It seems logical that a car with a full battery is not heavier than when it is empty. Cell phones always seem to weigh exactly the same. However, fully charged batteries may increase the weight of electric cars.
Conventional cars with a full tank are heavier than those with an empty tank. Since a liter of gasoline weighs about one kilogram, with a full tank, you simply have additional passenger weight on board, which in turn affects consumption. But what about electric cars? After all, only charging and discharging begins chemical processes, but no substance is transferred into or out of the batteries.
However, since Albert Einstein, we have known that energy, like light, has mass. That is, it has weight. Decisive here is the most famous and perhaps at the same time the most famous formula in the world E = mc². Specifies that energy has weight, this also applies to electricity stored in an electric vehicle’s battery.
333 million Tesla Model S
but how much? The Tesla Model S battery weighs about 750 kg empty. According to 24Auto.de, it should be about three nanograms heavier when fully charged. A nanogram is one billionth of a gram. That makes 333 million fully charged Tesla Model S cars about a gram heavier than the same number of empty Tesla cars.
However, Auke Hoekstra, an electric vehicle expert affiliated with Eindhoven University of Technology, wonders if Einstein’s formula can be used in this matter. “And even then, it is not true. One gram equals about 90 million megajoules, which is 25 million kilowatt-hours and that means 25,000 Tesla Model S cars fully charged at 100 kilowatt-hours.” Hoekstra believes that the ions are mainly displaced when the battery is charged and discharged and wonders if this is causing the weight change.
theory and practice
Experts and hobbyists also consider this question on the American Physics Stack Exchange. Most people would agree that although the battery gets heavier in theory when it’s charged and lighter when it’s empty, you can’t measure the effect in practice. Someone writes: “Like you light up when you close your eyes.” “It costs energy so it gets lighter, but the effect is immeasurably small.”
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