What is a kilowatt hour and why is it used when using battery capacity instead of battery weight?

Question

What is a kilowatt hour and why is it used when using battery capacity instead of battery weight?

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Answer 1

It finally clicked for me when I thought of it like this (this may honestly confuse you more, but it at least helped me understand);

Think of Kilowatts being like “Speed”, and think of Kilowatt Hours being like Distance. To call it a “Kilowatt Hour” would be like calling distance a “Miles-Per Hour… Hour”. Like, if you were going to say you drove 30 miles, you decided to say “I drove 30 miles-per-hour hours.”

So in simplest terms, the Kilowatt Hour is the battery’s capacity (quite literally like the distance/range of an EV). And the number of Kilowatts determines how fast that capacity is depleted.

For example, an EV with a capacity of 70 kWh would get depleted after 3.5 hours at 20 kW.