An all-electric Renault Zoe with an impressive 345,000 kilometres on the clock has caught our attention this week – not due to the distance it has been driven, but because of the apparently near perfect state of its battery.
Battery degradation of lithium-ion electric car batteries can be a problem particularly if constantly depleted to 0% state of charge and regularly charged to 100% full.
Standard practice to get optimum life of an electric vehicle (EV) battery is to never deplete below 20% and only charge to 80%.
Even so, it’s for this reason that car makers typically limit warranty of EV batteries to 8 years – and in the case of French car maker Renault, it is 8 years, or 160,000km , and whichever comes first.
But in an interesting video shared by the “official” Renault Zoe owners club on Twitter on Monday, a Turkish Youtuber Erdem Çizmecioğulları has shown that one Zoe electric hatchback has been 345,000km and its battery is still going strong.
This is worth showing to you all & to all them people that say EVs are not the future & Battery tech won't last.
We have a Zoe owner with 345.000km on there ZE40 still with 96% SOH.
Truely amazing well done @GroupeRenaultEV pic.twitter.com/eYVXhmSIGG
— Official Renault Zoe & ZE Owners Club (#RZOC) (@RZOC) February 1, 2020
Using an OBDC device which allows access to the battery data via a smartphone app, the 2017 Renault Zoe shows the 96% state of health, and an 82.1% usable state of charge giving 41kWh usable capacity from the vehicle’s original 52kWh.
Full output via the OBDC shows, as follows:
— Official Renault Zoe & ZE Owners Club (#RZOC) (@RZOC) February 1, 2020
Followers of the club on Twitter expressed their amazement, with at least one questioning if the vehicle had had a battery replacement.
“Nope it has had no battery replacement. It’s a Taxi in Turkey & this many miles the warranty of the battery is long gone as its an i model,” replied the club.
In a translation of the video obtained by The Driven, this was confirmed by the taxi driver who owns the vehicle.
Others were impressed.
“Wow.. Amazing. Renault are a company who took this path many years ago. Well done and shame on you all the rest who are trying to impress 7 years too late,” said Matthew Wornham.
“Bl**dy hell!!! That’s amazing!!!” said Nicholas Clark.
However, another Tweep has questioned the OBDC output, which shows the battery has done 343,672km exactly and used 11,185kWh of energy.
“Please help me with the math; i see 343000 km and 11185 kWh used. Does this car runs 30 km on one 1kWh?” Johan de Jong asked.
eRally Motorsport, however, chimed in in support of the video, tweeting, “We’ve been thrashing the hell out of our eRally Zoe and it’s still 100% Soh, according to CLIP after it’s BMS update.”
We’ve been thrashing the hell out of our eRally Zoe and it’s still 100% Soh, according to CLIP after it’s BMS update. pic.twitter.com/Wjo6rchUpG
— eRally Motorsport (@Project_eRally) February 5, 2020
Bridie Schmidt is associate editor for The Driven, sister site of Renew Economy. She has been writing about electric vehicles since 2018, and has a keen interest in the role that zero-emissions transport has to play in sustainability. She has participated in podcasts such as Download This Show with Marc Fennell and Shirtloads of Science with Karl Kruszelnicki and is co-organiser of the Northern Rivers Electric Vehicle Forum. Bridie also owns a Tesla Model 3 and has it available for hire on evee.com.au.