A report from GEOTAB studying 10,000 EVs found that EV batteries can last 20+ years which is far longer than most ICE vehicles.
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Good information for those considering an EV.
Considering the average age of cars on the road is now 12.8 years, that means there must be a substantial amount of cars over 20 years old still on the road.
Every vehicle that I own is older than that. Around here (southern Arizona) it’s common to see 30+ year old cars on the road. We’re doing our part to keep that average age up.
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Must not drive much. It’s nothing for cars that are only 10 years old in New England to have OVER 300k miles. At 20 years it would equate to 600k miles and 30 years almost 1 million miles. I can easily keep a vehicle 30 years if I only drive 5,000 miles a year. Average age of cars is over 12 years which is up from last year.
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Interesting, I generally keep a car for around 10-15 years. The issue here is that a 10-15 year old EV would have virtually no resale at all, given that the battery pack would almost certainly need a replacement at that time. My 10 year old Mustang currently commands about 50% of it’s MSRP. I doubt an EV could match that. But at the same time I wouldn’t be paying for gasoline either, but I would be paying for more frequent tire replacements, and the one time cost of home charging station, and more expensive insurance rates. From a financial standpoint, it’s a wash at best.
Did you read the article? What their data found was that EV batteries are lasting 20+ years. And you do NOT have to replace the battery pack. You can get it repaired at a fraction of the cost.
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The title of this topic suggested that a study has been done with +20 year results. Since very few EVs would be that old, I was skeptical. Reading the article in detail shows that the battery life is all speculative, that batteries have lost major capacity by ten years. If I were to buy an EV and would be doing that for long life, I would need my own definition of what is an end-of-life usefulness for my driving habits. When driving distance is limited when the battery is new, would you want to drive with a battery at 50% capacity?
Yes I did, and the graphs suggest that there’s about a 15% loss in battery degradation in about 4 year span (assuming a mix of level 2 and DC charging). After 10-15 years years, that will be at least a 30%-40% reduction. I’m not going to speak for others, but losing a 1/3 of the original range isn’t acceptable to me. I would not buy a used EV if that were the case. With that said, in another 10 years perhaps batteries will get to the point where their energy density could be high enough that EVs would either have significantly higher range for a given battery size or the batteries will get smaller/fewer, which might make replacing them not as big a deal as it is right now.
When I lived in Ohio surrounded by cars built in the 80s when rustproofing got a lot better from the factory, cars more than 10 years old became pretty common. 60s cars were rust buckets by the 70s. Same for 70s cars in the 80s. Today, a cars or truck is approaching rust bucket by 20 years.
In Florida, 15 to 20 year old cars have little to no rust… but might need a paint job. The mileage depends on the owners commute.
It’s actually considered very acceptable. And as I said you don’t have to replace the whole battery pack. Get it repaired at a fraction of the cost.
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The article projects a long-projected life span for EV batteries based on cell degradation, but cell failure is the condition that will require battery repair before expected.
Cell degradation is one point, but multiple cell failures will cripple the vehicle.
A $13,000 lift table for removing heavy high-voltage batteries was delivered to the service department before the new electric vehicles arrived. Prepared for the future, one lift should be sufficient for now if batteries should last 20 years.
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The data Geotab shows is for BEVS between 4 and 6 years old. Extrapolations beyond a couple-a-three years past 6 are a bit questionable. Maybe they use extrapolations from battery life testing to verify the 20 year life.
They also lump Lithium-Iron-Phosphate (LFP) batteries in with Li-ION batteries. LFP batteries function best when charged to 100% according to Tesla. They used them for a while on Model 3s until their in-house battery factory had the capacity for both the MY and M3. Good thing, since the LFP batteries are made in China ad would be subject to a tariff, and counted against the % domestic content for the tax credit during the last administration.
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Lithium ion degrade with high state of charge and temperature, even if not used.
My 18 year old MP3 player that was new back then and not used much recently got to the point where it lasts only a few minutes on a charge. I doubt the battery was cycled more than 100 times. It has always been kept at room temperature.
Vehicle batteries may be high quality, I don’ t know. Maybe a high temperature accelerated aging test would be the best way to find out.
Like I said; Losing 1/3 of the original range isn’t acceptable to me. It might be acceptable to other people though. I’m looking at it this way; Suppose you were buying a used ICE Corolla, when new it was rated for 35 MPG. But it’s now 10 years old and 100k miles on it. The salesperson tells you “Well, it somehow only gets 23 MPG now. But it probably could get 35 MPG again if you dump another two or three grand into it.” Would that make you (A) want to buy the car? or (B) expect the dealer to cover the cost to bring it back up to spec. For me, the consumer, I went into this expecting the car to perform as advertised or at least reasonably close to it. If the car was going to come up short, I’d expect a hefty discount or want the dealer/seller to bring the car up to my expectations.
Going back to the point of trade in value. If the dealer knows that he’ll have to put in a couple grand with every older (10-15 years old) EV he gets in on trade, that means he’s going to offer less on the trade. Either that or he tries to sell the 10-15 year old EV with the refurbed battery pack at premium and hope that people will bite.
Bad wheel alignment would affect range on an EV, instead of fuel economy, based on what people would notice. I hadn’t thought about that before!
Of course it technically affects the economy of both, but on an EV reduced range will be noticed, since the electricity for charging is cheap, whereas with an ICE, the cost of increased fuel use will be noticed most.
I’m pretty sure you’d notice how well the vehicle is tracking long before the gas mileage.
It says “can”. Doesn’t say “will”. Also electricity costs and road taxes are increasing.
They based their assessment on the thousands of EVs they reviewed. It wasn’t just a random state. It was based on observed FACTS.
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yeah ive seen that study too man and honestly it lines up with what my cousin experienced his leaf battery barely degraded after like 8 years and he drives it every day