BMW’s working to power festivals, construction sites and the like without the need for generators. Old EV batteries are already popping up everywhere. So what happens to your old battery? Does it just go into landfill somewhere? Er, not quite. So in 2032, you could take a perfectly decent, cared-for e-tron GT to Audi – or perhaps even an independent mechanic – and get a battery that yields more range for less than you’d pay today. In the future, used-car values will reflect the price of this big job, much like you can get an old Range Rover on the cheap because it’s just a time bomb with four-wheel-drive.īut a decade from now, batteries will be cheaper and almost definitely more energy dense. As of right now, it’s eminently possible to replace the huge batteries that underpin electric cars – take it back to the dealer, ask for a battery replacement, wince as you get a five-figure bill back and go from there. For reference, Tesla guarantees at least 70 per cent capacity after eight years, or will replace the battery with one that can hold at least that much charge.īut let’s say that 150 miles is absolutely not good enough, and the owner (be it original, second, fifth or otherwise) wants to replace the battery and recoup the 300-mile range of a new e-tron GT. It doesn’t take Euclid himself to comprehend the exponential expense.

But for players as big as these, who’ve bet as hard as they have on electric cars, to cover a component that makes up around a third of the cost of a new car. There will undoubtedly be all sorts of caveats and legalese in these warranties, of course. Now these vary from country to country, but the trend among Tesla, Hyundai, Porsche, Nissan, Mercedes, Audi, Polestar and so on is to offer an eight-year warranty on the battery.

And this is the average, which includes early EVs that didn’t have the level of battery conditioning found in newer electric cars and whose batteries degraded faster as a result.Ī simpler retort (or methodology for engaging peak backfire effect, depending on your audience) is warranty. And it found that across those 6,300 cars – 21 different models including the BMW i3, e-Golf, Nissan Leaf and Tesla Model S – the average battery capacity after five years was still 89.9 per cent of the new car’s. ability to hold charge) of some 6,300 electric cars.

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