Author: EVAI

• Summer heat waves do mean a temporary drop in EV range
• They won’t “brick” your battery, but they can accelerate degradation (aging) of the pack
• Avoid 100% charges in the heat if you can

How hot is too hot for EVs, and will the next heat wave brick it, leaving you stranded?

The answer isn’t nearly as sensational as the headlines some have written already this summer, or the questions that follow. 

Just as hot weather puts a range of components for gasoline vehicles under additional stress, heat waves do potentially put more wear on EV batteries. But to put it all in perspective and bust a misinformation myth, that’s all it is for EVs—wear. 

EV batteries can degrade faster in hot weather. They simply don’t fail suddenly though and leave owners stuck—although of course it’s possible that the heat may affect the reliability of the grid or charging stations owners rely on. 

“I can probably count on one hand the number of times we’ve seen a car lose range quickly and unexpectedly, and the team has not had a reason to believe that any of them were due to a single heat wave,” said Garberson, head of growth and research at the EV battery health analysis firm Recurrent.

Recurrent EV battery health

Based on Recurrent’s data from 20,000 EVs, there’s no red-line temperature at which EV batteries “brick,” or at which the damage to batteries suddenly accelerates. 

To put it bluntly, heat isn’t going to brick your EV. 

Fries, cigarettes, and other bad habits

According to Garberson, it’s better to think of EV batteries’ heat exposure as drops in the bucket, or factors that could be likened to human aging and bad habits that might accelerate the aging process like smoking or using tanning beds. Prolonged exposure can alter the rate of the electrochemical reactions in the battery, ultimately leading to a shorter life—defined by whatever point the useful range has degraded to a point where the EV no longer covers the distance, charges, or performs to an expected level. 

As such, battery replacements aren’t an expected expense at a particular number of miles, one that will suddenly render the car unusable. As Recurrent’s data has shown, for instance, Tesla range degradation does happen in a pronounced way over the first three years but really flattens out after that. 

Tesla Model Y range degradation (via Recurrent)

Tesla Model 3 range degradation (via Recurrent)

Due to their smart liquid-cooling systems, frequent fast-charging isn’t likely to affect degradation in Teslas and most other modern EVs. These systems and improved chemistries have eliminated some of the concerns over accelerated degradation.

A few early EVs simply didn’t do well with heat and saw accelerated battery degradation as a result of heat exposure. The most noteworthy of those are the earliest model years of the Nissan Leaf; a new “lizard” battery chemistry introduced in 2015 mostly solved that, and Nissan has since reported back that Leaf battery packs are lasting a very long time. 

Taking care of your EV in the heat

That said, there are some pieces of practical advice for keeping your battery pack safe and cool in the heat—and some of it is the same that applies the rest of the year, only more so. Don’t charge the battery all the way to 100% if you don’t have to. And certainly don’t charge it fully and then park the vehicle. 

Park in the shade if it’s very hot and sunny. Parking over blacktop that’s been in the midday sun will give your battery pack, which is typically on the underside of the vehicle, an unexpected heat soak in the worst possible way. 

Also, leave your battery half-charged if you have to leave it out in the heat, as the battery is more stable that way. Recurrent has noted that if you’re able to set a charge limit (of 70%, for instance), owners can leave the car plugged in during that hot weather and active thermal management might activate at a lower temp than it otherwise would. 

Tesla Model 3 Performance

Don’t be surprised if range takes a heat-wave hit—temporarily

EVs don’t lose a lot of range in most weather that’s considered very hot. That’s because most EV batteries are in their thermal sweet spot right around room temperature—where a vehicle’s climate control system also wouldn’t need to do much work. And their climate systems don’t have to change the temperature of the cabin by that many degrees. 

As Recurrent calculates, EVs might only lose 5% of their useful range at 90 degrees, but by 95 degrees they’ll lose 15% and by 100 degrees the loss adds up to 31% in all—still less than some owners note in winter use. 

Apples to apples, if your vehicle doesn’t have a heat pump and relies on resistive heating not unlike that inside a toaster or hair dryer, cooling an EV 20 degrees costs less energy than heating it 20 degrees. Part of the reason is that EV cooling doesn’t have to work against the waste heat of a combustion engine. 

