Should I wait for all electricity used up and then charge the batteries or charge them immediately for the first time charging after purchasing a new electric vehicle?

Full electricity is always better than less electricity for keeping good working status of electric vehicle batteries. What’s more, electric vehicle batteries have no memory effect on battery electricity volume status. Thus, after buying a new electric vehicle, what we need to do is just to charge them until they are fully charged. It makes little sense to wait for all electricity is fully discharged.  Let’s take lead acid batteries as an example to see why.

a) Sulphuric lead crystallize on the negative electrode

Due to inadequate charging voltage, not all of Lead(II) sulfate (PbSO₄) can be converted into lead oxide (PbO) , which leads to Lead(II) sulfate (PbSO₄) crystallize and the sulfate crystals on the negative electrode become bigger and impact the performance of batteries. Luckily is that this status is reversible and we can restore the performance of the batteries by batteries desulfator charger. 

b) water loss

During charging, water will be ionized into hydrogen and oxygen when the voltage of the batteries rises to certain high level. However, hydrogen and oxygen produced can not be converted into water again. Thus, water loss is occurred and leads to battery capacity decreased. Maintenance-free batteries can help to minimize water loss. Even if maintenance-free batteries, water loss through pressure reducing valves can not be avoided.

c) The positive plate from being damaged.

The positive plate can be eroded and distorted, alternatively, the active materials can be soften and fallen if the lead acid batteries are stored under high temperature environment and in insufficient voltage status. This is irreversible and it is the worst for batteries. Thus, we must keep the lead acid batteries in sufficient voltage status as much as possible to avoid the positive plate from being damaged.