Electric Car Batteries: How Long Will They Last?

As electric vehicles slowly begin to trickle out across the globe, as expected, many questions still remain. As we venture towards this new, unproven technology, concerns are plenty. Now some of these issues have been discussed in-depth several times before, while others remain a mystery.

For example, the issue of range has been discussed at great lengths. The range of an electric vehicle is determined by several things including the battery size, vehicle weight, aerodynamics, rolling resistance, motor size and much more. Range can be reduced if loads on the battery are high such as when your air conditioning or heater system is functioning. Range can also be reduced during extremely cold or hot weather.

While range is quite understood, battery life is not. Many manufacturers claim that their electric vehicle batteries will last for at least ten years. In fact, most manufacturers are willing to warrant the battery for full replacement during the first ten years. But that's really not the point here. The main issue or cause for concern is whether or not a battery can continue to deliver the expected range during that entire ten year span or will range slowly diminish over time, thus resulting in significantly reduced range?

The answer is really quite simple, but automakers try to avoid discussing this aspect at length, because consumers may turn away from electric vehicles. So here's the short answer from AutoblogGreen. No battery can maintain a consistent level of performance over the course of ten years. All rechargeable batteries in existence today will slowly loose the ability to hold a charge, thus resulting in reduced range for electric vehicles. The key here is for automakers and battery producers to focus on designing batteries that lost the least amount of capacity over time.

So the next question that naturally pops up is; how much range will a vehicle lose down the road? That answer is not nearly as simple and as AutoblogGreen states, it depends on many aspects including how often will the battery be charged, what type of charging will be used and so on. But a good general estimate suggests that an electric vehicle with an as new range of 100 miles will only be able to cover between 70 and 80 miles ten years from now.

As the technology emerges and the electric vehicle industry grows, more exact information about range and battery life will become available, but for now many of the numbers are estimates provided by automakers pending real-world test results.

Source: AutobloGreen.com, Nissan