Extending Battery Lifetime by Avoiding High SOC

The impact of ageing when using various State of Charge (SOC) levels for an electrified vehicle is investigated in this article. An extensive test series is conducted on Li-ion cells, based on graphite and NMC/LMO electrode materials. Lifetime cycling tests are conducted during a period of three years in various 10% SOC intervals, during which the degradation as function of number of cycles is established. An empirical battery model is designed from the degradation trajectories of the test result. An electric vehicle model is used to derive the load profiles for the ageing model. The result showed that, when only considering ageing from different types of driving in small Depth of Discharges (DODs), using a reduced charge level of 50% SOC increased the lifetime expectancy of the vehicle battery by 44–130%. When accounting for the calendar ageing as well, this proved to be a large part of the total ageing. By keeping the battery at 15% SOC during parking and limiting the time at high SOC, the contribution from the calendar ageing could be substantially reduced.