In order to help you compare some of the most popular electric cars currently available, I made a table with EPA range and efficiency figures. It might help you decide which electric car is the best for you. Electric car Range Efficiency Combined City Highway Combined City Highway BMW i3 (94 Ah battery) 183 km 201 km 165 km 17,75 kWh/100 km 16,23 kWh/100 km 19,75 kWh/100 km

Once Elon Musk was the CEO of a company called Tesla Motors, that built amazing electric cars. Now that company is just Tesla. No longer produces only electric cars, it also makes energy storage systems, with solar panels and tiles to be added to Tesla’s production soon. Cars with solar roofs aren’t new, hybrid cars like the Toyota Prius or the Fisker Karma had them even when the efficiency of the solar cells made back then was lower than it’s today.

Before going to the new battery, let’s see the characteristics of the older one. You’ll find this video lecture from Renault very interesting. First generation battery: Total weight is 290 kg (280 kg are quoted in the video, but in every other source is 290 kg)

Volkswagen’s strategy for batteries could be resumed to using the same cells for BEVs and PHEVs. It has its pros and cons. But we’ll look into it ahead. Volkswagen currently uses 25 Ah NMC cells made by Sanyo (owned by Panasonic) to make the batteries for its BEVs and PHEVs. While it’s not easy to find simple information like weight and volume of these cells, Joachim from endless-sphere.com forum got some units and we now have some data.

The 43 kWh battery for the Renault Zoe was built by Imecar Elektronik Turkey in cooperation with Renault Turkey. The 18650 format cells used appear to be the popular green cells made by Panasonic, the NCR18650B (3.400 mAh). We’re talking of more than 3.400 cells used in the battery pack. If we consider that the battery pack has 43.000 Wh capacity and each cell has 12,41 Wh (3,65 V x 3,4 Ah), it takes 3.465 cells.

Since 2013, GS Yuasa, Mitsubishi and Bosch are working together in a joint venture named Lithium Energy and Power with the purpose to develop better batteries for electric cars. But despite some claims from time to time about a future battery with double capacity we haven’t heard much since. I took a look at the joint venture website and discovered two things: Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV doesn’t use the same LEV50N cells that are in i-MiEV’s battery pack. Instead it uses LEV40 cells. These cells are made specifically for PHEVs.

In the summer of 2012 Mitsubishi MiEV’s French brothers, Citroen C-Zero and Peugeot iOn started using a battery with reduced capacity, 14,5 kWh (80 cells) instead of 16 kWh (88 cells). Nonetheless, Mitsubishi i-MiEV kept the 16 kWh battery. At the time PSA said that cars would keep the previous range because the regenerative braking was now more efficient. However, there was a change in battery cell chemistry and LEV50 was replaced by LEV50N. A change of electrolyte that allows it to be more heat resistant, similar to what happened in the Leaf with the lizard battery. The Ragone curve (battery efficiency) also improved.