this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2026
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Adding more batteries increases the weight, though, which in turn makes the motors work harder, and therefore makes them use more energy to do the same thing.
That's not that big of a deal for long-range trips, on which you typically don't have to accelarate often.
Keeping the car going at a certain speed depends on several types of resistance, most importantly air resistance, but not really on weight.
More weight plays a bigger role for energy consumption in urban ares, where the weight needs to be accelerated more often than on the highway, the mileage per kWh is yet typically higher than on the highway due to the lower speed and less air resistance.
What I'm trying to say: I'd pick the bigger battery any time over the smaller one, if the price is reasonable.
EVs are already heavy. The weight from some additional batteries don't play a big role.
Frequent acceleration/deceleration driving like city driving is also significantly more efficient in EVs because of regenerative braking. ICE just lose all that energy they spent accelerating when the have to stop 500m later, which destroys their efficiency.
I was comparing EVs with different weight and not comparing EVs with ICE vehicles, though.
And in that case the heavier EVs are less efficient than more leightweight versions even with regenerative breaking, because the process of accelerating and breaking cant' regenerate all energy that was spent for accelerating.