The ace electric car battery It is probably the most important component for the implementation of the electric car. Its autonomy, its management or its charge are common topics of conversation. But what about your repairs?
With the sale of each electric car, the brands give a guarantee on the life of its battery. Most of them focus on a battery life that ranges from 8 to 10 years and from 70% to 90% of the useful battery capacity. Mileage limits are also usually set in ranges between 160,000 and 180,000 kilometers.
But what happens when we want to change a battery? Should it be replaced completely or can only one part be changed? This is what they have been denouncing since the YouTube Channel Munro Liveowned by Munro Associates, an engineering consultancy also specializing in the automotive sector.
like a building
The batteries of our electric cars are not an indissoluble part that stores energy as a whole. Each battery has a number of cells, in which electricity is stored. It’s something like an apartment building. Each is independent but the sum of all allows us to travel hundreds of kilometers with an electric car.
Imagine that six, seven or eight units in a building of 50 units are structurally affected. The logical solution would be to repair these apartments so that they can be lived in safely. Demolishing the building and installing a new one would be much more expensive, more polluting and would take us longer.
The same thing happens with battery cells. replace some one of them can be the solution to recover part of the lost autonomy. Indeed, the Stellantis Group has its own battery operating room to restart them, as they explained to us during our meeting. how they want to ride in the hydrogen vans.
More autonomy, less autonomy
Part of the progress increase autonomy electric cars go through the improvement of the densities of their batteries. The higher the energy density, the more capacity they will have and, therefore, the greater the electrical range stored in the same space.
That’s what’s happening with the Tesla Model Y, which battery experts Munro Live tried to open up. After two days of work, the engineers gave up. Access to the battery cells is nearly impossible and cannot be accessed without damaging the rest of the battery.
For starters, the battery itself has a metal cover that they couldn’t remove without damaging the pack. But, once removed, the cell access It is also complicated, because they are covered with a plastic material bonded strongly with large amounts of resin, so replacing them is an unnecessary waste of energy.
In other words, the goal of achieving greater autonomy with the new batteries has an important counterpart: we have less autonomy as owners.
Beyond Tesla and the electric car
Although the batteries shown are the newest implementations in the Tesla Model Yisn’t the only case of an electric car that ties its drivers to its own technical department.
That Tesla batteries are designed like this makes sense. The huge amounts of resin are used to add a greater rigidity to the battery and therefore to own vehicle. In addition, it improves its thermal management, which translates into greater autonomy and reduced recharge times.
The problem, we see, is that the batteries remain a disposable product which, in addition, binds us to the technical service of Tesla as owners once they have deteriorated enough to deserve a complete update.
It would not be excluded that the brand, with its own engineers and acquired knowledge, could recondition the batteries without damaging them. Indeed, when presenting the Mobilize the limoRenault has already informed us of its intention to recover cars that have traveled nearly 200,000 kilometers to repair or replace their batteries and put them back on the market as and when. reconditioned vehicles.
But Tesla is not the only one to act in the same way, Mercedes prevents users of its vehicle from lifting the bonnet of its Mercedes EQS, so only a technician can check its mechanics. The BMW iX also does the same.
But how they explained to us about RACE, new batteries are no exception. Before, having a problem with a headlight meant changing a bulb in time. Since the arrival of xenon headlights and the evolution to LEDs, the usual thing is to completely change the optical group.
The same happens with 12 volt auxiliary batteries. Previously, customers buying this component and replacing it themselves was common. With the arrival of Start&Stop systems, a battery change is much more expensive and requires a qualified technician.