A bottom line to remember is that cold weather doesn’t cause the permanent damage to EV batteries that hot weather can, but just like the heat, it leads to temporary range loss. Be prepared; follow your battery’s state of charge; and remember that your range estimator is only that and doesn’t see the heat wave coming. 

This preview of the 2025 Chevy Equinox will be updated with full driving impressions when we test drive it soon. What kind of vehicle is the 2025 Chevrolet Equinox? What does it compare to? The 2025 Equinox is a five-seat crossover that compares with vehicles such as the Ford Escape, Nissan Rogue, and Toyota RAV4. Is the 2025 Chevrolet Equinox a…

• CATL to remain in global ‘pole position’

• The all-new Mazda CX-50 hybrid

• Hyundai’s outlook on U.S. EV market

• Auto retailers disrupted by hurricane

• Chat on cyberattacks: 11:00 EDT today

CATL is rapidly climbing the list of the world’s largest suppliers as it pursues an aggressive global growth strategy.

Hyundai Elantra or Toyota Corolla These two popular, compelling compact cars both offer inexpensive entry-level sedans, fuel-sipping hybrid editions, and spicy performance editions. The 2024 Toyota Corolla plugs in a familiar hybrid system—it’s on loan from the Prius hatchback—in a body that’s sedately styled, but still…

The 2025 Porsche 911 GTS brings a hybrid into the sports car lineup Porsche 911 GTS hybrids have 532 hp and 449 lb-ft of torque and do 0-60 mph in 2.9 seconds The 2025 Porsche 911 costs $122,095 while the hybrid GTS costs $166,895 A Porsche 911 hybrid seems like the answer to a question nobody asked. Hybrids were introduced to save fuel, reduce…

Fifth Third Bank has agreed to pay restitution to auto borrowers and a $5 million civil penalty to settle Consumer Financial Protection Bureau allegations it mishandled the “force-placed insurance” it applied to thousands of customer cars, the agency said.

• Some Electrify America locations in California will limit charge to 85%
• “High-utilization station” locations were chosen for the pilot test
• Regular charging and idle fees apply

Electrify America is testing a strategy that may help alleviate wait times at some of its busiest stations by preventing customers from charging all the way to 100%. 

Through a so-called Congestion Reduction Pilot, EA has targeted a series of “high utilization station” locations in Southern California that it’s limiting to a maximum 85% state of charge for DC fast-charging. 

Unlike gasoline vehicles, which fill at about the same rate until the fuel nozzle’s automatic shutoff valve clicks, EVs don’t charge at a uniform rate. Generally speaking, an EV may take the same amount of time—or even more—to top off from 80% to 100% as it does to get to 80%. While the reasons as to why depend on both the EV’s battery pack and the charger, simply put it’s to keep the cells safe and avoid too much heat buildup. 

So for charging-station operators—and EV drivers waiting in line on busy weekends—cutting people off at 85% could save a lot of time. 

The pilot, which began in early July, is solely an Electrify America initiative, the company told Green Car Reports, with the goal simply to reduce congestion. It stated that the locations were chosen for their “high usage, long wait times and the proximity of other stations if customers wanted to charge to 100%.” 

The network explained that it’s helped optimize charger availability with idle fees, hardware updates, and larger-format stations. “Nevertheless, some stations are experiencing long wait times.”

Electrify America chargers

Electrify America was created as part of a Volkswagen diesel settlement, with federal and California regulators, and for the most recent and final cycle of that it faced more scrutiny in California over reliability. Although the company doesn’t connect this pilot to its reliability push, it’s currently gathering feedback on how the limit works at those stations, and evaluating how it affects congestion and queueing. And depending on those takeaways it might roll the pilot out to a greater number of stations. 

As EA states in an information page on the pilot, chargers will simply end the session once the vehicle reaches 85%. The network, which shifted to a station-specific pricing structure in 2023, applies idle fees after a 10-minute grace period, and those will continue to apply as normal, the network noted. 

Even though Tesla laid off nearly its entire Supercharger team, CEO Elon Musk claims that the company plans a $500 million Supercharger expansion this calendar year. Electrify America has also underscored that it’s set to grow by 25% in 2024. 

• Akio Toyoda’s compensation

• Stellantis head of software business leaves

• Hydrogen regulation in California

• The dipstick, no more?

• U.S. EV assembly plant projects underway