[EN] 50.000 km with an electric car and no battery replace

In June 2018 I bought my Zoe and two and a half years later I have reached an important milestone: first 50.000 km pure electric. And what a better way to reach this milestone than on the road to a coffee with Tesla owners.
In this article we will discuss some technical data regarding my first 50.000 km done with an electric car, so let's start shall we. General data In this two and a half years I drove the car mostly on short trips but also in a few long trips and I kept a detailed information document with all the charges done, time required for charge, stations where I charged, data from CanZE regarding State of Health (SOH), main battery start temperature and probably the most important an estimation regarding the source of the energy. In Romania we have the possibility to see on the transport operator site (here) the state of the grid on any given time and also for any given interval the source of the energy. ◉ I consumed 9565 kWh to travel 50.000 km and if I had charged only at home, the cost for energy used (9565 kWh) will be about 1000 €. By comparison if for the same distance I would have used a fossil car with an average consumption of 7.5 l of dinosaur pee/100km, the costs would have been arount 4000 €. Keep in mind that most fossil cars have a yearly average consumption far worse than 7,5 and usually the consumption data is reported incorrectly. This number includes also the energy recovered from regenerative breaking and according to my data I have charged about 8331 kWh. ◉ Real world consumption for the life of the car is 19,13 kWh/100km with 5,47 kWh/100km more than the official 13,66 kWh/100km declared by Renault. Please keep in mind that I do not have a garage and last three winters the car has sited outside and I do not use ECO mode in any conditions. ◉ I started with 100% SOH and after 50.000 km my car's SOH is 94%. The car was not managed most of the time, I charged in very dificult conditions in winter and the lowest main battery temperature at the begining of charge was -11℃. ◉ Battery was fully charged 56 times. Keep in mind that in winter time car usually reports SOC 100% but the real state of charge is normally less and depending on the temperature the car can report SOC 100% even for a real state of charge of 90%. In the summer the car reports SOC 100% for a real state of charge of about 96.6%. ◉ Battery was partially charged 680 times. This is also incorrect because the car is incrementing the number of partial charges each time the cable is uncoupled and in case of a faulty station I tried again a few times before actually starting the charge. I will say this number is with at least 10% lower. Source of energy used According to my data from the 8331 kWh consumed, 5309 kWh come from renewable sources and 3022 kWh come from fossil sources. In percentages, 63,73% of the energy I used was green energy and 36,27% was produced from fossil sources. If we go further with the analysis, the energy that come from renewable sources can be splitted as: ◉ Energy from my solar production: 692 kWh or 13,03% from total renewable energy used ◉ Energy from hydro: 3976 kWh or 74,90% from total renewable energy used ◉ Energy from wind: 475 kWh or 8,95% from total renewable energy used ◉ Energy from grid tied solar: 166 kWh or 3,12% from total renewable energy used Doing the same for the fossil sources: ◉ Energy from coal: 1187 kWh or 39,28% from total fossil energy used ◉ Energy from nuclear: 936 kWh or 30,96% from total fossil energy used ◉ Energy from hydrocarbs: 864 kWh or 28,61% from total fossil energy used ◉ Energy from Biomass: 35 kWh or 1,15% from total fossil energy used Please keep in mind that I have started seriously charging at home at the end of 2019 after I have installed my solar system. For this figures I took into consideration the state of the grid at the time of charge and for the years 2018 and 2019 I have charged most of the times at Kaufland and as far as I know they buy only renewable energy so some of the energy counted as fossil was actually renewable but I do not have any way to distinguish. I had a few issues with the car, a couple of times I was not able to charge from the first try. I managed to overheat the car once and I ended up at local Renault service because the car was not allowing me to start the charge session. In the last two and a half years and after 50.000 km, I have not changed the main battery, I have not remain stranded in the middle of the road without energy and I have droved only one fossil car from June 2018 until today. Published by Marius Șerban at 00:56 on 12.03.2021 [EEST]