Every new electric car on sale comes with a battery warranty that’s entirely separate from the normal vehicle warranty. While the whole car might only be covered for three years, the battery of an EV will be covered for eight years or 160,000km, whichever arrives sooner.
It’s become something of a gentleman’s agreement in the motor industry to offer such a warranty, as a way of trying to convince wary consumers that batteries will continue to function, and electric cars will continue to be usable, even into their third or fourth owners.
The warranties, normally, specify that if a battery is faulty, or falls below 70 per cent of its original energy storage capacity thanks to the degrading that happens in regular use, then it will be replaced, free of charge.
Zoe Bradley, head of marketing at Toyota Ireland says the Japanese brand has been working on batteries for nearly three decades, “and our batteries in our electric cars are engineered to last for the lifetime of the vehicle”.
RM Block
“As part of this, alongside our manufacturer’s warranty of 8 years or 160,000kms, we have developed an Extended Battery Care Program, meaning that our batteries will be covered for up to one million kilometres or up to 10 years, whichever comes first. All customers need to do is to have their car serviced in the Toyota Network as per the manufacturer’s requirements.
“This care programme covers both the battery degradation and the battery defects, which should give peace of mind to anyone looking for a new electric car.”
Even so, many Irish car buyers remain wary of what happens to a battery as it ages – perhaps, given that the average age of a car on Irish roads now hovers at around the nine-year mark, that’s unsurprising, Equally, rolling over six figures on a car’s odometer still feels like a psychologically big thing, and is often the harbinger of major mechanical maladies to come.
However, in the case of EV batteries, the 100,000km barrier really might just be psychological, and nothing more. True, there have been cases of EV batteries failing outside of warranty, needing expensive – sometimes five-figure – replacements, but these are rare incidents, and well outside the norm. In fact, although you have to allow for the fact that we’re still in the early years of electric car evolution, batteries are proving to be extraordinarily robust.
According to research carried out by Future Management Group, a consultancy that works with some of the globe’s biggest firms: “One charge cycle equates to a full battery charge. Suppose a battery provides a relatively modest 400km range. Most cars have more today. Europeans drive an average of 38km per day.
“Therefore, you’d need to recharge about 20 per cent daily, equating to 0.2 charge cycles. With a 400km range, multiplying 400km by 3,000 gives an astounding 1.2 million kilometres. At this point, the battery still retains 90 per cent of its original capacity. Extending the findings from these result, typically, even after 5,000 cycles, the battery remains at 80 per cent, translating to at least 1.8 million kilometres.”
Even allowing for the fact that Irish car buyers tend to cover slightly longer daily journeys – more like 45-50km on average – that’s still a huge amount of kilometres that can be squeezed from one battery. In fact, in part, it’s this extraordinary longevity – one that was not envisaged when EV sales really started to grow a decade ago – that is holding back some other parts of the battery world, which rely on recycled or second-life batteries.
Renault’s Mobilize subsidiary, for example, is planning a whole series of ultra-high-speed charging points across Europe that use huge storage batteries, made of second-life battery packs, to soak up solar and wind energy. But the problem, as Mobilize admits, is that there just aren’t that many recyclable batteries around.
New battery tech could push that longevity out even further. Future Management suggests that the latest lithium-iron phosphate (LFP) batteries from China – which use a simpler and more robust chemistry than the, to date, more popular nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) batteries that we’re used to – could take that 1.8 million kilometres figure and double it. Equally, the likes of CATL – China’s biggest battery maker – is talking about new-tech solid-state batteries that can last, and be warrantied for, one million kilometres, while Samsung is already claiming that its solid-state batteries will last for 20 years, which should put paid to concerns about battery longevity.
OK, those are reassuring, but ultimately they’re also a combination of laboratory estimates and technological promises. What about the batteries we have now, and in actual real-world conditions?
Helpfully, Germany’s ADAC has looked into battery longevity in real-world conditions; it spent several years running – abusing, even – a first-generation Volkswagen ID.3 to see just how well the battery coped with real usage – and it went way beyond 100,000km …
ADAC, or the Allgemeiner Deutscher Automobil-Club, is basically like Germany’s version of the AA, and it’s been independently testing the mechanical solidity of cars for decades now.
This wasn’t a lab test; over the course of four years, ADAC’s team drove the bottom off this ID.3, putting 160,000km on its clock – and, not coincidentally, that’s the mileage limit of VW’s original battery warranty. The car was driven up to Alpine glaciers, along Autobahns at high cruising speeds, and in shatteringly low temperatures.
It was also charged without care. ADAC’s engineers didn’t have time to hang around, so fast-charging was used for roughly 40 per cent of the ID.3’s total charging time, and often the car was left with a charger connected even when a 100 per cent charge had been reached – normally said to be a serious EV battery no-no.
According to ADAC: “The battery is not treated very gently in the ADAC endurance test. In everyday test life, it often happens that the battery is recharged to 100 per cent after a trip in order to enable the next user to reach the full range. With this landing position, the VW then stops longer from time to time. Neither is considered to be conducive to the durability of a drive battery.”
According to ADAC’s test, and independently confirmed by battery testing experts at Aviloo, the ID.3’s battery has indeed lost some of its original charging capacity – a whole 9 per cent. That means that after some serious mileage (at the time of writing, the ADAC ID.3 had reached 172,000km), it still retains 91 per cent of its original charging capacity. Given a claimed range of 557km on the WLTP test, it means that this VW can still cover 500km between charges. That seems to be the case according to ADAC’s observed results too, and the engineers note that even at motorway speeds the ID.3 is still capable of returning around 400km between charges.
So, don’t worry if your EV, or some future EV that you might own, starts to creep up towards the 100,000km mark. It may well be that your battery is just getting started.
