For cars, maybe, but my org has had a long line of HP laptops with swollen battery packs within a year of use. No doubt there are companies out there that would rather have the extra hour of runtime on some journalists review fact sheet than a battery that doesn't put their customers at risk.
I hounded Dell for months and got them to replace I guess 2 or 3 dozens of Optiplex DL270 motherboards and it felt good: forcing them to take the cost for their shoddy work.
The times I had an issue with an HP business laptop I called them and either a technician came to my office and replaced the part (a screen in that case) or they sent a spare after confirming I was capable to change it myself.
Good point, and it is/does for many products. EVs beyond Tesla all do this for instance.
I do wish there was a little more of treating your users like adults though. If I have enough battery to make an urgent call, but it puts me under the 20% recommended, I want to make that call at the cost of long term battery life.
My products treat users like adults, I wish it was a more common consideration.
My Note 8 phone has a charge battery notification at 15 percent.
I just replaced that phone, and yes with another one because I happen to like that model a lot, and my old one did 1500+ cycles with respectable battery capacity remaining. I replaced it due to a cracked screen, not battery trouble.
My general experience has been to avoid fully charging the battery and leaving the device on the charger, plus avoiding high demand use under 15 to 20 percent adds very considerably to longer term battery health.
This has played out across a number of devices, lenovo laptop, various phones.
After, say a few hundred cycles, it's very important to avoid taking the battery below 5 percent or even to zero. When that happens, the battery capacity is reduced every time, and it's by a significant amount.
As batteries discharge their voltage drops. This is known as a discharge curve. The curve is based on a constant current, different current draws have different curves.
Battery capacity is guessed by the Voltage output at the current draw when measured.
Laptops usually throttle components, reducing current draw, when they fall below certain percentages. This prolongs the battery so that last 10% really does last longer.
This article goes into some nitty gritty details if you're curious.
10% vs 30% corresponds to whatever arbitrary voltage they select but I doubt they are selecting for battery durability over all else since marketing max run time is so important.
Automotive engineer that doesn’t work on EVs here… there is a lot that goes into the battery. Heating and cooling elements for instance. You’re right, max runtime is the number one factor, but this can be gamed just like MPG ratings.
I’m not sure many reviews are checking 0-60 times at 20% battery for example.
My EV has a hilarious “miles remaining” number that INSTANTLY changes when the HVAC is on, doesn’t matter if it’s only slightly on or not, I instantly “lose” 8 or 9%. It’s pretty loose. As to what I actually get? Doesn’t really matter, never even compared to rating, mfgs know we use these cars for city travel.
The small percentage of EVs you see on long haul highway, owners already know to carefully plan their trips.
Depends on the locations and cars in question; on the east coast there are lots of DC Fast charging stations between anywhere and anywhere else.
This is double true for Tesla where there are superchargers nearly everywhere. With access superchargers, road trips are roughly as complex as driving a diesel with a 5-8 gallon tank.
Also the tesla UI is very good at managing the trip so it is trivial to offload the "how do I get there including charging" task to the UI.
