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anewguy9000

so after 5 years the battery in my laptop is just toast.

can anyone comment on what happens to an electric car after 5 years? 10, 20?

i have a truck with 350,000 kms on it. will this still be possible?

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There's been quite a few stories of Tesla Model S with quite a bit more mileage than that [0] [1].

[0]: https://www.teslarati.com/tesloop-tesla-model-s-400k-miles-b... [1]:https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-model-s-400k-km-250k-mi-7-pe...

It all depends on thermal management. Tesla uses liquid cooled active thermal management, and they have less than 10% degradation over 10 years/200k+ miles. Nissan went with passive air cooling for the Leaf, and they are seeing up to 50% degradation in just a few years and less than 50k miles.

The battery in a Nissan LEAF is warranteed to retain 75% of its capacity for 8 years, 160,000 km. So there's a good chance you'd be on a 2nd battery, considering a 3rd at your stage.

But on the upside, there's virtually none of the other engine maintenance that is required of combustion-run vehicles.

As with every manufactured good, certain things are prioritized. Your small commodity laptop battery was likely made to be cheap and light, but not necessarily built to last a long time.

That's like comparing a lawn mower engine and an engine in a car designed to last hundreds of thousands of kilometers. They just weren't designed with the same things in mind.

Tesla especially has done a fantastic job with the chemistry and cooling allowing their batteries to have long life even when they are rapidly charged (which usually wrecks batteries).

Here's one way to think about it, for example- is your laptop battery thermally managed, with its own heating & cooling system to keep it at ideal temperature? Chevy Bolt's is.

"Bolt" would be the logical name for a hypothetical Chevy electric truck.

There is already a Chevy Bolt, in case you had not heard.

Current generation lithium-based batteries will be recycled into batteries for non-automotive applications, e.g. fixed-location storage, etc. It's a wear component, just like cars have always had wear components. If/when a viable contender technology reaches manufacturing at scale, allowing for very-high charge/discharge cycles, that picture will change dramatically. There's currently a ton of money and R&D effort being driven in this direction, so we'll see what emerges.

I've always wondered what the degradation is like, because it dictates what secondary applications are viable.

Is it just peak capacity?

What happens to peak discharge rate?

Charge efficiency?

Discharge efficiency?

>I've always wondered what the degradation is like, because it dictates what secondary applications are viable.

All of the above. Internal resistance increases as the SEI layer (boundary between electrolyte material and the anode) gets thicker and thicker. Eventually it reaches a point where internal resistance is so high that it becomes dangerous to even charge, and at that point the battery basically has to be completely disassembled and recycled. There's essentially no way to safely reuse a whole cell because of the wildly different charge/discharge profiles each one may have been exposed to, which affects the discharge curve accordingly.

https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1210/1210.3672.pdf

A certified Ford dealer will be more than happy to sell you a replacement battery.

Electric car batteries are cooled with coolant which keeps them healthy for longer.

It's currently quite popular to buy used Priuses for 3-4k and spend 1.5k on replacing the batteries with recycled cells.

My 2013 Volt has 85K EV miles (100K total).. Zero battery degradation.

I'm glad for you, but 100k is like the starting point for 'how long a car can last' at least here in Atlanta GA. "Junky" cars manage to die at 100-150k, good cars get 150-200, and 200+ is preferred. 350k is a very different number than 85k.

Alternate example: NYC Taxicabs used to be that Crown Victoria, and each vehicle could get upwards of 400-500k before being replaced. Will the Ford Escape EV replacement also get there? I don't know, the jury is out.

Parent didn't say they had a Volt with a dead battery, they said they have a Volt still going strong, with no signs of failing. It's just a single data point.

As for your taxi example, it's like you haven't even looked. I've been seeing stories of hybrid battery taxi longevity for over a decade.

https://www.autotrader.com/car-news/highest-mileage-new-york...

https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1063767_ford-hybrids-pr...

https://www.hybridcars.com/taxis-show-hybrid-battery-durabil...

Okay so the car frame itself lasts 400-500k before being replaced? I'm assuming there are multiple stints of heavy powertrain maintenance during that lifetime. Similarly, if your car's battery gets degraded after 200k miles (or whatever), you just get a new one, much like you might replace the transmission.

Laptops have constraints on the battery - ultra-thin etc. Cars are different, they just want lightweight. So it'll be more than 5 years.

To get big miles, have to change the battery pack I imagine.

The question you should be asking is: what the maintenance cost of electric vehicles compared to normal gas vehicles over a long period of time?

I had a 2007 Ford Escape Hybrid up until the end of 2016. Mileage did decrease to about 27mpg avg from about 29-30mpg (it actually decreased to 24-25mpg for a while but I just needed to replace the engine air filter... whoops). Ford dealership offered to replace the battery for somewhere around $3600 IIRC.

Replacing the battery is always possible, I'd imagine if the electric components are built well, it's likely that with battery replacements you could make the truck last even longer than it would with a more mechanical machine.

By the time the battery has fully degraded the cost of a replacement will have gone down too.

battery in a laptop != car battery. Different compound and different spec. 350,000 kms shouldn't be a problem for a new electric car if you are fine with lower range.

Tesla gives you 8 years warranty for the battery so 10 years shouldn't be an issue. The battery may survive 20 years.

Even if you have to replace the battery it's really nothing comparing to ICE (oil, sparks, DPF etc.)

In five years you will be able to exchange your car battery and extend the full charge range by 15-20%

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