Myth: You Need to Replace the Battery in your EV

Myth: Even­tu­al­ly, you'll need to replace the bat­tery in your EV.

Myth Bust­ed: EV bat­ter­ies are designed to last 10–20 years, or up to 200,000 miles, so replac­ing an EV's dri­ve bat­tery will be a rare occur­rence.

EVs have mul­ti­ple bat­ter­ies: a dri­ve bat­tery respon­si­ble for pow­er­ing the vehi­cle, a 12-volt bat­tery that pow­ers the vehicle's elec­tron­ics (the same type of bat­tery in gas cars), and aux­il­iary or mod­u­lar bat­ter­ies, depend­ing on the vehi­cle. In this myth buster, we're focus­ing on the dri­ve bat­tery, which is found under­neath the car and is respon­si­ble for charg­ing and power.

Since EVs are still fair­ly new, they haven't been around long enough for us to real­ly know just how long their dri­ve bat­tery will last. It also depends on the mod­el, and with so many EV mod­els on the mar­ket today, there is a wider range of bat­tery life­time. EV bat­ter­ies are expect­ed to last longer than their gas car coun­ter­parts — up to 200,000 miles, which is longer than aver­age life­time of an inter­nal com­bus­tion engine vehi­cle, which is around 150,000 miles¹. In fact, less than 1% of EV bat­ter­ies have been replaced due to fail­ure since mod­el year 2015².

In the rare case of a faulty bat­tery, a replace­ment should be cov­ered under war­ran­ty. Cur­rent­ly, all automak­ers offer an EV bat­tery war­ran­ty of up to eight years or 100,000 miles (with some man­u­fac­tur­ers even exceed­ing this)³. While bat­ter­ies do degrade over time, it is very min­i­mal, at 1.8% annu­al­ly on aver­age. Accord­ing to Inside EVs, "A 1.8% annu­al degra­da­tion rate means that in 20 years, the bat­tery of an EV would the­o­ret­i­cal­ly still have 64% life in it.⁴" How­ev­er, keep in mind that bat­tery tech­nol­o­gy has come a long way from 10 years ago, and is con­stant­ly improving.

To pre­vent degra­da­tion and max­i­mize the life of your EV bat­tery, you can⁵:

• Charge at home instead of rely­ing on fast chargers
• Main­tain soft­ware updates regularly
• Keep your charge between 20–80%

For more infor­ma­tion about bat­tery replace­ment, degra­da­tion, and war­ran­ty, vis­it this arti­cle by Recur­rent.

Sources:

1. "New Updates: How Long Do Elec­tric Car Bat­ter­ies Last?" Recur­rent, 20 May 2024, www.recurrentauto.com/research/how-long-do-ev-batteries-last#:~:text=So%20far%2C%20it%20seems%20that,or%20damage%20to%20the%20pack.
2. "Elec­tric Car Bat­tery Life: Every­thing You Need to Know, Includ­ing How Long They Last." Car And Dri­ver, 10 May 2024, www.caranddriver.com/features/a31875141/electric-car-battery-life/.
3. "FOTW #1339, April 22, 2024: Plug-in Elec­tric Vehi­cle Bat­tery Replace­ments Due to Fail­ure Have Been Very Rare Since Mod­el Year 2015." Office of Ener­gy Effi­cien­cy & Renew­able Ener­gy, 22 April 2024, https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1339-april-22–2024-plug-electric-vehicle-battery-replacements-due.
4. "EV Bat­ter­ies Can Out­last A Vehicle’s Life­time With Min­i­mal Degra­da­tion, Study Finds." Inside EVs, 17 Sep­tem­ber 2024,
   https://insideevs.com/news/733987/ev-batteries-outlast-vehicle-degradation-study.
5. "Car War­ran­ty Cov­er­age on an Elec­tric Car Bat­tery." U.S. News, 29 May 2024, cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/advice/ev-battery-warranty).