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EV Batteries Are Defying Expectations After Miles
- johnathan101 3mo ago[dead]
- NitpickLawyer 3mo agoIsn't this old news? I remember reading about 7yo teslas used exclusively in cold climates (Norway, Finland, etc) and they found the same thing: batteries held on much better than even the manufacturer expected. And those were often 1st gen cars, which you could expect to have teething issues. It was at the time one of the main reasons the 2nd hand markets in those countries were pretty healthy and saw a lot of movement of used cars.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- radicalbyte 3mo agoSome of the early models - either the Chevvy or Nissan Leaf - had battery packs which would degrade very quickly. This was causes by the charging system which seemed designed to destroy them. The expectation in the EV fan world was that modern (> 2019) battery packs were very likely to retain 80% of their charge for well over the time anyone expected with the drop to 80% itself taking most of the car's expected lifetime. This was because the standard extrapolations ignored improvements in charging algorithms and that real-world usages were expected to be better for the battery than the models. Another prediction we made is that range under cold (or very hot) weather would be significantly reduced and that seems to be the case too.
- cgyvbunji 3mo agoThey still die by calendar age based degradation. High miles low years isn't interesting. We know that works well. They don't like talking about the calendar age degradation. Every article like this leaves that part out. It's annoying. Many articles have been written like this. Many more will be written yet. I guess there are still people out there who don't know that EVs are ideal for drivers who accumulate high miles per year. Personally I don't think batteries are going to get interesting until solid state batteries. The problem is the electrolyte.
- JumpCrisscross 3mo ago> They still die by calendar age based degradation Source?
- y1n0 3mo agoNot OP, but this talks about it: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352152X25000702 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352152X2...
- gnfargbl 3mo agoThat article says calendar ageing was the dominant ageing mechanism for batteries in their test vehicle, because said vehicle spent 96% of its life stationary. Unless I'm missing it, the article doesn't put a number figure on the rate of calendar ageing. Real-world observations suggest batteries are likely to be serviceable for around 20 years, which is around the same lifetime of an average ICE car. Users who can tolerate a much reduced range (which is most of us) can likely extend this even further.
- cgyvbunji 3mo agoIt's not clear how much of a factor calendar age degradation is in EVs because almost nobody is straightforward about it like they are in the battery industry itself.
- stavros 3mo agoLithium batteries age even just sitting on the shelf. I fly RC planes and we store our batteries at 3.8V to lengthen their life, but they still deteriorate even when not used. Like anything else, I guess.
- defrost 3mo agoThe article specifically talks about how this has changed with the evolution of chemistry in Li based car batteries. I suspect the RC plane batteries you've been using for five years are not the same chemically as the EV car batteries in use in the UK for five years.
- PaulKeeble 3mo agoNo manufacturer is testing the batteries life by just charging and discharging them daily for a decade before releasing them. Instead they are using artificial acceleration techniques like getting the battery hot while charging/discharging continuously to simulate a longer lifetime. They can't realistically do anything else to estimate it. But it turns out heat is the big enemy for li-ion batteries and if you can keep them on the cooler side of their range they will last a lot longer.
- memoriyato3 3mo agowe have EVs for almost 15 years now, one would imagine some real world data on battery life was collected already, even if not widely shared
- decimalenough 3mo agoBattery chemistries have changed and technology has improved a lot in that time frame. Those 15 year old Nissan Leafs have terrible battery degradation, because they're not liquid cooled (hot = bad) and used batteries that degrade fast (LMO, which autocorrect thinks should be spelled LMAO). Manufacturers learned their lesson and every EV built in the last 5 years is far better on both counts.
- hvb2 3mo agoThe only thing you can fault them for is for how long it took to switch to liquid cooled. The leafs are fine cars but you're paying for being an early adopter. I bought one used in 2016, used it as a daily commuter till 2025 and then sold it. I don't think any car will ever be as cheap to run as that one....
