There are still plenty of reasons why you might not want an electric car including the up-front cost, the limited driving range of some models and the lack of a convenient charging spot at your home. But one factor that concerns people who like to keep a new vehicle until it’s a very old one is battery lifespan.
We’ve all experienced a drop-off in performance of our cellphone batteries after a few months of use and EVs employ similar lithium-ion battery tech, though the huge size of those car batteries means they cost thousands of dollars to replace, not just hundreds.
But the researchers behind a new study for Recurrent Auto suggest that battery lifespan might not be such a big worry after all. They found that in a community of 15,000 electric cars only 1.5 percent of batteries have been replaced if you exclude massive recalls like the one affecting the 2017-19 Chevy Bolt.
The team also points out that most battery replacements happen when the car is still covered by a warranty. While a regular manufacturer car warranty might only last for three or five years, the federal minimum warranty on an EV battery is eight years or 100,000 miles (161,000 km), and many automakers offer much more peace of mind than that. Rivian, for example, covers its batteries for 175,000 miles (282,000 km). And it’s just as well, because in a separate study Recurrent found that battery replacement could cost anywhere between $3,000-23,000 depending on model.
Related: Insurers Are Totaling EVs For Minor Battery Issues, And That’s A Problem For Everyone
The other big takeway is that battery degradation isn’t linear. An EV might suffer a marked drop in electric driving range in the first 20,000 miles (32,000 km), but stabilizes after that and can remain almost the same for several years.
There are couple of caveats with this study however. The first is that Recurrent’s mission is to provide more “confidence in pre-owned electric car transactions” and to “accelerate the overall adoption of electric vehicles.” We’re not suggesting that results aren’t 100 percent valid, but Recurrent is hardly a neutral party. The company also admits that the relative youth of the EV sector (30 percent of EVs on the road in 2022 were under six-years-old) means we won’t have a full picture about battery lifespan for some time, including the effects of long-term rapid DC charging on battery health.
