See what your new electric car needs to break it in right
Cars
A good number of you are buying your first electric car.
Pure battery electric.
Congratulations.
Whatever you have got, there is a few hot ones out there right now.
But I've been getting some emails asking, how do I break it in?
Because you've been buying gas engine cars all these years that required a break in period.
On your EV, there really isn't one, but there kind of is.
Let's get some background.
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Now the reason you break in a combustion engine car is first and foremost to get these piston rings here, they go around the piston, and seal it to the inside wall of the cylinder.
To marry nicely, to get to know each other, they hone themselves.
They polish together if you will.
So they seal very tightly.
That allows the car to have an especially long life if you do that gradually during the break in period, also to have less blow by, that's a lack of compression, which can reduce the amount of power and the economy of your car.
It's just a good thing to let these guys to get to know each other.
The other part is ditto here.
This is a crankshaft.
This lives down in the bowels of this guy.
But all those shiny areas you see right there, those are called journals.
They're essentially bearings.
And you can see how polished these have become on this used crank.
This is from breaking in a car that you get a very nice micro meeting between those journals and the parts that go around them, which are bearing Which connect to your various rods here, that attach to your pistons.
All of this is literally inside engine 101, but if you allow that to happen, and gradually during break-in, your engine works better, for longer.
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Okay, so without an engine to break in, what is there to deal with?
Well, there is definitely a few components that EVs have in common with combustion engine cars.
The first ne that I want you to think about is breaking in your brakes.
Brakes composed of discs and those pads that clamp on them that we've talked about before are common to all cars.
EVs do not dispense with them.
Now EVs do a lot of their braking Through the motor resistance of regeneration.
So when you tap the brakes you're actually telling a motor to resist your forward movement and thereby capture energy that goes back in the battery.
However you do also use your friction brakes especially in harder more aggressive.
Stops.
And you want that to happen for the first 500 miles rather gradually.
So the pads and the discs get to marry each other nicely, get a nice pattern between themselves, that allows them to wear a little longer, to operate without any kind of vibration or shimmy, and to work more quietly as well.
So avoid panic stops on your EV breaks for the first 500 miles or so.
It's really hard to do a panic stop on electric car but, Don't go out of your way to do it.
Another thing you need to think about is your tires.
Tires on all cars need break in.
A lot of folks don't know this.
The first thing is when new tires come out of the mold at the factory, they have almost a grease on them, a very thin layer.
It's a mold release And it allows them to pop out in the mower, but it's also slippery and slick.
It takes a few hundred miles to that thoroughly wear off in average gradual driving.
Do that until you've got full traction on those tires.
The other thing about break-in tires, by driving gradually the first 500 miles is you are exposed them into their first cycles of heating and cooling, that's called heat cycling in the tire business.
As well as lateral and vertical loads, all of which help to finally sandwich together all those layers of rubber and belts that make up the tire's actual structure.
You want that to happen gradually for the first 500 miles as well.
Tire manufacturers and big tire installers all agree on this, and your EV is no exception Finally, a lot of you ask about the battery and how to condition that for longest energy retention over the years you'll have the car.
And the battery is the most analogous thing to your combustion cars engine.
It has the most to do with the cars character and its livability.
It has the most to do with the cars cost to be honest, just like an engine.
Well what's going on here is something that should be out of your hands.
A car maker has sophisticated management of an electric car's battery.
Both to monitor the way it delivers power, the way it receives power and a charge whether it's on a plug or regeneratively.
As well as temperature control and management.
Of that battery.
All of them are key and all of them are beyond your ability to do much, at least they should be.
If you find a lot of users are saying yeah you gonna drive your EV a certain way to break in the battery.
I would suggest your car maker was asleep at the switch.
This should not be your problem.
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