The consideration of the thermal behavior of electric machines is becoming increasingly important in the machine design for electric vehicles due to the adaptation to more dynamic operating points compared to stationary applications. Whereas, the dependency of machine efficiency on thermal behavior is caused due to the impact of temperature on the resulting loss types. This leads to a shift of efficiency areas in the efficiency diagram of electric machines and has a significant impact on the maximum load capability and an impact on the cycle efficiency during operation, resulting in a reduction in the overall range of the electric vehicle. Therefore, this article aims at analyzing the thermal load limits of induction machines in regard to actual operation using measured driving data of battery electric vehicles. For this, a thermal model is implemented using MATLAB^® and investigations to the sensitivity of model parameters as well as analysis of the continuous load capacity, thermal load and efficiency in driving cycles under changing boundary conditions are conducted.