Hi Bryce.
I enjoyed reading your article about the Mitsubishi iMiEV. How far have we come with EVs since 2010!
I have a 2024 Subaru Solterra (purchased in Dec 2024) and absolutely love it. It is a fantastic car. If I could change one thing to improve it that would be to add 100km to the range as it is just a bit shy of making the trip to Ballarat and back from my part of Melb and it would be nice if I could make it without needing to recharge.Â
You touched on an issue I have been thinking about for a while, which is whether (in the years ahead) it would be possible to replace the battery with one that would extend the range? It sounds like it is possible with some EVs but not sure if this extends to all EVs? If the battery capacity loss is only 0.5 to 1% replacing the battery may never be necessary but just wondering what the possibilities may be?Â
Actually, there is something else I would change about the Solterra if I could, and that is adding bi-directional charging. Again, I am wondering if that is something that could be somehow programmed in to the car’s system?
Hoping you can educate me on the above points please.
Cheers,
Mark
Hi Mark – thanks for the kind words. And yes, EVs have come a long way since 2010. (Come to think of it, since perhaps the early 1830s for the first attempts).
As an introduction to the question for readers – Subaru/Toyota recognised the original version of their Solterra/Bz4X joint venture (first sold in Japan in 2022, but both only introduced here in 2024) was a tad underwhelming in both range and performance specs compared to the competition.
For the 2026 updates of the pair they therefore made a series of improvements – including a slightly increased battery size and better motor power and efficiency.
Together, these changes added something around 100km (WLTP) to the driving range. Also added was vehicle to load (V2L) functionality. Whilst V2L was added to both Toyota bZ4X models, Subaru only added it to the Touring version of the Solterra. Mind-you, the V2L is only 7A/1500W so still a bit lacking there in comparison to the competition.
Anyway, I digress: to your question about batteries, Mark. Manufacturers are notoriously bad at offering upgrades to existing models as they like you to buy a replacement new car with the ‘latest and greatest’ tech instead. This means we are very unlikely to ever see a bigger battery upgrade from Subaru/Toyota themselves.
In addition, as the earliest BEVs had very short ranges (100-ish for the iMiEV and 120-ish for the leaf), as well back then having faster battery degradation, it made sense for after-market businesses to not only offer battery replacements, but bigger ones as well. This was for two reasons:
– Many of the older ones were likely to one day need replacing as their short ranges decreased to less-than-practical distances (offering some return on the investment work to design one as there was a reasonable number of potential customers) and,
– Most owners of them would love to increase the original limited range when replacing the battery. This, by the way, has been facilitated by the increasing energy density and massive price drops in battery cells between 2010 and now, making bigger batteries both much cheaper and potentially easy to squeeze more kWh into the original battery containers.
Moving forward to today – even the cheapest BEVs available offer at least twice those early driving ranges, with many at 5 to 6 times as much!
As a consequence, I am guessing we won’t see longer-range batteries offered as range degradation rates now are much lower, meaning that in combination with those long initial ranges – they are unlikely to ever fall to ‘utterly too short for anything’.
Plus, after-market businesses are less likely to develop replacements as almost all the batteries in modern BEVs won’t need replacement, so there is little likelihood of a decent return on their development work. (Especially as the cheapest BEVs now cost only a bit more new than a battery replacement for a 15 year old Leaf or iMiEV).
As for bidirectional charging in the Solterra – it wouldn’t surprise me if yours was capable of it with a minor hardware change (or even just a software update). Toyota for instance recently announced they’ve been experimenting in the US since 2022 with V2G technology using Japanese spec bZ4X’s.
However, even if yours is ‘capable’ of V2G is – it would be a safe bet that the manufacturer would much prefer you buy a new one when they (finally) announce the feature and warranty the battery for use with V2G technology. It could even work ‘out of the box’ now, but do you want to risk your warranty?
Hope that answers your questions, Mark? In the grand scheme of things, when it comes to changes in technology BEVs are now little different to the ICE cars they are replacing.
Cars have been quietly evolving to incorporate new features since the beginning of the automotive era, and this is unlikely to change any time soon. After all, if in 10 years’ time manufacturers built cars that were the same as the ones on sale today – they might have a hard time convincing you to spend the money on ‘more of the same’.
So whilst BEVs did a pretty big technological growth spurt between 2010 to 2018 – they are now following much the same path of incremental change that we have been used to in ICE vehicles. However, when it comes to V2G technology, the wait does seem to have been interminable!
Cheers,
Bryce
Bryce Gaton is an expert on electric vehicles and contributor for The Driven and Renew Economy. He has been working in the EV sector since 2008 and is currently working as EV electrical safety trainer/supervisor for the University of Melbourne. He also provides support for the EV Transition to business, government and the public through his EV Transition consultancy EVchoice.