Electric car glossary: EV batteries, charging stations, PHEVs explained

Thanks to electric vehicles, the automotive world has changed rapidly and seems to look completely different from one month to the next. Between all the new vehicles, tech, and features, there are hundreds of new ideas and terms to learn in order to become an EV master. That’s the bad news. The good news is that you don’t need to be anywhere near an EV master to own and drive an electric vehicle, and you certainly don’t need to know the ins and outs of everything going on under your car to enjoy the drive.

You need to know a few foundational terms to understand how to charge and care for an EV, especially the batteries. We’ve gathered a handful of the most common and important terms here. Let’s take a quick run through the EV terms you need to know.

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Electric Car Battery Terms You Should Know:

Battery Pack: The battery pack is a completed system within an EV that includes the battery modules, cells, and related hardware.

Kilowatt: A kilowatt (kW) is equivalent to 1,000 watts, and is a unit used to measure an EV’s power from its batteries.

Kilowatt-Hour: A kilowatt-hour (kWh) is a measure of how many kilowatts an EV can supply within an hour.

Amp: Amp is short for ampere, which measures how fast an electric current flows. The term is typically used to describe charging speeds.

Cathode: Cathodes are the part of the battery where the current exits.

Solid-State Batteries: You may hear the term solid-state thrown around when talking about upcoming EV technologies. Solid-state batteries lack the liquid electrolyte that lithium-ion batteries require, which makes them lighter, safer, and more energy dense. Automakers are hard at work developing solid-state batteries and the methods to produce them, but the technology isn’t yet ready for primetime.

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