Initial Study Shows EV Battery Life is Longer than Expected
August 2023 - One of the concerns many Americans have regarding electric vehicles (EVs) is the lifespan they can expect for their vehicle's battery. A new study of EVs driven in the United States looked into that issue and the findings may allay some of your fears.
 (Image of a Nissan Leaf EV battery - from electric-vehiclenews.com)
The study was conducted by Recurrent, a Seattle-based company that analyzes used electric vehicle batteries, and the results were released this past March (we only recently became aware of the study). Their findings included the following:
- 15,000 EV's of various age, model, and make were tested. Only 1.5% of those vehicles had replaced their battery.
- Since newer vehicles would tend to skew this number lower, Recurrent then looked only at older vehicles. For EVs that had been on the road for 9 to 12 years, only 5% had replaced their batteries.
- In terms of battery degradation, most of the batteries in cars that had been driven roughly 100,000 miles still were operating at close to 90% of their original capacity.
Recurrent did state that there is fluctuation in the results between different makes and models, but overall, they were surprised at the durability of the various batteries.
EV's are just in their infancy, so more studies will have to be done, but we find this first study to be very positive. (Not to mention that researchers and EV manufacturers continue to make improvements in battery technology.) With EV sales even stronger in the Far East and Europe than in the U.S., we hope someone is studying battery performance in the rest of the world to see how those results compare to the US-based study by Recurrent.
 (Image of battery within an EV chassis - from Car Magazine)
One other note on EV batteries that we came across recently; this one regarding the recycling of old batteries that have been replaced. A number of recycling options are being studied and tested, one of which we found intriguing: some people are using their old battery as an immobile power source for their homes. We don't know the details on how this works, but we also have read that General Motors is studying this concept to see if it may be a viable source of future revenue.
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