Aggressive driving could cause EV batteries to degrade more than twice as quickly as smoother driving styles.
Researchers at Shanghai Dianji University in China have found that high driving speeds do not wear out EV batteries as much as aggressive driving styles do. In other words, repeatedly slamming your foot on the brake before accelerating again and rapidly launching away from traffic lights.
They found that regularly driving this way causes around 2.5 times more battery capacity loss compared to adopting a smoother or more economical driving style.
To reach this conclusion they analysed the driving data from 15 EVs in Guangzhou during 2022. Data was gathered every 10 seconds on metrics such as speed, battery current, state of charge, voltage and temperature. This helped to determine how smoothly or aggressively the driver accelerated and decelerated, as well as the overall intensity of driving.
The most aggressive category involved pulling very high electrical current from the battery...