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Automotive vocabulary · Electric Vehicles and Batteries

State of charge

Meaning in automotive, with examples

nounCommon term

In automotive, state of charge means: How full a battery is at a given moment, shown as a percentage of its usable capacity. The battery management system estimates it continuously.

In Turkish: şarj durumu, şarj seviyesi, doluluk oranı

How it is used

Engineers write SOC or SoC. Charging speed depends on it: DC fast charging is quickest at low SOC and slows down above about 80%. It is different from state of health (SOH), which shows how much the battery has aged.

Example sentences

  1. The car arrived at the charger with a state of charge of 12 percent.

  2. For long-term storage, keep the battery at a state of charge of around 50 percent.

Common collocations

  • SOC window
  • low state of charge
  • target state of charge
  • state of health
  • BMSShort for battery management system: the electronics that monitor the voltage, current and temperature of the cells, keep them balanced and protect the battery from overcharging, deep discharge and overheating.
  • battery packThe large high-voltage battery that stores energy for an electric or hybrid vehicle. It is made of many cells grouped into modules, with cooling and control electronics in one housing.
  • driving rangeThe distance a vehicle can travel on a full battery or a full tank. For electric cars it is usually given according to an official test cycle such as WLTP.
  • DC fast chargingHigh-power charging in which the charging station supplies direct current straight to the battery, bypassing the car's on-board charger. Typical power ranges from 50 kW to over 300 kW.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Electric Vehicles and Batteries

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