The Facts on EV Battery Health and Longevity

People are afraid of the unknown, and when considering an electric vehicle the biggest unknown is how the battery is going to perform. Usually within 60 seconds of a conversation about switching to EVs, the skeptical person says something like:

• “Yeah, but how long is that battery going to last?”
• “How much does it cost to replace the battery?
• “Don’t EV batteries catch fire like they did in that hurricane in Florida?”

It is totally understandable to have questions and trepidation about the battery on your EV. Most people are familiar with lithium ion batteries from items like your phone, laptop, or cordless drill, and we know those degrade over the course of a few short years. But EV batteries are completely different for a variety of reasons, and the research as well as the real-life experience of drivers is turning up more and more good news every day.

I can help you understand EV battery health, how long your EV battery is going to last, and how to keep an EV battery in tip-top shape. In my article on vehicle and battery recycling, you can learn more about where EV batteries go in the afterlife – and it’s not a landfill! If you’re interested in the environmental impact of batteries, check out the article on EV Environmental Impacts.

Here are the quick highlights, which will be explained further in this article:

• EVs have highly sophisticated battery systems that promote maximum useful life.
• EV batteries degrade at an average rate of approximately 1% per year with normal use.
• Almost all EV batteries have a 7 year, 100,000 mile warranty from the manufacturers.
• EV batteries lose range in very cold temperatures, but it does not degrade them; they return to normal range when the temperature rises again.
• EV batteries can degrade more than normal when operating in very high temperatures.
• EV batteries can charge in 3 different ways: Level 1, Level 2, and DC Fast charging (Learn more about charging here). DC Fast can degrade the battery more than normal when used frequently as a charging method.
• EV batteries are generally as safe or safer than internal combustion engines in nearly all operating circumstances.
• EV batteries require less maintenance and repair than internal combustion engines and fuel systems.

How does anybody know anything about EV batteries?

Recurrent Automotive

The pre-eminent resource for information on EV battery health today is a company called Recurrent Automotive, a company full of battery scientists with a mission to provide transparency and confidence in pre-owned electric cars. They don’t sell cars themselves, they just study the performance of batteries and report on it so that you have the information you need. In fact, you will definitely get more information from them then you will from Green Wave, so definitely check out their website as well. And because Green Wave is a partner of Recurrent, we get battery health reports on every vehicle we sell and provide those reports to you free of charge. It’s like a Carfax for your battery, and it helps give you peace of mind when buying your EV from us.

Recurrent’s most comprehensive article on battery health was published after cars connected to the Recurrent database logged 100 million miles in September of 2022, and their takeaways were:

• “For most EVs, the lithium ion batteries are in quite good shape.
• Battery replacements due to excessive degradation are very rare.
• Heat, high voltage, and extreme state of charge degrade batteries the fastest.
• There are tools you can use to keep tabs on your EV.

The Nissan Leaf Data

The two vehicle manufacturers that have been producing and selling EVs for the longest, and continuously, are Tesla and Nissan. The Tesla Roadster was released in February, 2008 and the Nissan Leaf was first released in December, 2010. While Tesla has sold the most EVs of any U.S. manufacturer (about 200k, according to EVadoption.com), I am more interested in Nissan’s data and analysis because unlike Tesla, the EV is only a portion of their portfolio and not their only offering. As a traditional automaker, they have to analyze their data versus their own ICE (internal combustion engine) cars, and not evaluate themselves versus competitors.

In an article in Forbes magazine last August, Nissan executive Nic Thomas reported that twelve years into the Leaf experiment, “Almost all of the batteries we’ve ever made are still in cars.” Nissan had worries about end-of-life issues for batteries from the day they started producing them, because the expectation was that they would have useful lives similar to internal combustion engines or lithium ion batteries in consumer electronics. But the truth is, the sophisticated battery management systems in EV batteries has done better than expected in keeping the batteries healthy longer.

Today, Nissan expects the batteries to last longer than the EVs they power, as cars rust and degrade over time. They are working on strategies to have second lives for these batteries, including using them as power storage for solar farms.

Using this information in your purchase decision

This may be enough information for you to make an informed decision about purchasing a reused EV, but if not, please continue to do research on your own or get in touch with us at Green Wave, and we can help guide you on your learning journey. We would be happy to share what we know about different EVs, PHEVs, and how their batteries fare over time. We are learning more as we source EVs from all over the country to provide to our clients here in the Northeast.

But generally speaking, here is a quick way to guess a vehicle’s range based on its age:

Step 1: Figure out what the EPA range rating was when the vehicle was new.
Step 2: Subtract 1% of that total number for each model year since the vehicle was manufactured.
Step 3: If you have identified an EV or PHEV that you are interested in purchasing, get the Recurrent Automotive report for that vehicle, which is free from their website. Green Wave also provides Recurrent battery reports for all vehicles in their inventory.
Step 4: Go see that actual vehicle, and do a test drive. Keep in mind that if the vehicle is in a cold climate during your test drive, the range will be about 20% to 30% lower than in warm weather.
Step 5: Have a conversation with an EV professional about you range needs, driving habits, and EV ownership goals. Here at Green Wave, the most important thing to us is that you get the EV that works best for you.

The bottom line is that EV batteries are not a black box anymore: we know a lot more than we did a couple years ago, and the news is generally all good. You can trust that if your next vehicle is an EV, your battery will be less of a concern than the internal combustion engine is in the vehicle you currently own.

Keep learning!