No manufacturer is testing the batteries life by just charging and discharging them daily for a decade before releasing them. Instead they are using artificial acceleration techniques like getting the battery hot while charging/discharging continuously to simulate a longer lifetime. They can't realistically do anything else to estimate it. But it turns out heat is the big enemy for li-ion batteries and if you can keep them on the cooler side of their range they will last a lot longer.
by whatever1
2 subcomments
Wasn’t the same concern with the Toyota Prius when it was first released? Only for all the doubters to be proven wrong by the taxi drivers who kept beating Priuses for decades.
In any case battery failure seems rare but it still is catastrophic and nobody can afford replacement. Hence companies should just provide some sort of warranty / insurance product for the few unlucky folks. Seems like an ideal candidate.
by NitpickLawyer
2 subcomments
Isn't this old news? I remember reading about 7yo teslas used exclusively in cold climates (Norway, Finland, etc) and they found the same thing: batteries held on much better than even the manufacturer expected. And those were often 1st gen cars, which you could expect to have teething issues.
It was at the time one of the main reasons the 2nd hand markets in those countries were pretty healthy and saw a lot of movement of used cars.
by raychis
6 subcomments
EV batteries may be lasting far longer than most buyers expected but are consumers really going to trust the data over the headlines? There has been such a propaganda attack on EVs that it will take a long time to overcome that.
by cgyvbunji
5 subcomments
They still die by calendar age based degradation. High miles low years isn't interesting. We know that works well. They don't like talking about the calendar age degradation. Every article like this leaves that part out. It's annoying. Many articles have been written like this. Many more will be written yet. I guess there are still people out there who don't know that EVs are ideal for drivers who accumulate high miles per year. Personally I don't think batteries are going to get interesting until solid state batteries. The problem is the electrolyte.
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