Chevrolet Bolt / Opel Ampera-e / battery degradation: -8 percent at 117 km? [video] • CARS

A video of a user has posted on YouTube, who estimates 117 kilometers of driving in his Chevrolet Bolt, the twin brother of the Opel Ampera-e. This shows that with this range, the battery has lost 8 percent of its original capacity. While this is just one car and one owner, let's take a look at the values ​​it claims.

The deterioration of the battery of an electric vehicle with increasing mileage is well known. Lithium-ion cells are of such a nature that their capacity slowly decreases and reaches an unacceptable level after a few decades. However, theoretical knowledge is one thing, and real measurements are another. And this is where the stairs begin.

While Tesla is tracked by many users, in the case of other brands we usually deal with disparate, single information. Measurements are taken under different conditions, by different drivers, with different driving and charging styles. It's the same here.

> Tesla battery consumption: 6% after 100 thousand kilometers, 8% after 200 thousand

According to the owner of News Coulomb, his Chevrolet Bolt lost 117,5 percent of its battery capacity after 73 thousand kilometers (8 thousand miles). At 92 percent of the battery's capacity, its range should fall from the real (EPA) 383 to 352 kilometers. However, this is difficult to deduce from the Torque application visible on the film, the voltage on the visible battery cells is the same, but the creator of the recording states that he does not trust him.

News Coulomb measures battery consumption by checking how much energy it uses while driving. At this time, after he has consumed 55,5 kWh of energy, he must visit the charger again.

His calculation ("-8 percent") does not quite correspond to the figures presented.. He claims that the 55,5 kWh he has today is an average value, since in subsequent measurements the difference reaches 1 kWh. If we assume that this 55,5 kWh is the real value, it is more likely to lose 2,6 to 6 percent of its power, depending on which numbers it refers to:

• -2,6 percent capacityif the reference net power was 57 kWh (image below),
• -6 percent capacityif the reference is 59 kWh as the value represented by the car.

In none of the above cases are we reaching -8 percent.

The true capacity of the Chevrolet Bolt battery as estimated by prof. John Kelly, who parsed the package. He calculated 8 modules of 5,94 kWh and 2 modules of 4,75 kWh for a total of 57,02 kWh (c) John Kelly / Weber State University.

That's not all. The video maker himself questions his battery degradation thesis stating that after the General Motors software update, it lost 2 kWh of power (time 5:40), which would basically eliminate all of the estimated difference. Also, commentators talk about either zero degradation or that ... they never charge their batteries above 80-90 percent, so they don't notice if they've lost capacity or not.

In our opinion, measurements should be continued, since the presented figures are moderately reliable.

The video is available here.

This may interest you: