Modern EV Batteries Last Way, Way Longer Than Those 'EV Skeptics' Want You To Think

For some reason, a certain segment of the U.S. population has declared an all-out war on electric cars. Sometimes the anti-EV crowd insists wildly outdated information is still relevant, but other times, they pull their claims out of thin air. Like the idea that EV batteries only last a few years before they need to be replaced. Ridiculous? Absolutely. Arguably, it isn't even worth taking the time to address this fallacy. And yet, the reaction to this silly little post emphasized just how many people will happily lie on the internet, and if someone doesn't push back, well-meaning people might start to believe them. 

Best as I can tell, there's no set number of years the anti-EV conspiracy theorists believe a car battery lasts before it needs to be replaced. Five years and seven years appear to be the most commonly cited figures, but I've also seen at least one claim they need to be replaced every three years. It's all over the place. Do keyboard warriors just pick a random number that feels convenient in the moment? Whether or not they do, they never include sources with their battery-replacement claims.

It's not like plenty of studies haven't already been done on this exact issue. We've covered that research before, and at the time, it said modern EV batteries should last at least 15 years just fine. There will always be the occasional exception of course, just like with gas engines, but in the space of a decade, battery failure rates have fallen dramatically. For a variety of reasons, first-generation EVs such as my lovely but limited Fiat 500e had a high failure rate of about 8.5%. Fast forward to Gen 3, and that failure rate had been cut to 0.3%. Nice.

Additionally, they found that the vast majority of battery failures occurred right after purchase, while they were very much still under warranty (more on the warranty in a bit). So if you get a dud, you'll figure it out pretty quickly, and once the battery is replaced with a new, non-defective one, you should be good to go for another 15 years or more. 

Maybe that's just one study? Nope. We've also previously covered a separate study that put the expected lifetime of a modern EV battery somewhere between 15 and 20 years. On average, they found batteries lost 1.8% of their capacity a year. As we pointed out at the time, that means a 318-mile-range Hyundai Ioniq 5 would still be expected to retain a 200-mile range after 20 years, assuming there were no other issues with the battery pack. You might not still want that 200-mile-only Ioniq 5, but you could still sell it to someone looking for a cheap daily driver. Battery degradation isn't linear, either, instead dropping initially before flattening out and only accelerating again close to the end of its life.

Even if you don't believe the published research on battery life, it's worth considering how long battery warranties last. The federal minimum warranty for most batteries is 8 years/100,000 miles, with others being warrantied for at least 100,000 miles, and some a full 10 years. If modern EV batteries really needed to be replaced every three, five, or seven years, electric-only automakers would already be out of business. Tesla has sold millions of cars, and its current battery warranty is between 100,000 and 150,000 miles, depending on which one of its vehicles you buy. If batteries were going bad after three, five, or even seven years, replacement costs would be in the millions. 

Can you find old EVs with barely any range left? Of course. But the research shows that's just not the case with the newest batteries.