be done are Nissan Leaf and Mini E.
The next thing you can do to increase the miles is to condition the car. You can pre-program the charging and heating programs easily. So, the best time to do this is when a car is plugged because then all it has to do is maintain a set temperature, which means less energy will be used. This method is very useful when it is very cold as it will allow you to precondition the cabin’s temperature.