E-car battery discharged? What to do in the event of a breakdown
Were you visiting your parents in the country without any possibility of charging or you simply forgot to charge the battery of your e-car at night and now you are standing on the side of the road with an empty battery? In this guide we will show you what to do in this unfavorable situation and how you can prevent it in the future.
Juicy and powerless: Discharged e-car battery as the reason for a breakdown
There you are now – the remaining range shows a 0, far and wide there is no charging station in sight. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve been stuck in traffic for hours or underestimated the distance to the next rest stop, the first thing you should do is either the manufacturer’s service hotline call or the breakdown service to contact.
Especially if the new car warranty is still valid, you should dial the manufacturer’s number first. Mostly your car will then to the next charging station brought, however, if a major problem is found with the battery, you may be given a replacement car. This is possible, for example, if your battery is defective and can no longer be charged at all.
Otherwise you have no choice but to wait for ADAC and Co., because unlike with combustion engines, you can’t get a can of petrol from the nearest gas station. A portable power storage, with which the battery can be charged to a minimum, is unfortunately not yet available. However, the technology is already in the testing phase, but it doesn’t seem to be a real option yet.
Have an e-car towed away – annoying but not so wild
Note that towing an electric car is not that easy. It is not possible to pull a Stromer onto the loading area without generating energy in the electric motor via at least one axle. If the on-board system is not active at the same time, the resulting induction voltages permanent damage to the control electronics cause. However, as long as you point out to the breakdown service that it is an electric vehicle, this is not a big problem. In this case the car is loaded.
Save battery: This is how you save energy
As long as you pay attention to the on-board computer and keep an eye on the level of the battery, this scenario should not occur. the ADAC evaluated in 2021 how prone e-cars are to breakdowns. The result shows that electric cars exceptionally reliable are. Only 4.4 percent of all operations could be traced back to batteries, electric motors or charging technology. The problem is much more often the starter battery, which was the culprit in 54 percent of the cases (Source: Car picture).
Unfortunately, the charging infrastructure for e-cars is not yet sufficiently developed to call a dead battery completely avoidable. If your navigation system or a charging station app should let you down, you can at least try yours allocate remaining energy.
There are the following ways of saving enough electricity to get to the next but one stop: First and foremost is the recuperation. If you adapt your driving style enough, you can go much further with the same battery level.
If your model has one Eco mode available, you can save even more energy. In some vehicles, the eco mode is also linked to the so-called sailing mode.
In this guide you can read exactly what these terms mean and how you can best drive when the battery level is low:
