Your EV questions answered: How long do EV batteries last and are they expensive to replace?

How much should you expect to get out of your electric vehicle (EV) battery?

Research by telematic company Geotab has shown that “high levels of sustained battery health” have been observed in its database of electric models. There will always be outliers – cars that cover hundreds of thousands of kilometres versus cars that barely manage to crack six figures – but for most of us, with just a little care, but for the most part batteries do seem to be lasting longer than expected.

So this is good news?

Yes, because batteries can be expensive to replace, even though the actual wholesale costs of making batteries has come down dramatically in the past two years, and is expected to fall further this year. The most important thing to remember is that they don’t actually need to be replaced much at all. And when they do, the cost is unlikely to extend to the large five-figure sums that sometimes pop up in newspaper headlines or on Facebook.

You know the ones – “We just bought a second-hand EV and now it needs €20,000 worth of new batteries”, that sort of thing. Such cases do crop up from time to time, but they’re far from the norm. Indeed in March of 2023, American electric vehicles specialist website Recurrent carried out a survey of 15,000 EVs, and found that 1.5 per cent of them had needed a complete battery replacement.

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What do the car makers say?

Part of the problem is that car makers tend to clam up any time they are asked about the vexed issue of battery replacements. When we asked one of Ireland’s leading electric car brands about the issue, the – very much off the record – response was “I cannot begin to predict how much battery replacements will cost down the line.” Which is fair enough – pretty much every new electric car comes with an eight-year or 160,000km battery warranty, so for the first, or even first couple of owners, it’s going to be a warranty issue, not a cost issue.

What about older EVs?

Older models, such as the original Nissan Leaf, are long out of warranty but tend to have smaller, less complex batteries which are easier and cheaper to replace. In the UK, Nissan offers older Leaf buyers a £5,000 battery replacement package, with a £1,000 cashback which is effectively the recycling value of the metals and components in the old battery. Not cheap, to be sure, but equally not out of line with some repair costs for older petrol or diesel engines. While tales of battery woe make the headlines, we hear far more stories of perfectly good cars being sold for scrap because of the four-figure cost of the likes of an electronic control unit (ECU) replacement.

What else do I need to know?

The factor that will, in the short term, keep battery repair and replacement on the expensive side will actually be staff.

Specialised training and facilities are currently needed for battery maintenance, as the voltages in an electric car battery will kill you pretty quick if they’re mishandled once out of the car (when they’re in the car, they present pretty well no danger thanks to insulation and emergency cut-offs).

For now, only the big main dealers and dealer groups can afford to invest in the kind of specialised training needed for battery removal and replacement, but such skills will – inevitably – trickle through to more affordable garages and independent specialists in the future.