Everything you need to know about electric car batteries and how to keep them healthy

The most important component in an electric car is, you guessed it, the battery. Just like the engine is the heart of a car, a battery is the most integral part of an EV. Yes, EVs have lots of cool tech but all of it revolves around the battery with the focus on giving you better range, performance and reliability.

Talking about reliability, there is a fair bit that you can do to keep your next electric car’s battery healthy. In fact, coming up now are 5 things that you should do to keep your EV’s battery healthy and extend its life:

1. Let’s start from a very basic measure - parking your car. When parking an EV, keep in mind that you should minimise its exposure to heat. Parking your car in the shade will prevent your car’s battery from overheating and keep the temperatures down for optimal efficiency.

1. When charging your battery, take care of not keeping it plugged in when the battery has reached 100%. You can avoid this scenario by not plugging your car overnight - we know this isn’t convenient but going forward it will do wonders for your car. A full charge will give you maximum operating time but in the long run it is not advisable.

1. While fast chargers are not available in many regions right now, some carmakers have already started advising customers to refrain from using them frequently. The reason is pretty simple - using a fast charger puts a strain on your EV’s battery and decreases their life faster. Kia claims that “eight years of standard charging will give you 10% more battery life compared to 8 years of using fast charging.”

1. Just like high temperatures, EV batteries are allergic to low temperatures as well. You see, when an EV stays unplugged  at low temperatures then it can sometimes automatically run the thermal management system even unplugged.

1. Last but not the least, maintain the optimal battery state of charge of your EV when you’re not using it. You might have left your car at 100% charge for a long time but the probability is very high that it will not be  able to retain that charge over such a long period of time. If the car is left in the garage for too long then the EV can self discharge to 0 and after that things can get ugly. A good way of avoiding it is by setting the charger at minimum capacity so the batteries keep on getting some charge.

These were the 5 ways to increase the battery life of every EV but not every EV is same and along with these tips you should always adhere to the guidelines given to you by the carmaker as different EVs have different requirements.