EV Battery Timebomb

The Mail has a timebomb story that should horrify EV owners and convince those still running combustion cars to stick with them for the foreseeable:

Many EVs will lose up to 12% of their charge capacity by six years. Some may lose even more.

Yet the cost of replacing an EV battery is astonishingly high, our research found.

In some cases, the cost of a replacement battery is as much as £40,000. For certain EVs, the cost of replacing the battery could be 10 times the value of the vehicle itself on the second-hand market.

That means used EVs have a limited lifespan — which makes them a bigger and bigger risk as the years go by.

Research into EV batteries is yet to be conclusive and the second-hand EV market is new, given the first popular EVs were rolled off the production line in 2009.

Last night, one motoring expert said customers should be wary of buying a used electric car beyond its warranty (typically eight years), as after that timespan there is no easy way of measuring how much the battery will degrade before it needs replacing.

This may mean you end up needing to pay for an expensive new battery.

Pointing out that by 2035 all U.K. motorists will face paying around 10 grand more for an EV compared to its obsolete combustion equivalent, the Mail goes on to claim that’s swamped by the prospect of replacing the battery in a secondhand EV:

While you can drive a traditional petrol or diesel car for around 200,000 miles over 14 years before the engine needs fixing or replacing, by comparison a new EV is typically guaranteed under a warranty for 100,000 miles over eight years.

Should your petrol engine need replacing you can expect to pay around £5,000, but replace the battery on your EV outside warranty and you’re looking at an eye-watering £13,000 to £40,000, depending on the make of your car, if you fit a manufacturer’s new unit.

In the most extreme cases, such as with a 12-year-old Nissan Leaf that cost £2,000 to buy, you can pay as much as £24,000 for a brand-new replacement 24kWh battery.

However, most owners would upgrade to a newer 40kWh Nissan battery costing £12,780 before garage installation fees of around £2,000. This later battery has a bigger capacity but can still be fitted into older models.

The upshot would appear to be that the secondhand EV market is already dying on its feet. Battery degradation starts from an EV being new anyway. Fast charging accelerates the loss of an EV’s battery. And all those people without a garage and trying to charge their EVs outside will find the range reduced anyway.

But don’t worry, there’s glimmer of hope on the horizon, for the old batteries at least:

And what of the fate of an old EV battery that can no longer be used in a car? They typically fetch £1,500 and can be used for holding energy storage for solar panels, but many fear they will end up in landfill.

Now a host of new start-ups are racing against the clock to find a way to recycle car batteries past their prime including J.B. Straubel, former Chief Technical Officer of Tesla, who has launched Redwood Materials.

Mr. Barnard says: “The old batteries have an intrinsic worth because of the valuable metals inside them — and even if they are no longer practical for storing electricity they have a scrap value.

“It is still a relatively new market and we can expect it to grow more as we move towards a more renewable future.”

Worth reading in full.