TL;DR Most EV batteries will last longer than the cars they’re in.

@jwildeboer I see several comments from people saying that X car lasted decades, which is interesting, but:

* Statistically most cars are replaced within 10-15 years
* No ICE car lasts that long without replacing parts
* Battery tech keeps improving while costs keep coming down, so if you want to keep a car for 50 years, that's fine. You will be able to replace the battery with a much better, cheaper one whenever you want to (whether that's 10, 20 or 30+ years from now)

@jwildeboer
of course you're right ... thats a general problem with new cars not only EVs. I just wanted to point out that the cells are for sure not the bottleneck.

@frank @jwildeboer yeah, the '16 had a 27 kWh battery and 93 miles of range. Pretty much the same territory as the older Nissan Leafs. It also lacked any sort of battery heating, so that dropped by 20-30% in cold weather.

@jwildeboer

There's an assumption that batteries go to the rubbish dump at the end of a car's life. But they don't, they typically get employed as stationary storage. For instance, there's a Nissan parts factory in Victoria which relies on a collection of old Leaf batteries for stationary storage.

The batteries we already have can last ridiculously long. A Swasticar battery lasted over 600,000 km - ~40 years of average driving - before needing to be replaced.

@shtrom @jwildeboer We need Fairphone (Faircar) or Graphene for the car OS/software.

@chrisp "Let's burn more fossil fuel in proprietary cars until we have a truly open platform for EVs" doesn't sound convincing to me, though (I know this isn't what you tried to express, but I've seen many people that kinda argue that way and I think it is a fundamentally flawed argument) @shtrom

@shtrom @jwildeboer I got an EV, the software (the infotainment system) is annoying.

Borrowed an ICE vehicle from same manufacturer while my car was serviced. Same software, same annoying things.

It's not the engine, its the dashboard.

I wouldn't worry about any obsolescence, that would imply updates and I'm pretty sure car manufacturers generally don't update much. And, they could mess you around with an EV as much as an ICE vehicle.

@shtrom @jwildeboer The cheaper they get the less garbage the vendors can afford to try and ram in to inflate the prices to stupid level.
There's not much infotainment in a Citroen Ami for example

@jwildeboer @JYeo18 As in "If it disappears after ten years" or "if it becomes totally useless and worthless after ten years".
This thread is about longevity of EVs. The sales in Norway however, are so cheap (compared to conventional vehicles) that longevity is not a factor. At that price difference, EV would sell even if they were guaranteed (!) to go up in flames after ten years.

I never said that they will do that, or that anyone had guaranteed that.

@jwildeboer this just makes me think the rest of the vehicle wasn’t built to last long enough

Definitely good news though. I know a lot of people stress over this.

@jwildeboer @renard @dynom XDD this person just said that they used a car for 20 years and you blocked them because they asked how many years it lasts for a typical EV car to be trashed due to battery life.

Idk what you want to achieve but this is not the way...

@jwildeboer @chrisp Oh, yeah, no. But the choice is hard, particularly as those are not features that are commonly reported.

“Won't apply firmware updates while on the highway” Oh. Good.

@etchedpixels @jwildeboer We need more of those. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slate_Truck

BYO electronics.

@jwildeboer @codinghorror Shhhh! People will see this and the used market will get vastly more expensive.

@drs1969 Thanks for sharing. Very interesting and reassuring.

My experience seems to support the conclusions. Stable for the first couple of years, then a noticeable drop off after long journeys using high power charging stations.

Not scientific, just personal intuition.

@jwildeboer Agreed, and a good article too. Very reassuring.

My main issue (and I’m currently in the market for a new car), is that I need to travel long distances frequently, moderately laden, and often in the cold (more frequently in the winter).

I could afford a decent spec EV, but I couldn’t really justify it, and would prefer to have the spare income.

I don’t pay for fuel, so it’s not that, it’s the hours added to journeys charging and the very real risk of being stranded tens (or a hundred in some cases) of miles from help. Some weeks could add 10-15 hours of charging for me, not including those while sleeping.

We trialled one of the new mid range Kias in ‘long range’ configurations, and struggled to get even 50% of the advertised range in December. Obviously that’s down to traffic, load, road conditions, temperature, and the type of miles you’re doing (for me it’s motorway or very rural fast B roads) but it’s still hard to get a good read on advertised range. It also really wasn’t cheap.

I know I’m probably an outlier, but it frustrates me as I’m environmentally conscious otherwise. Don’t drive much except for work, and I do drive a hybrid, and drive economically. I do carry auxiliary fuel tanks as even with a 400-450 mile range, it’s easy to get caught out between the UK and various sites over Europe.

I’m excited for the new battery tech people are working on now, though.

@jwildeboer untrue they use the same cells as box mod vapes that at most will last 5 years until half the capacity is gone. But to be fair modern vehicles are designed to be thrown away and still be able to charge price wise as much as possible. Any vehicle from 2026 would at longest last 15 years. My gasser is 31 years old and it's just gotten broken in engine wise.

@NeonxDaze You have convinced me, stranger from the internet. The article is obviously totally wrong because you know everything about ... checks notes ... vapes.

@jwildeboer most vapes use 18650 through 12700 cells, 3 companies make them. They're the exact same batteries mostly LG & Samsung because they are A bin cells. Ones that don't qualify for A bin get sold off to smaller companies to rebrand them because either LG, Samsung, or Sony don't feel safe putting their name on them over them being defective. But what do I know I'm just a gasser and EV mechanic.

@NeonxDaze You simply dismissed every argument that article makes by reducing it to your knowledge about cells. Even when the article gives numbers that clearly are not aligned to your statement that cells lose 50% of their capacity after 5 years. But what do I know. Welcome to my blocklist.