Electric battery degradation

The pictured INL location appears to be 775 University Blvd, Idaho Falls, ID 83401.

However, I also see a note reading:"Four model year 2013 Toyota Prius plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) entered Accelerated Testing - one during March 2013 and the other three during April 2013 in a fleet in Arizona." The trees in the background behind the Prii look more tropical than anything I have seen in Idaho.

Some of the work was subcontracted to Intertek. It's Arizona facility is in Phoenix, but has facilities in many other states as well.

 

OK, thanks, so probably Arizona.

 

Someone already noted a statement in one of the documents about fleet use in the southwest. The comment that I found says:

In the past for other vehicles in this testing program it has been stated that the vehicles were provided to local parcel delivery fleets in Arizona.

 

The same program at INL ran Volts through the same basic testing and they also did well with roughly about 10% degradation during a similar period of use I think (from memory).

You can those results here:
2013 Chevrolet Volt | Advanced Vehicle Testing Activity

My personal experience is similar although my driving conditions are different. I now have about 142,000 miles on my 2011 Volt and I would guess it has about a 10% battery capacity reduction although it's hard to be certain because I'm using non-original tires.

Other vehicle results can be found using the search menus on the above page.

 

Been over a half a year with no new posts in this thread. Anyone have any new data they would like to share?

 

Resurrecting this thread since the range shown as being available has dropped from 12.6 to 10.4 over the last two months. 55,000 on the car. This is my first fall/winter with the car so I don't know how much that effects things. Although it has not been so cold here in PA this year and the car is kept in an unheated, but insulated garage where the temp now is in the low 50°s. Others thoughts or experiences.

 

i'm in an attached garage, unheated. also 50 degrees currently. my high the year was 15.9 miles, and currently at 11.8, normal and will dip a little bit lower at the coldest part of winter.

 

Your drop from 12.6 to 10.4 EV miles is typical for temps in the 30s-40s. You can look forward to even less EV range in a few more weeks. before it fully recovers in late spring.

 

lol, like your Profile Pic

 

Also in an attached garage. Morning lows now are in the upper 40's most days and I'm showing temps in the 50's in the garage with an estimated range of around 11.2-11.7. After my nasty 9.7 mile commute with about 500 stops, I usually have less than one mile left without running any climate control stuff.

 

Wow- I'm really shocked that these results are reported by some mainstream car publications. This really makes the case for buying a used pip imo.

 

These are fleet cars and if you look at "on-road performance report" you will see that those cars were newer charged from the grid.

 

Ahh- well that could certainly change things. Is there any reason to believe the battery degradation would be better or worse if they were charged on the grid?

 

from what i've read about lithium, your probably better off never charging. but i'm no expert.

 

geez
a 3 year old post from a guest with 1 post
troll?
nothing against speculation concerning why B's EV miles decreased for 12 to 9
but haven't we all seen similar results from both weather and as the original post states "my driving pattern has remained the same" " Any ideas?" after 7 pages - I guess there are at least a few - huh!

 

Lithium batteries do best when charged within a smaller depth of discharge. If you never recharge a Plug-in Prius from the wall and just drive it around then the battery is being charged by the gas engine within the small ~300 Wh buffer used by the Prius hybrid system.

Yes, these long-range driving tests by Idaho Labs weren’t very useful because they gave the cars to delivery services to drive around and put lots of miles on the car in s short period of time. That meant that the cars weren’t being charged during the day and most miles were from driving in hybrid mode.

Also, because the miles were added rapidly it doesn’t account for “calendar life” degradation that happens from the battery just sitting around. Typical battery degradation will be a mix of calendar plus recharging cycles losses. On the useful side of things, the testing was done in Arizona so it did put the batteries through a good amount of heat stress.