How long does an electric car battery last?
Here’s what the industry says
What are the insights old EVs can give us?
Thankfully, we have some oldies on the road,like the early Nissan Leafs and Teslas, which are still going strong and disproving skeptics.
A 2020 survey by consumer review magazine Which?found that EV batteries don’t degrade as much as previously feared.
According to the 1,016 electric car owners surveyed,EVsthat were up to three years old showed only a 2% decline in battery capacity. Cars, which were six years old, showed a degradation of up to 8%.
This means that an electric car with a 395km range would only lose 5km of range after three years, and 31.5km after six years.
And that’s with years-old technology.
What do industry experts say?
With modern battery tech, theUS National Renewable Energy Laboratoryestimates that batteries could last between 12 and 15 years in moderate climates.
Similarly, JB Straubel, Tesla’s co-founder and former CTO, saidin a recent interviewthat batteries should last for a good 15 years.
Along the same lines, Britishvolt’s chief strategy officer Isobel Sheldon,has suggesteda 12-year lifespan.
Automakers are taking a cautious approach
Another indication of how long yourelectric vehicle’s batteryshould last is the automakers’ warranties. These warranties cover a period of time or kilometers driven, and guarantee that your battery will retain 70% of its initial capacity by that point.
Carcompanies in the likes of Tesla, BMW, Nissan, and Volkswagen offer a warranty for up to eight years or 160,000 kilometers driven — whichever comes first.
Kia is limiting its warranty to seven years, while Hyundai is more generous with 200,000km.
What to keep in mind
To get a concrete answer we need more EVs on the road and an adequate timespan for their batteries to degrade — say, in the next decade.
Still, the data we can gather from older electric cars and industry insights points to an average battery life of ten years.
That’s more or less the average life of a car itself.
So it’s very likely that your car will bread down before the battery becomes a real issue. And unless you’re planning to keep your EV to the point where it becomes a classic, you shouldn’t worry that much about battery degradation.
Story byIoanna Lykiardopoulou
Ioanna is a writer at TNW. She covers the full spectrum of the European tech ecosystem, with a particular interest in startups, sustainabili(show all)Ioanna is a writer at TNW. She covers the full spectrum of the European tech ecosystem, with a particular interest in startups, sustainability, green tech, AI, and EU policy. With a background in the humanities, she has a soft spot for social impact-enabling technologies.
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