Batteries in electric vehicles have more mileage in city driving rather than highway driving
A 2022 Ford F-150 requires 9.4 and 12.1 litres per 100 km for highway and city driving, respectively.
- A 2022 Ford F-150 requires 9.4 and 12.1 litres per 100 km for highway and city driving, respectively.
- Traditional fuel-powered automobiles, powered by the internal combustion engines, give higher mileage on a highway compared to city roads.
- Second, unlike highway driving, city driving involves more frequent acceleration and braking; every time a fuel-powered automobile accelerates, it consumes more energy than it would consume to maintain speed.
- All these factors result in higher gas mileage on highway driving compared to city driving.
Power usage
- And will that power requirement be higher (or lower) to drive in the city?
- It could be expected that a BEV would require less power to drive on a highway compared to city.
- When the BEV operates at high power, only a certain portion of the full energy capacity is available for driving.
Battery testing
- We took a cylindrical battery cell like the ones used to make battery packs for BEVs and computed its energy at different discharge currents.
- First, we fully charged the battery and then discharged it at a certain power until it was fully depleted.
- When we computed the total energy discharged by the battery at each experiment, we found that the lower the current, the higher the discharge energy capacity.
- The battery management system is very important, and in some BEVs, it may be programmed to prevent the driver from fully depleting the battery pack so that long-term health can be maintained.
Informed consumers
- On average, the tested BEVs required lower power to drive 100 kilometres in city roads compared to highways, confirming our explanation.
- Our findings suggest that those considering an electric vehicle would find it useful if power consumption guides included this information.