I seem to be attracting lots of EV cynics these days for some reason. I can’t count the number of times someone has told me that I shouldn’t be driving an EV and that don’t I know that when I have to replace the battery it will cost me €10K. Or that mining Lithium is destroying the planet and it takes a thousand tonnes of rock just to mine 1kg of Lithium. Not as bad as the guy who asked me why they don’t add a dynamo to the wheels so the car can charge itself while it’s driving I suppose.
So my car, like most EVs, has an 8 year battery warranty. I’m sure any sane manufacturer offering such a warranty is reasonably sure the battery is unlikely to fail during the warranty or else they would bankrupt themselves replacing batteries. So it’s safe to assume the mean time between failures (MTBF) is at least 10 years. Given the average lifetime of any car is only 11 or 12 years anyway, even then the battery will outlive the car for the vast majority of cases. It’s only logical.
But what is a failure? An outright total fail is possible but unlikely. If that does happen, it probably isn’t the individual cells that are at fault but some other component. Repairing EV batteries isn’t commonly done yet AFAIK, but as EVs age there will almost certainly be repair shops springing up that specalise in battery refurbs. It’s more likely to be a gradual degradation, eventually becoming severe enough that the car is unusable. I’ve read stories of older Nissan Leaf’s that can’t even do 100km on a full charge any more. Those older cars were missing a lot of the features in a modern battery management system (BMS) like thermal management so they certainly did degrade faster. But any research I’ve seen (like this one) on Tesla or newer EVs just aren’t showing anywhere near that level of degradation any more. I think I can live with 15% degradation after 200,000kms. That’s probably on par with the degradation of an ICE engine block.
The idea that I would spend €10K on new battery for a car over 8 years old is silly anyway. Why would I do that? I’d just scrap the car if it was that bad. 20 years ago I bought a brand new Honda Accord for €40K and kept it for 11 years. When I eventually traded it in, I got a whopping €2K for it against my next car. So that’s a 95% deprecation over 11 yrs, or a compounded annual deprecation of 6.5%, not unreasonable. If it was an EV and the battery had failed at 11 years, does anyone really think I would have put a €10K battery into a car worth €2K? Would anyone put a brand new ICE engine into a 10 year old car? Why do they think EVs are any different? If a post-warranty battery replacement is needed, it’s going to be a second hand battery from a scrapped car, or maybe some kind of refurb, or else scrap the car. Same as with an ICE. A friend of mine had an engine blow on a 5 year old landrover. The timing chain snapped and caused lots of internal damage. Apparently it’s a common fault with the model of engine (Ingenium?) in those cars. But out of warranty so tough luck. It made no sense to them to buy a brand new engine, which would have cost in excess of €10K so they went for a rebuild instead.
But what about the Lithium? You have to go and destroy the planet again to get more, right? Well the Lithium hasn’t gone anywhere. The 8kg of Lithium that was in the battery at the start of it’s life is all still in the battery. So why would you dump the battery in a landfill and go and mine another 8kg? That doesn’t make sense to me. I can’t see how it’s harder, in the worst case, to crush the battery and use solvent extraction to get the Lithium out? I just don’t get it. But Cobalt!!! That enslaves children in the Congo! Well, it’s true that 50% of the world’s Cobalt comes from the Congo, but most EV batteries aren’t using Cobalt any more. Lithium Ferro-phosphate (LFP) batteries are Cobalt free. And never mind that one of the biggest uses of Cobalt is to make catalysts for the de-sulpherisation of petroleum.
EVs go on fire all the time too – did you know that? I didn’t. I’ve never had any first hand experience of anyone having an EV fire. I’ve seen several fires caused by diesel runaways – one happened to a friend of mine’s neighbour. Why am I not hearing about all these EV fires? I don’t get that either.
A retired doctor recently told me my EV was destroying the roads because battery is so heavy. So my 2 tonne car is destroying the road but your 2.5 tonne range rover doesn’t cause any issues? Maybe it’s the 40 tonne trucks that damage roads? No that can’t be it – I must be wrong there. Or is it the tyres that are bad? Well I put regular tyres on my EV. My last set lasted 46,000km. I don’t see how that’s any different to my previous ICE cars?
Maybe I’m just not as smart as the people I meet who know all this stuff about EVs cos they read it on the internet. I just wish they’d talk to people who actually own one though.