How much does electricity weight? Like if you charge your EV, does it weigh more than when the batteries are on “empty”?

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Does “electricty” or whatever it’s called that goes into your electric vehicle battery, have mass or weigh anything? My car has a 100KW battery. Is the weight substantially different when it has 0 charge versus when it is fully charged? It seems like a lot of energy goes into the battery, it must add to the net mass of the vehicle?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Technically yes, but practically no. Imagine a child’s playground slide and a ball next to it on the ground. This is the “uncharged” state of the EV battery. Now move the ball to the top of the slide. This is the “charged” state. There is clearly more potential energy in the system, but the overall mass is the same. This is not a perfect analogy because stored potential energy of an object due to gravity is not the same as chemical potential in a battery, but hopefully it ELI5s how something with more energy doesn’t need to substantially change the weight.

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