New study shows: EV batteries last much longer than expected
electrive.com
electrive.com
All my Chevy based EV/PHEVs have had great battery life (so far) - knock on wood.
Some manufacturers limit this, but in a few years we will see a lot of hybrids that have batteries that barely work and will not deliver the expected ev only distance by a lot.
When used in the same duty cycle, most lithium cells/packs should last longer than the same capacity NIMH cells/packs.
Li-ion is not universally better, but its energy density makes it better for EVs, and economies of scale mean that they’re becoming as cheap or cheaper than NiMH cells even if the hybrid duty cycle will make them degrade faster.
If you want a real world opinion, check the EVClinic blog…
even though most people don’t do it, on more expensive cars it actually makes serious financial sense to replace the battery but on cheaper cars it does not!
It dropped because Teslas in general have a high maintenance cost associated and a high insurance cost (because insurers also see it as costly to maintain). High maintenance cost tends to sink a car's resale value.
I know the car does not need oil changes or have the possibility of various failure modes an ICE car has, but when it does have an issue, like a dent or a scrape, etc. the cost to repair is much higher.
https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-maintenance/the-cos...
Doesn't much matter how good the cells are when the wires in the pack just magically corrode
I personally thinks it makes financial sense to get extended warranty for things like this, $15k used to be a price of a new car, getting a warranty to cover that past Tesla’s warranty I think makes financial sense.
My wife recently bought pre-owned eTron and I made her get extended warranty after doing research online about maintenance costs on them
I appreciate that you didn't call me a liar, which has been my past experience anytime I mention something negative about that company
Is the supecharger capping a thing? Like for any refurbished battery? I didn’t know about this!!
It stings. Can't even write it off in my head as supporting the EV movement with how soured that's all become.
again, even if this was true, you are shitty driver and have to pay premium for tesla insurance, given virtually $0 in maintenance you’d still come out on top
> insurance and collision repair works out not much different from other luxury cars
No, it does work out differently than other cars of a same retail value, that's very well documented. See my other comment
if you know you are going to F sh*t up with the car and have bunch of claims on it and have it at the shop all the time - I agree with you Tesla is not for you. But if you are a good driver insurance and maintenance is not a thing you need to worry about at all...
You also ignored repair costs.
- new internal battery $220 - new modem when switch to “5G” was made - $250-ish - new tires
that is it. after 80k miles I am still on original brakes cause with regerative braking I seldom-to-never use the brake (as my wife would say if I use a brake on Tesla it is always followed by F-bomb at another driver)
not sure who told you all these things but they are all 100% wrong - no exception
> but when it does have an issue, like a dent or a scrape, etc. the cost to repair is much higher.
This is why insurance on Teslas is higher. It is not uncommon for bodywork on Teslas to be far more expensive than on other cars, and since bodywork is the majority of insurance claims, it factors in.
You can read about why insurance and repair costs are higher at many sites:
https://www.compare.com/auto-insurance/vehicles/tesla/why-is...
https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-car-insurance
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/sep/30/the-quotes-wer...
https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/insurance/tesla-insurance
I pay roughly 40% less for Tesla vs. my other car which is audi etron. KBB on both comparable.
Even if insurance was higher, the actual cost of ownership/maintenance is practically $0.00 so even if I was paying 25% more in insurance compared to some comporable I’d still choose Tesla every day of the week and twice on sunday
You having a Tesla doesn't mean all the statistics and articles I posted are false.
as most tesla owners will tell you there is no maintenance costs and insurance (if you are not a shitty driver) is not bad at all considering it is a luxury vehicle and repair costs are also not that bad. the real issue is the cost to replace a battery fear of which drives people away from buying used teslas. this is true for other EVs, if I tried to sell you 2018 audi etron your first thought will be “that is a 7-year old battery in that car”, not “ain’t going for it cause of insurance and repairs.”
if tesla offerred lifetime warranty on the battery (or if battery replacement was like <$2k) the used tesla prices would go through the roof
Statistically neither of these are true. Average repair costs for collision damage are higher than comparable MSRP vehicles. So is insurance, I already provided many sources for that claim.
Tesla owners can think the sky is purple. That doesn't make it so.
When I researched evs, I couldn't make the economics make sense. 7 years for a car lifetime seems outrageous.
