How to increase the range in the Renault Zoe electric car by occasionally draining the EV battery
I recently tried draining the battery pack of my wife’s 2020 Renault Zoe to see what would happen. I drove it down to 1%, parked the car and then drained the remaining energy by keeping the heating on max power. It took extremely long before it showed 0% and 0 km range left. I then left the empty Renault Zoe electric car for a few hours and then slow charged it on our home socket. That full charge took about 35 hours from 0-100%.
EV range consistently increased with 60km in the Renault Zoe
To my greatest surprise the range went up from 260 km to 320 km! The extra range is still there and we are able to drive the car much further on the same 100% battery charges we did afterwards. I have tried the same with my other electric car, a 2020 Opel Ampera-e / Chevrolet Bolt EV. But there the battery drain experiment did not result in any additional range. I will be checking also if the Renault Zoe battery state of health (SoH) has increased by using my favorite OBD2 Bluetooth Dongle and app.
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Feedback
Why is this happening? I don’t have an explanation for this, maybe you can tell me? Did you ever drain the battery of your electric car and did it also result in additional range? Let me know your experience, comments and suggestions in the comments and I am looking forward to hearing from you.