Wow, lots of FUD in that article. Some of it is correct or nearly so; some of it is half-right, and some of it is just plain rubbish. I'll leave it to you to sort out what's reasonable and what's bogus.
Lithium batteries shouldn't stand fully charged when they're very hot. They also shouldn't be charged at very low temperatures. Don't panic! These are battery management issues, and a well designed EV handles them by warming or cooling the battery, and/or delaying charging as necessary. I'm not a a lithium battery expert, but I think we can now say that Nissan's choice of battery cells for the early Leaves probably wasn't optimal. Nissan and Renault collaborate on EVs, but the Renault Zoe used a different brand of cell, LG, and while I haven't had my ear constantly to the ground, I haven't heard that early Zoes have had anything like the battery failure and capacity loss problems that the early Leaves had. Zoe also uses air cooling, BTW, though I'm pretty sure that, like the EV1 did, it can use the car's aircon to cool the battery if necessary. I won't tell you that EV battery capacity doesn't fall as the battery ages. It certainly does. You just have to plan for that to happen, as you plan for the lower running time as your mobile phone and laptop batteries age. The good news is that the battery capacity of current EVs leaves much more room for diminishing range than production EVs of 8-9 years ago did, to say nothing of the 40-60 mile lead battery conversions that were just about your only affordable choice as recently as 10-15 years ago. David Roden - Akron, Ohio, USA EVDL Administrator = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = EVDL Information: http://www.evdl.org/help/ = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Note: mail sent to "evpost" and "etpost" addresses will not reach me. To send a private message, please obtain my email address from the webpage http://www.evdl.org/help/ . = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub ARCHIVE: http://www.evdl.org/archive/index.html INFO: http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org Please discuss EV drag racing at NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
