Real-time vehicle data to extend battery life.

Increase the residual value and resale price of your electric vehicles by preserving the health of their batteries.

With an average price estimated by Bloomberg at $151 per kWh in 2022 (source), lithium-ion car batteries remain expensive, despite a drop of nearly 80% since 2013. As a result, the battery can account for up to 50% of the total price of a new electric car, and potentially even more as the vehicle ages.

It is therefore no surprise that its condition is closely scrutinized by leasing operators, who are highly sensitive to the issue of residual value.

A degraded battery, or the risk of a dispute after the transaction

Fortunately, a complete battery replacement is rarely necessary and remains the exception. Among a community of 15,000 vehicles tracked by the U.S. website Recurrent, only 1.5% have had their battery replaced during their lifetime (source). Nevertheless, a battery’s capacity gradually degrades over its lifetime, depending on how the user charges and discharges it.

This raises a crucial question when the time comes to resell the vehicle: how should the potential gap between the range stated in the vehicle’s technical specifications and its actual range be handled? Can a dealer take the risk of having to settle a dispute with a dissatisfied buyer?

This is why it is necessary to measure a battery’s State of Health (SoH) before it is put back on the market, so that the buyer can be given a range figure that accurately reflects reality. To do this, the manufacturer can perform a precise — but paid — diagnostic. Various players also offer tools or devices that plug into the vehicle’s OBD port:

1. Full charge. The vehicle is charged to 100%, then used normally.
2. Real-world discharge. The vehicle is driven until the battery is nearly empty, within a given timeframe.
3. Data analysis. The provider collects the data transmitted by the device, then estimates the battery’s condition and its maximum remaining range.

As one might expect, for a dealer, this multi-day analysis process is hardly compatible with the demands of the used-car business, built on fast inventory turnover and process optimization. And even then, once the battery’s loss of efficiency has been measured, the dealer can only lower the resale price — and thereby record the loss in residual value and margin. But conversely, shouldn’t prevention come before cure?

Prevention is better than cure

Indeed, preserving battery capacity must remain a key concern throughout the entire lease term, not just when the vehicle is returned. Battery performance is largely determined by the driver’s usage habits, with many factors that can degrade it.

The right habits to adopt, according to chargemap.org:

• Stay within the 20–80% charge range, avoiding excessive use above 80% or below 20%.
• Limit fast charging, which stimulates the battery cells too aggressively.
• Avoid temperature swings, by parking the vehicle under cover and activating battery preheating before charging and before starting in cold weather.

These guidelines must be followed by the driver throughout the duration of the contract, to keep the battery performing at its best. It is then up to the lessor to make sure these instructions are properly followed. To do so, it needs continuous, real-time access to the vehicle’s technical data.

As it happens, most new cars come natively equipped with an onboard telematics device designed to transmit technical information to the manufacturer at high frequency. Manufacturers make this data available to vehicle owners for a fee, which allows leasing operators to collect the raw information and then harmonize, reprocess, and exploit it. But this tedious collection and processing work — especially when several different manufacturers are involved — remains far from the core business of leasing companies.

Echoes, a neutral server and data provider

This is where Echoes, a neutral server independent from car manufacturers, offers a value proposition that meets the new needs of leasing companies. By gathering vehicle technical data from every manufacturer, Echoes collects and harmonizes all this information, exposing it in a uniform way in its dedicated CarLocate and CarFleet interfaces.

All the critical information to manage your vehicles on the road, in real time, in a single tool:

• Location and mileage of every vehicle, continuously updated.
• Battery charge level, to monitor the state of your electrified fleet.
• Mechanical and accident alerts, to react without delay.

Better still: for electric vehicles, Echoes also collects the data of each charging session — power, duration, amount of energy charged. This makes it possible to produce a weekly or monthly charging report for each vehicle. Nothing is easier, then, than analyzing this report, spotting any bad practices, and contacting the customer to discuss their charging habits and raise their awareness of the right practices to make the battery last.

In time, as the electrification of fleets progresses, fleet operators and rental companies alike will have every interest in putting charging policies in place to make users aware of best practices. This is where real-time vehicle data monitoring truly comes into its own: helping to define realistic charging policies on the one hand, and monitoring their proper application on the other.