How It Works: Making sense of EV specifications

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So you’re considering an electric car – say, for example, the Nissan Leaf Plus . It has a 160-kW electric motor, a 62-kWh lithium-ion battery, 6.6-kW onboard charger, it fast-charges up to 100 kW, has an estimated 363-km range, and it’s rated at 2.2 Le/100 km in combined city/highway driving.

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And if all that made your eyes glaze over, you’re definitely not alone. There can be a steep learning curve with electric vehicles (EVs), and we’ll try to take some of the mystery out of it.

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How It Works: Making sense of EV specifications Back to video

A watt is a unit of electric power, and a kilowatt (kW) refers to 1,000 watts. But a kilowatt hour (kWh) is a measurement of energy capacity — power multiplied by hours. It’s equivalent to the energy needed to keep a 1,000-watt (1 kW) electrical appliance (or an electric car) running for one hour.

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In a vehicle, kW is used to measure the power of the electric motor that drives the wheels, while kWh measures the capacity of the battery that supplies the electric motor. Compared to a gasoline car, think of kW as the engine’s horsepower — they translate directly — and kWh as the amount of energy contained in the gas inside the tank.

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The battery’s kWh rating measures how many hours it can deliver its power, but that’s based on standard tests, rather than what the car may actually use in real-world driving. When cruising, an electric car generally uses 1 kWh of energy to travel approximately 4.8 to 6.4 kilometres (three to four miles). With a Tesla Model S, its 100-kWh battery can continuously deliver 100 kW for one hour, and the car uses 1 kWh of energy to go 6.4 kilometres. Multiply 100 kWh by 6.4, and you get the car’s estimated range of about 640 kilometres on a charge.

Our hypothetical Leaf Plus has a 62-kWh battery, giving it an estimated range of 363 kilometres. Just as with a gasoline car, real-world mileage may differ; drive more aggressively and just as you use more gas than the estimated fuel consumption, you’ll use more electricity than the estimated range. Cold weather will also cut into the battery’s range. On any EV, the higher the battery’s kWh rating, the farther it goes before it needs recharging — but that battery will be physically larger and heavier, and correspondingly more expensive.

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When measuring engine power, we’re used to horsepower rather than kW. Translate kW into horsepower by multiplying kilowatts by 1.34 — so our Leaf Plus’ 160-kW motor makes 214 horsepower. Torque is rated using the same pound-feet units for both gasoline engines and electric motors.

Battery charging comes in three levels. Level 1 is a regular 120-volt household outlet; it takes the longest and is mostly viable for plug-in hybrids, which have a much smaller battery (generally 8.8 to 18.1 kWh) or for slowly topping up an EV when there’s no other charging option available. Level 2 is 240 volts, using a specially designed home charging unit or at most public charging stations. All EVs contain an onboard charger to accept Level 1 and 2, and most are rated at 6.6 or 7.2 kW. The higher the number, the faster the battery can charge, and both Level 1 and 2 are alternating current (AC).

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Fast-charging, often called Level 3, is direct current (DC) at 480 volts or more, and is only available at public stations. These are still relatively rare (but growing fast) due to the high cost of installation. There are different types — one of the issues automakers and charging providers face is a lack of standardization — including CCS for most vehicles, CHAdeMO for the Leaf and a few others, and Tesla’s proprietary Superchargers.

Not all vehicles can accept fast charging, and those that do have an extra charging port for it. Most fast-charging sites provide power at 50 kW, but newer ones are 100 to 150 kW, and a few can provide more than 250 kW. Most EVs capable of fast charging accept 50 to 150 kW, depending on the model. If the charging station can deliver higher power than the vehicle can take, it reduces energy flow to match the car’s capacity.

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Rapid fill-ups for minimal downtime are key differentiators at the top level. Tesla’s Superchargers are 150 kW (and its upcoming V3 network is 250 kW). The Porsche Taycan can charge at up to 270 kW — if you can find an appropriate station. At that level, a Taycan can pull in enough energy in four minutes to go 100 kilometres.

But on any EV, the quoted power rates are maximum and the car will fast-charge up to that rate. Numerous factors, including temperature and how charged the battery already is, will affect the recharging rate. The time it takes to fast-charge is usually advertised to 80 per cent of battery capacity, rather than to full. That’s because all charging slows down as a battery cell nears its full capacity, to avoid potential damage — your phone does this, too. The last 20 per cent can take as long as the first 80 per cent did.

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Finally, let’s look at the Leaf Plus’ rating of 2.2 Le/100 kilometers. EVs are more accurately rated in kWh/100 km — how many kilowatt-hours of battery it takes to travel 100 kilometres. For that, the Leaf Plus gets 19.5 kWh/100 km, but consumers aren’t used to that. One litre of gas has the energy equivalent of 8.9 kWh of electricity, and so Natural Resources Canada uses Le/100 km for litre equivalent — how much gas you’d burn to get the same energy the car is using from its battery. An EV uses much less equivalent energy than a gasoline car to go that 100 kilometres, which is why the fuel efficiency rating is so low.

Use either rating to compare EVs, along with all the kW and kWh information you’ve now learned to decipher, to know if you’re getting the electric car that’s right for you.

Author’s note: My thanks to J ohn Voelcker, a reporter and analyst who has covered electric cars for 15 years, for his assistance with this story.

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