Electric Car Battery Lifespan

Electric vehicles (EVs) now dominate the road. More and more of us consumers are asking ourselves is it worth it? Would an electric vehicle work for me? A frequent question that goes along with “is an EV worth it,” “is how long will their battery last?” As we are accustomed to combustion engines and have a good idea of their lifespan we want to know more about how long our potential electric vehicle will last. There are three EVs in question that we will discuss, a hybrid, a plug-in hybrid, and a full electric vehicle. Each of these vehicles uses batteries to assist the combustion engine or to power the entire vehicle. We will talk about each of the vehicles and their respective batteries. We will also talk about the lifespan that you can expect from each of them. As we go through the different batteries our hope is that you can know more about electric vehicles and what to expect.

There are a few metrics here that we talk about when we talk about engine life so we are going to use the same talking about electric vehicles batteries/motors. An electric vehicle battery lasts about 200,000 miles. This is what we hope to expect from most traditional combustion engines as well. Although across the many makes and models of cars we see trends and see engines that go well past that benchmark and other engines that do not quite break 150,000 miles before their engine goes caput. This figure sounds good at first, but we simply do not have the data for electric batteries like we do for regular combustion engines. We have seen millions of combustion engines and we have a good idea of what to expect. Electric vehicle batteries are newer and we have less data to see what cars truly do last 200,000 miles. Further, we don't know if we can always expect that from any electric vehicle that is purchased right off the factory line. For those of us who do not know how long it takes to get to 200,000 we can do some quick math. Generally the average American drives 12,000 to 15,000 miles per year, that means the engines should last anywhere from 13 to 20 years depending on use, maintenance and how much one drives per year. We can only hope at this point that the manufacturers are accurate and that these vehicles will last up to 200,000 miles.

Hybrid vehicles have been around for a little longer and we know more about their average battery life than we do electric vehicles. Hybrid batteries are supposed to last anywhere from 80,000 to 100,000 miles. We have seen reports of hybrid batteries lasting longer than that, up to 150,000 miles and even up to 200,000 miles. These numbers do come with careful and continuous maintenance and depend on the manufacturer. Hybrid batteries are much cheaper to replace than a battery on an electric vehicle, ranging from $ 2,000 to $ 8,000 for a replacement. This is about the cost of replacing a transmission on the low end and the cost of replacing an engine on the higher end. The cost varies so greatly simply because of different battery sizes and power.