My VW hybrid is just over 10 years. The advertising claimed 28 miles on a charge, but the reality was about 18 maximum, with stop-start somewhat less. After a couple of months when it had calibrated, it settled displaying 21 miles for a full charge. 10 years on, and it still reads 21 miles on a full charge, but the reading is less useful in use. It's common for it to drop from 21 to 15 miles after a mile, but to stay on 1 mile remaining for around 4 miles travelled. But essentially, I don't consider the range to have deteriorated too significantly, it still feels around the same ballpark.
A lot of the original thinking about batteries comes from the Nissan Leaf, introduced in 2009, when they guessed that batteries would probably need replacing after 10 years. However, from the cars that were written off from accidents, they discovered much less battery wear than predicted, and around the time I bought my car, they were suggesting batteries would be around 80% after 10 years and most manufacturers started using that figure. I'm not sure what current estimates are, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was closer to 90% after 10 years.
It's common knowledge amongst owners that range is significantly reduced in cold weather - I'd guess from my use, maybe 20% less range on a cold winter day compared to summer.
And as to why car batteries last so much longer than e.g. phone batteries, I think it's mostly because their charging limits are much more pessimistic. Typically a car charger won't ever charge beyond 90% capacity or discharge below 10%, and this is built into its estimated range (so 0 miles remaining is 10% charge).
Bigger issue is that it's been out of OEM updates for 3 years now, which is complete balls considering it's a reputable brand and came with "Android Enterprise Recommended" or whatever that was.
The leafs are fine cars but you're paying for being an early adopter. I bought one used in 2016, used it as a daily commuter till 2025 and then sold it. I don't think any car will ever be as cheap to run as that one....
In any case battery failure seems rare but it still is catastrophic and nobody can afford replacement. Hence companies should just provide some sort of warranty / insurance product for the few unlucky folks. Seems like an ideal candidate.
(do this with care, an entire pack is hundreds of volts)
It was at the time one of the main reasons the 2nd hand markets in those countries were pretty healthy and saw a lot of movement of used cars.
The expectation in the EV fan world was that modern (> 2019) battery packs were very likely to retain 80% of their charge for well over the time anyone expected with the drop to 80% itself taking most of the car's expected lifetime. This was because the standard extrapolations ignored improvements in charging algorithms and that real-world usages were expected to be better for the battery than the models.
Another prediction we made is that range under cold (or very hot) weather would be significantly reduced and that seems to be the case too.
Today the market share for EV's is 98% and they account for the majority of the total number of cars on the road! The people who bough 1st. generation EV's as a number two car a decade ago chose EV's as their main car before long. My own vehicles are 7 and 12 years old and holding up well, despite the 12 year old having inferior battery chemistry compared to modern cars.
Change isn't always easy or smooth, but this one is inevitable.
OTOH in the UK at least, I think public charging is way too expensive compared to home charging, so I think most public charging is done out of necessity on long journeys, so the number of people using chargers would probably be significantly lower than number of people filling up with fuel.
The myths are now strong and it will indeed take a long time to dispel them.
When I can throw 100mi into my car in 5 minutes without having to do backflips to get the charger to start, or drive out of my way to specific chargers, and not pay 20 times the market electricity rate... Then people will stop worrying about it.
I do think we'll get there with new EVs (800V platforms look amazing), but it's not going to be retroactive. There are lots of EVs in used circulation where range will be a conscious consideration for another decade or two.
The early generation Nissan Leafs (no battery cooling) did most of the work to tar EVs longevity. It's not propaganda. They were shit.
Had an EV since 2018, range is never a concern.
My only concern is that traditional American car manufacturers still suck at making EVs.
I will happily arrive at a supercharger with 1%.
I haven’t experienced this for years.
There are also some elements of EV ownership where they require some TLC, like not overcharging them when doing mostly local journeys, not using rapid charging more than necessary etc. If manufacturers were carrying the can it would be easy to let these things go out of the window.
Also, consumers currently are the ones taking on liability in adopting new technologies. That's one reason why EV adoption has been a gradual thing. Offer certainty to consumers and they'll look at what they have to gain instead of focusing on what they might lose.
Obliging companies to make repairable products? Removing their right to lock everyone into disposability and overconsumption? And even worse - trimming a sliver of their profits? Damn right, buddy: we can't be having that.
General Motors built an ignition switch for decades which worked mostly just fine. Then they built one so crappy that they killed a bunch of people. Only to save 25 cents or whatever.
EVs depend heavily on 'early adopter evangelism'. I wouldn't read too much into this.
This has grown to 6 in the meantime. It seems that the segment was growing even before Hormuz, propaganda or no.
No amount of fire exits would help, I mean, what about my stuff?!?
No amount of insurance would cover personal belongings that could get lost, so that means stress from the stupid EV.
The technology might be generally proven (the EV could be a Toyota Prius variant) but the current iteration could be another Note 7, there is no knowing for sure.
I assure you it is not propaganda or TikTok that makes me wary of EV batteries, or any grudge, it is just that I have a different set of circumstances to the guy with a separate garage for housing an EV a safe distance away.
It took an extra decade for hospitals to allow mobile phones on their premises, they just had a different risk assessment. It wasn't propaganda that made them enforce such a ban.
Hence, although it is tempting to blame 'enemy propaganda', there is a whole spectrum of risk assessment, based on different people and different circumstances, so it will take a while, with battery chemistry essentially static for a decade before some get won over.
"A 2015 Model S with over 265,000 miles on the original battery (85% capacity remaining)"
The implication being that runs counter to the claim of "calendar age degradation".
Usually you would think that 25000 miles per year over 11 years would degrade the battery faster than the car just sitting around for 11 years.
Source?
Real-world observations suggest batteries are likely to be serviceable for around 20 years, which is around the same lifetime of an average ICE car. Users who can tolerate a much reduced range (which is most of us) can likely extend this even further.
I suspect the RC plane batteries you've been using for five years are not the same chemically as the EV car batteries in use in the UK for five years.
As I mentioned, the article specifically mentions that the battery chemistry has been changed and improved.
It neglects to dive into the chemical engineering specifics of such changes, as would be expected for press such as the WSJ.
I dare say there is as much variation in the attributes of the LiPo/Li-Ion battery family as there is within the borosilicate glass or soda–lime glass families (ie heaps).
The fact that the article states that this appears to result in longer life and the fact that you talk about your RC plane batteries not having a longer life would suggest that the fine specifics of the two batteries may well differ.
They've been sitting unused, in their original packaging, never opened... They're still sitting at the charge they shipped at, but the capacity is so diminished that one can't even run an esp32 for a day. I've tried cycling them to see if I can get the capacity back up, but I think they're toast already.