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this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2026
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Electric Vehicles
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Unless you are getting an old Nissan leaf, you’re probably going to be fine. Todays EV batteries are so energy dense they undergo less strain than the old versions.
There were 2 problems with early EV batteries. First, they were not actively cooled and could cook themselves to death over time. Today’s batteries have their own climate control.
Second, they were not very energy dense, so when they were being charged or discharged, you were moving a larger proportion of overall capacity in a short amount of time. Batteries do not like that. But as the capacities grew, the instantaneous load on the batteries dropped, so they didn’t have to work as hard to do the same thing. So they weren’t as abused and last longer.
Event first gen Chevy volts are rolling around happily on their original batteries with no noticeable loss in capacity to this day.
So, a couple of things: Personally, never been afraid of degradation much, outside of the old Leafs of course. What's always scared me about EVs is the chance of a sudden battery failure. Less and less of a problem now that individual cells can be replaced on many models rather than replacing a battery pack that costs more than the car (yes, used battery packs are an option, but IMO a bad middle ground between cell-level replacement vs new pack - you don't get the warranty of the new pack or the cheapness of individual cell replacement), but it's still an issue EV owners seem to mind, because there are TONS of 6-7 year old EVs for sale super cheap. Because the battery warranty is 8 years.
And secondly, I wasn't actually trying to say anything about having to be worried about the risk of failure in the parent comment, I was talking about the massive depreciation you take on if you buy a new or lightly used EV (because people are afraid of batteries). Meaning I find it to be a great deal to buy one that's already near the end of that battery warranty, you save tens of thousands vs getting a 2 year old one (which itself is, yes, much cheaper than a brand new one).
I still worry about people like me who drive a LOT. I do about 35-40k miles a year. I don't think I can trust a battery to last through the loan with the kind of mileage I put on.
I can wrench on an ICE vehicle pretty easily to keep it running for a couple hundred thousand miles. I have a used 2004 F150 that's about to hit 600k miles on its original engine.
It’ll be fine. EV batteries don’t just have the failure mode most people expect where it just stops working one day. They lose capaicy over time. Even then, they trends down to settling at 70-80%, not zero.
That's not entirely true. There's still risk of sudden battery failure. Otherwise these guys wouldn't have a business. Fortunately: Those guys do have a business and many others exist. For a couple grand at most you can get many battery packs repaired to their former glory. On a car where the battery pack is easy to remove, it should be fairly cheap assuming they can get cells somewhere (like other dead battery packs). The one in the video was done for 1€ as a joke, but that may very well be the true material cost of repair for an early Tesla battery since their cells are roughly the same as in an e-cigarette, 18650.
It IS increasingly rare with newer EVs, but it's a failure mode where the dealer will tell you to fuck off and pay anywhere between 20 and 70 thousand unless in warranty and for some manufacturers (Mercedes) the warranty terms have been updated to say that if the battery is more expensive than the residual value of the car, warranty will only cover it up to the value of the car.
All lithium-ion cells die one day. Majority will live a long happy life, but lifetime is not predictable on an individual level, only on the level of hundreds or thousands of units. I used to refurb laptops. I have the most experience with Macbook batteries, which I find to be very high quality for a laptop battery. I've tested at least a thousand of those, maybe 2-3 thousand.
Apple says 1000 charge cycles is what one should last - if you manage to get over 1000 cycles within the warranty period and it drops under 80% capacity, bad luck, you're not getting a warranty replacement. If it's under 1000 cycles and within the warranty period, it's covered. I've seen one or two that had above 80% capacity on as many as 2800 charge cycles. Many that were over 1000 but still good, many that had dropped barely under 80% in 200, 500 or maybe 1500 cycles... But I've also seen a couple that were in double digit cycle count and had <=30% capacity left. Usually those were also swollen.
It's just impossible to predict longevity on a single battery pack with proper accuracy.