Replacing EV Battery After 5 Years? Fuggedaboutit.
This has been one of the most popular criticisms of electric cars from critics and skeptics just looking to deny progress and ignore the benefits of electric cars: “What about in 5 years when you have to spend $15,000 to replace the car’s high-voltage battery pack?”
It has never been an extremely convincing argument, but it must have gotten to a lot of people. I typically figure that it stems from the experience most of us have had with 12V batteries, which do degrade before long and need replaced every few years. Whatever the origin, it’s clear that many people do think it’s going to cost a fortune to replace an electric car’s battery pack.
But here’s the thing: You’re probably not going to have to replace it!
There are already EVs on the road that are a decade old. Many of them have many years left on their batteries. And these are older EVs and batteries, both of which have improved tremendously in that timeframe. I recall a presentation about a decade ago from JB Straubel indicating they hoped Tesla batteries would last 15+ years. They probably will!
A new study by”Geotab” is a robust effort to understand what’s going on and reveal the truth about carmakers’ EV batteries. The study analyzed 10,000 EVs in North America and Europe and found they only degraded about 1.8% a year on average. With the range EVs start with these days, that means they could easily operate for 15 or 20 years without needing their high-voltage batteries changed. Needless to say, many cars don’t live that long. Whether because of accident or just everything starting to fall apart, cars are often ready to be ditched after a couple of decades of ownership. So, who needs a battery that lasts forever?
So, whether a battery replacement would cost $3,000 now or $9,000, it doesn’t really matter, but you’re not going to go replacing your battery. It’ll be just fine.
Notably, some electric cars had batteries that were expected to degrade less than 1% a year. That means you could keep your electric car for 30 years and it’d still have more than 70% of its original storage capacity. I think that’ll do just fine for the vast majority of us.
“The report underscores that higher EV use doesn’t mean higher degradation, but more fast-charging might. Geotab noted a correlation between greater DC fast-charging use and faster-than-average battery degradation—especially for vehicles in hotter climates,” Green Car Reports writes. That said, another organization’s research found earlier this year that fast charging didn’t make EV batteries degrade any faster than with slow charging did. Either way, again, it really doesn’t matter — our EV batteries are going to hold up just fine.
If you are concerned about battery degradation, though, there are some simple tips to follow. I wrote an article three years ago (three years ago?) explaining that it’s best to keep your battery around 50% state of charge if you want to really maximize its lifespan. However, keeping it between 30% and 70% is more practical than keeping it between 45% and 55%, or 40% and 60%. So is keeping it in a cooler place rather than a hotter place. And, again, it doesn’t matter! Your battery is not going to degrade to the point where you need to spend thousands of dollars on a replacement. (Disclaimer: There can always be extreme, niche scenarios where the battery does degrade too much too early, but that’s only expected to be a tiny fraction of EV drivers.)
In short: worry not, and feel free to tell EV skeptics, critics, and laggards that they also need not worry.
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