How to Boost Your Electric Car’s Performance [and Driving Behavior]

Where or how to charge up your EV is no longer a problem.

Electric vehicles (EVs) are a revolution on the roads by comparison to internal combustion engine (ICE) cars. This is more than skin deep — to boost your electric car’s driving experience, you need to have a bit of a revolution in the way you run and keep your car.

In the nine sections below, we look at areas in which you will find you will be changing your driving habits, and as we will discuss this can involve not actually driving it!

9 Driving Habits to Boost Your Electric Vehicle’s Performance

#1 — Charge at home — not the forecourt

Your battery is the hardest-working part of the EV. It has to go through chemical changes every day in charge and discharge. If you give it a beefy fast charge every day this will shorten its overall healthy life. That’s why you should charge at home where possible on a trickle charge.

Fast charging puts a lot of heat and energy into the battery and these can cause irreversible chemical changes that will reduce the EV’s range over time. A Level 1 or Level 2 charge is fine for that — a Level 1 charger comes direct from your home’s mains electricity and is classed as being up to 1.9kW (120v and 16 amps). A Level 2 charge is up to 19.2kW (240v and 80 amps). If you have a 60kWh battery, you’ll get a full charge at 7kW in eight hours.

DC fast chargers can push a lot more juice in than that. Some of the faster chargers can put in 350kW and that in theory can give you an 80% charge in just eight minutes! Most EVs on the market today just won’t take that sort of power but will take the maximum their systems will allow. Teslas for instance can take up to 120kW.

If you use a DC fast charger occasionally — on a road trip to see your folks for example — that is fine. You could even give it fast charges for a week of big distances if most of the rest of the year you’re treating it nicely. In human terms that could be like going for a nightly jog to stay fit but only competing in a half marathon every so often. If you went all out at competition pace on a half marathon every day, you’d soon do yourself damage!

#2 — You don’t need a ‘full tank’

While ICE cars can actually be more fuel efficient with a full tank, it has been shown that electric vehicle batteries have a longer life duration when not consistently charged to full capacity. That means you should consider only charging your car to 80% where possible.

To an ICE driver this may seem unfamiliar with many people having enough fuel to drop everything to drive to check on their elderly mother every day. The fact is unless you are a commercial driver or travel as part of your work, most of your daily use of a car — even with a relatively small battery — will need just a fraction of your battery.

The average distance of a commute to work in the USA is 16 miles. Many smaller EVs will have 160 miles of potential charge. That would allow you at a pinch to charge the vehicle over the weekend and then not worry about plugging it in until Friday night. There will be additional driving — being the Mom or Dad Taxi for the kids, seeing friends and doing your weekly shop will add the miles but even if you ended up doing 64 miles a day then you’d only need to plug your EV in once every two days.

You should also try to avoid constantly going to too low a charge. Research has shown that keeping your battery at a minimum cushion of 20% will maintain its state of health to optimum levels for the life of the vehicle.

You therefore have a cushion of 60% of the battery to use daily on normal travel. With a 160-mile battery on a 64-mile daily use this would be 40% of your battery. It would therefore make sense to charge it every night to 80% or at a pinch every two nights.

#3 — Be brave with your battery

Don’t be paranoid about your battery levels! You’ll soon realize that like a car fuel tank when the battery level meter reads zero you will have a mile or two to get to a plug. It can raise your pulse a bit though!

Many roadside recovery companies have chargers in their vans now to top customers up enough to get to a charger. This is a step better than for ICE cars as they don’t generally keep a tank of gas! If you do find yourself coasting to a halt you won’t be in trouble for long. In most cases you will be looking for a charger by that stage so the trip won’t often be far, and with an extension cable you might even be able to plug in at a nearby bar or restaurant (paying for their kindness by an hour or two tasting their food!)

#4 — Route plan via charging stations

ICE car drivers have range anxiety too! They are are always looking for a fuel station and can’t get their juice just anywhere. EVs have the advantage of being plugged in at home instead of having to drive a mile or two to the gas station.

The in-car navigation systems in most EVs will show you a network of charging stations that are available over a trip. Many will help you route plan a longer route between them too. In using such route planners, you can plan to maintain the battery within the 20%/80% envelope discussed above, perhaps having a longer charge while you eat lunch and a shorter stop while you get coffee or have a leak.

Linked to this, you will soon work out more economical routes. As we will see in the next section, EVs aren’t as economical at high speed as ICE vehicles, so it may pay to take a smaller road at lower speeds to get where you’re going. Obeying the speed limit, you could still only add a few minutes to your journey than by going at highway speeds on bigger roads thanks to the route being more direct and shorter.

#5 — Watch your acceleration and speed!

In an ICE car at the lights, you will often bury the gas pedal with your foot to maximize pull-away speed. It will move away slowly and then accelerate more quickly as the engine revolutions build.

If you do that in a Tesla, you’d be at 60 in sub 3 seconds! This is because torque is instant from the motors unlike ICE cars and if your foot is still buried in the foot well it will continue accelerating at the eye popping pace it started out at right up to top speed. This is why in most driving you can go easy on the accelerator pedal as you’re not in a quarter mile race and (unless you want to have fun with an ICE sports car beside you) can afford just to accelerate gently. Regarding economy, gentler acceleration uses less battery juice too.

