How many years does an electric car battery last?

Many people are wondering how long electric car batteries will last. Because, batteries are bound to degrade at some point. As a lithium-ion battery is charged and discharged, it will degrade over time.

This is very simple, just like with laptops. After going through so many charge cycles to the point that the battery dies and the only way to get it to work is to constantly have to plug it into an outlet. Depending on the machine, this usually occurs after two to four years.

So what about electric car batteries?

Considering some of the electric cars that have been around for a while, like the Nissan Leaf or the early Teslas, they’re still going strong so far. A 2020 survey by consumer review magazine Which found that EV batteries don’t degrade as much as people previously feared.

According to a survey of 1,016 electric car owners, electric cars that are up to 3 years old only lose 2% of their battery capacity. Cars that are 6 years old have degraded to 8% of their batteries. This means that an electric car with a range of 395km will lose only 5km after three years and 31.5km after six years.

And that is with battery technology that is quite old.

What do industry experts say?

With modern battery technology, the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates electric car batteries can last 12 to 15 years in mild climates.

Similarly, JB Straubel, co-founder and former CTO of Tesla, said in a recent interview that electric car batteries should last well for 15 years.

Of course, battery life also depends on the goals of electric vehicle owners, but the 15-year mark should be achievable in most cases. In the same vein, Britishvolt’s Chief Strategy Officer Isobel Sheldon has suggested a battery life of 12 years.

Automakers seem… more cautious

Another indication of electric vehicle battery life is the length of warranties offered by the automakers. The warranty policy covers a period or number of driving kilometers and guarantees that your battery will retain 70% of its original capacity at that time.

Car manufacturers like Tesla, BMW, Nissan and Volkswagen offer warranties of up to 8 years or 160,000 km driven – whichever comes first.

Kia is limiting the warranty to seven years, while Hyundai is more generous with 200,000 km.

Things need to notice

To get a concrete answer, we need more electric vehicles on the road and the right amount of time to see how their batteries degrade – over the next decade, for example.

However, data from older electric vehicles and industry insights suggest an average battery life of ten years.

That’s also the average lifespan of a car itself!

So chances are your car will have problems before the battery becomes a real problem. And unless you’re planning on driving your EV to the point where it’s become “ancient,” you shouldn’t worry much about the battery dropping in quality.