Let’s say I have a smartphone or an electric car, it loses 10% of the capacity.
Does it mean that the system consumes 10% more power, or the capacity just lowered, making me spend less electricity/money to charge?
In: Chemistry
The capacity of the battery is lower. There is a physical change in the battery that reduces the amount of charge that can be stored.
You will not spend less money or electricity to charge the battery. Technically a full charge costs less and use less electricity but at the same time, the range it provides is reduced.
On a long trip, you might need to charge one extra time, the cost each time you change will be less but the total charge cost will be the same.
If you drive it to work each day and charge it at home at night the amount of energy you add to the battery will be the same even if the battery has segregated. The difference might be it drops from 100% to 56% instead of 100% to 60% during the drive there and back.
Compare it to it you would put some rocks in the fuel tank of a car with an internal combustion engine and the rocks did not disrupt the function of the car. The result would be you can fit less fuel in the tank. Filling the tank cost less but it provides a lower driving range. The total fuel cost if you drive for a long time will be the same you just need to fill it up a bit more often during long trips.
Looking at a battery percentage is confusing, look at the energy storage instead. A 100kWh battery that degrades by 10% only stores 90kWh of energy.
If the car use 20kWh/100km you range have dropped from 100/20*100 = 500 km to 90/20*100= 450 km
The cost of filling an empty battery is lower because you only add 90kWh instead of 100kWh but at the same time you can derive 50km shorter.
Think of the kWh as a volume of fuel in a car with an internal combustion engine. We do not look at a trip usein 50% of the full tank of a car we look at it as it use a specific volume of fuel. Do the same with electric car and a specific amount of energy
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