Used, selling an electric car is a bit like selling a full or half-empty tank depending on whether the battery is almost new or has suffered the ravages of time and use. If a thermal automobile is quite simple to evaluate by professionals, what about electric cars whose residual capacity of the battery pack greatly changes the evaluation of the trade-in price? When this pack weighs 40% of the value of the new car but it is much more expensive if it has to be exchanged for after-sales service on a second-hand occasion, it is better to know which battery you can count on.
All the portable devices that modern society has acquired have demonstrated that hell is never far when the battery fails. Fortunately, in terms of cars, it seems that the situation is less alarming than on our smartphones. Residual capacities greater than 80% after three or four years of use classify the automobile among the good students, but all is not rosy for all that. Non-warranty battery failures can occur with a pack exchange fee of up to €75,000 for a Mercedes EQV, for example, according to Croatian electrical repair company EV Clinic.
Everything should change on March 1 and the uncertainty will dissipate with the arrival of a test offered by Dekra Automotive Solutions, also a German technical control giant. Revealed by the gocar.be site, this test precise to 2.5% makes it possible to evacuate the approximations delivered so far by the on-board computer. The estimate delivered by the car itself, based on the remaining WLTP autonomy, gives an effective capacity that is still usable. It’s better than nothing and alerts especially in the event of capacity dropping to 70% which greatly affects the autonomy and therefore the interest of electric for a potential buyer. Because this threshold passed, the performance of the battery drops much faster.
To find out for sure, Dekra Automotive Solutions has developed a new assessment tool that, in 15 minutes, will do the trick. It draws its information from the very source of the cells and then compares it to its huge database where all the batteries on the market are listed. In practice, the technician connects a box to the OBD diagnostic socket and collects the data from the pack. Then, it stimulates the cells on a peak usage by accelerating the vehicle for a maximum of a hundred meters. The algorithms then come into play to analyze the information collected, delivering a real check-up of the electrical system with a margin of error estimated at 2.5%.
This test can be carried out at Dekra Automotive Solutions but also by other automotive professionals, who can rent the equipment after completing ad hoc training. The implementation in France and the price of the test are not yet fixed but this should be clarified in the coming days.