12 ms·

>A battery lasts 1000-3000+ cycles. Modern lithium typically wears out due to time, not cycle count (when used outside of extremes).

marcosdumay 3y ago
Still, if recharged once a day, that's 3 to 10 years, what's completely in line with the time durability. The time degradation will just bias the lifetime into the short end of that interval. If you have an electric car, and don't use it often, then your numbers will be worse. But if you use it weekly (what is normal for lightly used cars), you need about an year and half to reach the OP's number and become better than the next best alternative.
- wlesieutre 3y ago
  A charge cycle is one full cycling of capacity, such as 0% to 100% once, 30% to 80% twice, or 70% to 80% ten times. I'd be surprised if there are any EV drivers consistently doing a charge cycle every day, outside of commercial vehicles where the battery size was picked to not be any bigger than its daily route.
  - jandrese 3y ago
    It's not that simple. Going from 100% to 0% is far more damaging to the battery than going from 80% to 70%. This is why most EVs are so conservative with their battery usage, they're trying to avoid needing replacement batteries before the rest of the car has fallen apart.
    - wlesieutre 3y ago
      Right, just generalizing on how charge cycles are counted, but I'd probably file regular 0-100s into grandparent comment's "(when used outside of extremes)" The average American drives around 13500 miles per year[1], so supposing a car with 250 mile range that's 54 charge cycles, just about one charge cycle per week. The vast majority of that will mostly be with under 20% of a cycle per day, plus a handful of outlier days every year with longer trips. 1000 cycles at 54 cycles per year would be 18.5 years, and 3000 cycles would be 55.5 years. I'm no expert on lithium ion battery aging, but that sounds like it's well into the range where age is more of a problem than cycle count for an average driver. [1] https://www.caranddriver.com/auto-loans/a32880477/average-mileage-per-year/ https://www.caranddriver.com/auto-loans/a32880477/average-mi...
      - SoftTalker 3y ago
        My newest car is 20 years old. I refuse to spend what a new car costs when a car costing 10% of that does the job. I don't know what I will do for cars when the battery craps out after 10 years. More and more I think the whole EV concept is a way to make cars that don't last as long but cost just as much if not more, so that automakers can extract more money from their customers
        wlesieutre 3y ago
        My previous car made it to 18 and I'm hoping to keep its replacement alive as long as possible to see what the track record of car companies looks like for lifespan of their electric cars. It's not just the battery, they're increasingly turning into smartphone-like gadgets. And performance on that type of device never seems to get better as it stretches toward the end of its supported life. Even in the best case automakers are saying things like "we'll give it 15 years of android updates." On the one hand, that's not long enough, and on the other at that 15 year mark I half expect the car will take 30 minutes to launch the maps app because "technically gave you an update" doesn't mean "gave any shits about the user experience on 15 year old hardware." If anything, the battery is the part where there's a possibility of a 3rd party replacement/refurbishment market improving things. Not so easy to replace an EV's infotainment system as it was to swap a single DIN tape deck out for a bluetooth radio.
        jandrese 3y ago
        It gets even stranger when you think about how some EV companies are pushing autonomous driving so hard. Will the AI driving system be able to run on 20 year old hardware? Or will they have to cut people off and say "oops, the feature you already bought wasn't really possible on your hardware after all, only new cars will get the update." Tesla isn't the only example here, but it is the most egregious.
        wlesieutre 3y ago
        Meanwhile GM is pulling CarPlay from their EVs to make sure when your car gets older and the software is a huge heap of shit, you can't use the car's screen for maps from your 15-years-newer smartphone (or whatever smart-gizmo we're using in 15 years). Want better maps? Buy a new car! I have to hope people will turn around from that and buy their next car from someone other than GM.
anonuser123456 3y ago
I haven’t heard of this effect. What is the timeline of degradation from just chronological aging?
- philipkglass 3y ago
  I don't know if ProllyInfamous is correct about electric vehicle batteries degrading more from age than from cycling, but it is an effect that shows up in batteries. The terms to describe the effects are "cycle life" and "calendar life." Increasing calendar age can degrade batteries that just sit there without deliberate charge or discharge processes. An example would be an old package of Duracell batteries, never used, that sat in the closet for decades and lost power before they ever went into a remote control. Those batteries reached the end of their calendar life.
  - nostrademons 3y ago
    Also note that this affects battery chemistries other than lithium as well. My (lead-acid) car battery is currently dead. The battery itself is 7 years old. The previous battery died at 8 years old. The service tech at the last replacement said that's pretty typical, and (ICE) car batteries are usually slated to be replaced at the 8-year mark.
- PaulKeeble 3y ago
  The manufacturers certainly list it as part of the expected life. Lipo batteries for example are guaranteed for 6000 cycles at which point they will have 80% of their rated capacity and a minimum of 10 years. So they are fairly certain one of those two criteria is going to lead to the battery no longer meeting >80% capacity. But that is the other thing about them only lasting 6k cycles or 10 years, its not like the battery is expected to be dead just lacking a fifth of its capacity. What is happening with batteries out of old EVs today is either cell scavenging and remade into new batteries or just racking the whole battery into grid storage. Per KWH they pretty cheap once they are that degraded but still quite usable in other applications.
  - 3y ago

marcosdumay 3y ago

Still, if recharged once a day, that's 3 to 10 years, what's completely in line with the time durability. The time degradation will just bias the lifetime into the short end of that interval. If you have an electric car, and don't use it often, then your numbers will be worse. But if you use it weekly (what is normal for lightly used cars), you need about an year and half to reach the OP's number and become better than the next best alternative.