- ralferoo 3mo agoThere was and publicly available, although the mainstream press mostly chose to ignore it. My VW hybrid is just over 10 years. The advertising claimed 28 miles on a charge, but the reality was about 18 maximum, with stop-start somewhat less. After a couple of months when it had calibrated, it settled displaying 21 miles for a full charge. 10 years on, and it still reads 21 miles on a full charge, but the reading is less useful in use. It's common for it to drop from 21 to 15 miles after a mile, but to stay on 1 mile remaining for around 4 miles travelled. But essentially, I don't consider the range to have deteriorated too significantly, it still feels around the same ballpark. A lot of the original thinking about batteries comes from the Nissan Leaf, introduced in 2009, when they guessed that batteries would probably need replacing after 10 years. However, from the cars that were written off from accidents, they discovered much less battery wear than predicted, and around the time I bought my car, they were suggesting batteries would be around 80% after 10 years and most manufacturers started using that figure. I'm not sure what current estimates are, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was closer to 90% after 10 years. It's common knowledge amongst owners that range is significantly reduced in cold weather - I'd guess from my use, maybe 20% less range on a cold winter day compared to summer. And as to why car batteries last so much longer than e.g. phone batteries, I think it's mostly because their charging limits are much more pessimistic. Typically a car charger won't ever charge beyond 90% capacity or discharge below 10%, and this is built into its estimated range (so 0 miles remaining is 10% charge).
- whatever1 3mo agoWasn’t the same concern with the Toyota Prius when it was first released? Only for all the doubters to be proven wrong by the taxi drivers who kept beating Priuses for decades. In any case battery failure seems rare but it still is catastrophic and nobody can afford replacement. Hence companies should just provide some sort of warranty / insurance product for the few unlucky folks. Seems like an ideal candidate.
- foreigner 3mo agoThey do.
- ZeroGravitas 3mo agoGenerally enforced by regulation, particularly tied to any government grant program to encourage EV adoption.
- Exoristos 3mo agoThose old taxi Priuses have had their batteries replaced.
- duskwuff 3mo agoThey were also using NiMH batteries - a completely different chemistry from modern lithium batteries.
- bfjvibybd6cuvu6 3mo agoLithium EV batteries are regularly serviced and repaired?
- Taniwha 3mo agoThe original Prius batteries can easily have individual cells replaced (mine is 20 years old, we've replaced 2 cells) - of course Toyota want to sell you an entire battery, the wrecker will sell you a whole bunch of spares (do this with care, an entire pack is hundreds of volts)
- servola 3mo ago[flagged]
- raychis 3mo agoEV batteries may be lasting far longer than most buyers expected but are consumers really going to trust the data over the headlines? There has been such a propaganda attack on EVs that it will take a long time to overcome that.
- inglor_cz 3mo agoIn late 2022, I moved into a new semi-detached house in a small project of 33 such houses total. Back then, there was precisely 1 EV here, parked openly. This has grown to 6 in the meantime. It seems that the segment was growing even before Hormuz, propaganda or no.
- beloch 3mo agoIf batteries are actually lasting, then it's easy to counter the propaganda. Manufacturers simply need to make sure batteries are replaceable and offer guarantees that they'll be replaced on the manufacturer's dime if they degrade.
- VBprogrammer 3mo agoThat's easy to say when you aren't the one considering adding a huge liability to the companies bottom line. There are also some elements of EV ownership where they require some TLC, like not overcharging them when doing mostly local journeys, not using rapid charging more than necessary etc. If manufacturers were carrying the can it would be easy to let these things go out of the window.
- beloch 3mo agoSaying, "Oh, you just have to baby it and it'll probably be fine!" is probably not the best way to counter claims that EV batteries are unreliable. Also, consumers currently are the ones taking on liability in adopting new technologies. That's one reason why EV adoption has been a gradual thing. Offer certainty to consumers and they'll look at what they have to gain instead of focusing on what they might lose.
- squidbeak 3mo ago
- apparent 3mo ago> When early EVs hit the market, buyers’ concerns were well-founded. Roughly one in 12 EVs built from 2011 to 2016 have had to have battery replacements. But new data shows that more modern EVs are doing better so far. Among EVs built from 2022 on, 0.3% have had battery replacements, according to a 2025 study from Recurrent. This is kind of a dumb comparison. It would be more useful to know how many vehicles had to have replacements within X years of being put in service. Obviously newer vehicles are much less likely to have needed a replacement at this point in time.
- apparent 3mo ago> EV batteries aren’t without their challenges, though. A battery that is frequently fast-charged with high power loses its range, on average, at twice the rate of a battery charged at a lower power, according to telematics company Geotab. I wish my car could charge at different rates depending on whether I'm going to need to use it again soon. If not, it could trickle charge and be full enough by the next morning.