> The Li-ion battery typically has a lifespan of 300-500 charge cycles. Suppose a fully discharged lithium-ion battery provides 1Q of charge, and not considering the decrease in charge with each charge, the lithium-ion battery can provide or replenish a total of 300Q-500Q of charge over its lifetime. It can be seen that if charged to 1/2 each time, it can be recharged 600-1000 times; if recharged to 1/3 each time, it can be recharged 900-1500 times. And so on and so forth, with an indeterminate number of charges if they are randomized. In any case, no matter how you charge, the total amount of energy replenished remains constant at 300Q-500Q.
https://cmbatteries.com/comprehensive-understanding-of-lithi...
Just replace the car, as much as that sucks.
2006-2011 Honda Civic IMA battery repair WITHOUT buying new cells https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGfQchiLtG8
Its almost like Japanese do it on purpose to push BS Hydrogen.
Meanwhile, automakers like GM heavily promoted hydrogen initiatives like Project Driveway, generating positive PR while maintaining their core ICE business. These companies knew that the fundamental challenges of hydrogen, including its energy intensive production, lack of infrastructure, and extremely high cost of fuel cells, made it impractical in the near term. Yet they used hydrogen's theoretical promise to argue against investing in more immediately viable technologies like battery electric vehicles.
This created a "vaporware" effect: the industry could claim to be pursuing clean alternatives while avoiding meaningful investment in technologies that could have disrupted their existing business model. The resources and attention diverted to hydrogen could have accelerated battery development and charging infrastructure years earlier. By the time automakers finally embraced EVs in earnest in the late 2010s, they had effectively delayed the transition by 20 years.
I think methods used in that video are somewhat dodgy. When dealing with severely unbalanced packs care should be taken when discharging, as unbalanced cells could go below 0V and become damaged by reverse charging. And while cooling them during charging might keep the temperature in check, it probably doesn't completely prevent internal outgassing and pressure buildup. Very long charge at low current would likely be safer option.
But in reality it's comparatively very rare for those full cycles to happen. People overwhelming drive <40 miles a day and top off the battery regularly.
A large battery with proper charge and thermal management will last much longer under light service. Which is exactly what you have with longer range EV's. A battery rated at a 1000 full discharge cycles will probably last 5,000 light duty cycles.
However people are mostly used to batteries in consumer products which utterly abuse cheap batteries to save money.
Even for consumer devices, battery aging and capacity loss is very slow after 70%, and they are exposed to much harsher conditions than EVs (no temp control, daily full cycling, etc).
Not sure that's true. I have seen comments on HN multiple times over the years claiming batteries die in a few years and were almost never downvoted.
Car batteries - very unlikely. Cheap portable electronics made in China - all the time.
The problem with these comments is that there are at least 10 different battery chemistries, and dozens of potential use cases and duty cycles you can put a battery through.
So yes, some combination of that will make batteries die in a few years. Most won't.
But I think that the situation you are posing: quasi regularly driving a trip that is >100 miles with no ability to charge at all is actually pretty uncommon. And even in your case, since you are driving that far (and visiting family), I assume you are staying overnight. You can get a portable lvl 2 charger for a couple hundred bucks that will plug into a dryer plug and charge your vehicle back to full overnight. (admittedly. this assumes the drive is in ideal conditions and you get the full 210 miles; given where you are going and the apparently lack of infrastructure, if this is mountainous at all, then yeah....very well might not make it)
To me, the issue that actually affects more people is that if you need a family sized vehicle, your options are A) pretty limited and B) almost all >$60,000. For a single person, or a childless couple, EVs are pretty accessible, for families, that's much less true.
For anyone not trying do to both kids + dogs, there are probably a lot more options.
Not everyone's use case is the same.
My laptop, power tools and iphone beg to differ....
Didn't stop the oil lobby anti-EV myths from spreading far and wide. And now both political factions hate EVs so expect even more people to continue to think batteries die in a few years.
EV companies wouldn't be warranting the battery degradation for hundreds of thousands of miles and several years if batteries died easily.
A significant fraction of people have now actually driven them. It's going to be increasingly tough to tell spooky stories about EVs when your neighbor/friend/coworker has been driving one uneventfully for 4 years.
99% of charges are at supercharger (which is also not supposed to be good for the battery)