wlesieutre 3y ago
A charge cycle is one full cycling of capacity, such as 0% to 100% once, 30% to 80% twice, or 70% to 80% ten times. I'd be surprised if there are any EV drivers consistently doing a charge cycle every day, outside of commercial vehicles where the battery size was picked to not be any bigger than its daily route.
- jandrese 3y ago
  It's not that simple. Going from 100% to 0% is far more damaging to the battery than going from 80% to 70%. This is why most EVs are so conservative with their battery usage, they're trying to avoid needing replacement batteries before the rest of the car has fallen apart.
  - wlesieutre 3y ago
    Right, just generalizing on how charge cycles are counted, but I'd probably file regular 0-100s into grandparent comment's "(when used outside of extremes)" The average American drives around 13500 miles per year[1], so supposing a car with 250 mile range that's 54 charge cycles, just about one charge cycle per week. The vast majority of that will mostly be with under 20% of a cycle per day, plus a handful of outlier days every year with longer trips. 1000 cycles at 54 cycles per year would be 18.5 years, and 3000 cycles would be 55.5 years. I'm no expert on lithium ion battery aging, but that sounds like it's well into the range where age is more of a problem than cycle count for an average driver. [1] https://www.caranddriver.com/auto-loans/a32880477/average-mileage-per-year/ https://www.caranddriver.com/auto-loans/a32880477/average-mi...
    - SoftTalker 3y ago
      My newest car is 20 years old. I refuse to spend what a new car costs when a car costing 10% of that does the job. I don't know what I will do for cars when the battery craps out after 10 years. More and more I think the whole EV concept is a way to make cars that don't last as long but cost just as much if not more, so that automakers can extract more money from their customers
      - wlesieutre 3y ago
        My previous car made it to 18 and I'm hoping to keep its replacement alive as long as possible to see what the track record of car companies looks like for lifespan of their electric cars. It's not just the battery, they're increasingly turning into smartphone-like gadgets. And performance on that type of device never seems to get better as it stretches toward the end of its supported life. Even in the best case automakers are saying things like "we'll give it 15 years of android updates." On the one hand, that's not long enough, and on the other at that 15 year mark I half expect the car will take 30 minutes to launch the maps app because "technically gave you an update" doesn't mean "gave any shits about the user experience on 15 year old hardware." If anything, the battery is the part where there's a possibility of a 3rd party replacement/refurbishment market improving things. Not so easy to replace an EV's infotainment system as it was to swap a single DIN tape deck out for a bluetooth radio.
        jandrese 3y ago
        It gets even stranger when you think about how some EV companies are pushing autonomous driving so hard. Will the AI driving system be able to run on 20 year old hardware? Or will they have to cut people off and say "oops, the feature you already bought wasn't really possible on your hardware after all, only new cars will get the update." Tesla isn't the only example here, but it is the most egregious.
        wlesieutre 3y ago
        Meanwhile GM is pulling CarPlay from their EVs to make sure when your car gets older and the software is a huge heap of shit, you can't use the car's screen for maps from your 15-years-newer smartphone (or whatever smart-gizmo we're using in 15 years). Want better maps? Buy a new car! I have to hope people will turn around from that and buy their next car from someone other than GM.

anonuser123456 3y ago

I haven’t heard of this effect. What is the timeline of degradation from just chronological aging?

philipkglass 3y ago
I don't know if ProllyInfamous is correct about electric vehicle batteries degrading more from age than from cycling, but it is an effect that shows up in batteries. The terms to describe the effects are "cycle life" and "calendar life." Increasing calendar age can degrade batteries that just sit there without deliberate charge or discharge processes. An example would be an old package of Duracell batteries, never used, that sat in the closet for decades and lost power before they ever went into a remote control. Those batteries reached the end of their calendar life.
- nostrademons 3y ago
  Also note that this affects battery chemistries other than lithium as well. My (lead-acid) car battery is currently dead. The battery itself is 7 years old. The previous battery died at 8 years old. The service tech at the last replacement said that's pretty typical, and (ICE) car batteries are usually slated to be replaced at the 8-year mark.
PaulKeeble 3y ago
The manufacturers certainly list it as part of the expected life. Lipo batteries for example are guaranteed for 6000 cycles at which point they will have 80% of their rated capacity and a minimum of 10 years. So they are fairly certain one of those two criteria is going to lead to the battery no longer meeting >80% capacity. But that is the other thing about them only lasting 6k cycles or 10 years, its not like the battery is expected to be dead just lacking a fifth of its capacity. What is happening with batteries out of old EVs today is either cell scavenging and remade into new batteries or just racking the whole battery into grid storage. Per KWH they pretty cheap once they are that degraded but still quite usable in other applications.
- 3y ago