Speed. ICE drivetrains pass through a gearbox before transmitting power to the wheels. Driving economically, you’d want it to sit at (roughly) 2000 revolutions per minute (RPM) all the time — yet at 2000RPM you’ll be doing 20mph in first, 30mph in second, 40mph in third and 60mph in fifth. Since the engine is running at the same RPM, you’re getting similar economy from the fuel at 20mph as you would at 60.

That isn’t the case with EVs — you will have a step-down gearbox to reduce the RPM of the wheels from the speed of the motors but that’s it. As with acceleration there is a linear relationship between the speed you are going and the amount of electricity, you’re using to achieve that speed. If 20mph were to use double the current of 10mph, then 60mph would use a third more electricity per second than at 40mph. The answer is not to be in a hurry to get where you’re going!

#6 — Coast/engine brake

Take your foot off the accelerator when on a hill or coming to a halt at a junction or in traffic. It pays to drive more smoothly as you add range to the battery.

EVs recharge their batteries when you are moving along without putting your foot on the gas pedal. This is known as regenerative braking, where the motors turn into generators when current isn’t passing through them to turn. Some car makers claim you can get as much as 20% extra range from regenerative braking.

On many models of EVs you can adjust the regenerative braking levels to an optimum so, often enough, you never use the footbrake to come to a halt. While one of the upshots is that you may never have to replace your brake pads while you own the car, it also changes your driving style as you know you’re getting more range by coasting on hills and slowing down smoothly at junctions and in traffic.

#7 — Eco Mode — do you need full power?

In an ICE car much of the electrical work is done by the engine. This is why car makers have come out with the idea of the ‘soft hybrid’ that has a 48v battery to power things like air con and in-car entertainments without using more gas. The soft hybrid has no electric motor — just an extra battery.

Everything in an EV takes electric. Heating? In an ICE vehicle hot air comes from across the engine — an EV will have a heater to warm the air and then blows it through the car. Both processes cost battery. In this case rather than freeze, use the heated seats as these warm you up as if you were sitting on a radiator — far more efficient than air con.

Teslas in particular have a lot of fun gadgets to play with. Your teenage kids will play fart noises all day long! Sadly, the car is then ‘farting electrons’ from the battery instead of driving the car. Many vehicles will have an ‘eco mode’ that cuts these processes out and collectively improve the range of the vehicle in doing so. Cut the hifi, air con and even navigation system and you’ll soon stop emitting waste electrons for your drive.

Eco mode also reduces the power output when you put your foot down. Yes, you may have a car that has spunk at the lights but you won’t use the ‘Insane Mode’ all the time as most EV drivers are very sane. You don’t have to be a ‘knit your own sandals’ type to see the benefits of driving a little more relaxed to achieve greater mileage!

#8 -Not too hot or cold

EVs need a cooler optimum internal temperature to operate than ICEs but are much less efficient in colder weather. Batteries hate temperature extremes. Too cold and they lose efficiency (and therefore range) badly. Too hot and the battery cooling system will kick in, taking more battery power to keep the temperature down for safety (at certain temperatures the battery will explode but the car would have shut itself down long before).

The answer is to get the vehicle out of the elements if possible. Keep the EV under the shade if you can’t avoid the heat and get it into a heated garage if you are in the thick of a Midwest winter. If you can maintain a sensible battery temperature range in all weathers, then you should optimize range and battery life.

#9 — Let it drive you!

Think you’re a good driver? Ask the computer driving it — it will soon show you your faults! If you are an efficiency geek on a long drive, then let the car do the driving for you. Cruise control systems are (with the exception of the version of Tesla’s Autopilot (being beta tested now) not for using in all traffic conditions, but where they are advised for use by the manufacturer are far more efficient at driving than you are. Computers don’t have bad habits and only control the steering, braking and acceleration in a sensible way. In flowing traffic or on an empty road the car will often do a better job than you will!

Remember though that cruise control / Autopilot systems are still very fallible. You need to remain switched on. All cruise control-related accidents have had a human element where over-confidence in the system allowed the driver to stop monitoring the vehicle. Think of it like a deep-sea ship that sails itself but with a watch of alert crew and officers being its eyes and ears the whole time. The Captain will lose their job if they hit the rocks — you won’t come off lightly if you have a sleep and the car navigates under a truck!

Final thoughts

Much of this article has been about getting the optimum efficiency out of your vehicle. These ten main points can bring about a fundamental shift in the way you operate your car though. You won’t be heavy on the gas pedal, will let the car roll instead of hitting your brakes and will use different roads to get around too. In letting the computer take over on longer legs (as long as you retain your focus on the road!) you will optimize the driving you do and could well get close to the claims of range made by the manufacturer.

EVs are a revolution on the road and they are fundamentally different beasts. If you make changes in your driving habits — shaking off the old ways of driving an ICE — then you will maximize your efficiency and the life of the vehicle on the road. In his ramblings on Twitter, Elon Musk has already suggested that the ‘million-mile car’ could well be on the road today. If driven that way, so you may never have to buy another car again!

Next steps…

Now that you know how to boost your electric car’s performance, you can find out how energy efficient your home is by taking my free energy efficiency quiz, which can also help reduce your electric bill and save you money.