Yes. The internal resistance of the battery will go up, so for the same amount of energy discharged into the drvetrain more will be lost to heat, and on charge more will be lost to heat. Also, your cars drivetrain will wear and become less efficient over time.

Both are relatively small effects, but all taken together the 30 minute original time (consuming 3.6kwh at 7.2kw to go say 14.4 miles) will become say 4.8kwh of charge taking 40 minutes at 7.2kw.

 

My ZOE's 5 years old and I haven't noticed any difference. I suspect the increase in internal resistance is small. It still rapid charges at 43kW to more than 80% when the battery is warm.

I've not seen any posts on EV sites reporting that the charging rate of old EV's has dropped. Battery capacity degradation varies with cars and is more noticable in cold weather. The batteries hold less charge when cold and other factors reduce your winter range.

 

My Leaf is 9 years old. When new it could regen at 30kw and rapid charge at 50kw. Today it will only go above 10kw of regen when the battery is both warm and almost empty, and the last time I rapid charged it did not go above 20kw (it's been a while as I don't/can't use the car for journeys requiring rapid charges anymore). I forget the exact internal resistance reading but seem to remember it being above 150 mohm.

 

Thanks guys for some insights into your real experience. I hope to keep my car for 10 years, and hopefully will reduce the mileage it does by quite a bit in 5 years time, so hopefully I can just ride that performance curve down to the bottom.

From an environmental/recycling point of view, I hope we start to see a situation over the next few years where my local dealer can replace the knackered cells in my battery (I understand the cells usually don't wear evenly?) so I can keep my range and charging rates at a good level for longer without the need to sell the car and buy a new one. I'm sure the car manufacturers will see it that way.....not!

 

Over ten years the degradation will be on all cells, not just a few, so partial pack replacements for calendar ageing is not helpful. Full pack replacements with the old cells going onto secondary storage (house/grid batteries) are more helpful and where i'm looking along side considering something newer and leased.