Ev battery life

[Connolly]

I read an article written by Rowan Atkinson about Evs yesterday in the Guardian. I admire the guy and he is obviously intelligent but I think he showed a quite negative view on EVS overall. I would admit straight away that EVS are far from perfect but the technology behind them is improving rapidly as time goes on. In particular he quotes that batteries last only about 10 years. I think this is wrong for numerous reasons....
1. Manufacturers guarantee batteries for 8 years to 70%. Given that they won't want expensive returns for battery charge failures I'm they have built in a cushion to ensure returns are not likely because of hidden charge buffers and a good BMS. That suggests to me 8 year old batteries will probably still have an SOH of say > 80% on average. Yet supposedly after 2 further years ageing the batteries will be useless- nonsensical IMO.
2. Battery recycling will recover a lot of the expensive metals and materials used in the batteries. This recovery process is only going to improve in time.
3 . Energy densities will continue to increase with Battery development and hence weights will reduce significantly over time.
I could go on about other points that were overly critical but I think that's enough to be going on with for now. What do you think

[MotMot]

It’s amazing the Guardian hasn’t pulled or offered some sort of counterpoint to the article. It’s been pretty comprehensively debunked on Twitter. Notably - the Volvo study cited in it has been shown on a number of occasions to be wrong.

[Kwr68]

I thought this might turn up i have read the guardian for number of years and was surprised by this article it seemed to cover all the usual topics I’ve heard from much older people over the time I’ve had an ev ,its more in keeping with certain other newspapers who are not overly enamoured by ev there was a bit about hydrogen fuel cell i have read some where the hydrogen requires an awful lot of energy to produce .still every are entitled to have a point of view

[smyth1492]

And today I caught an article about blocking electric cars going into older multi-storey car parks for weight reasons but no mention of the fact that modern cars in general are much heavier. A LR Disco 3 is 2.7 tones, I don't see them being blocked from multi-storey car parks.

I still think we are early stages for some of the life cycle impacts of electric cars because we have not mastered the end of life process and what the impact will be in each country in the same way we are going to have a problem with solar panels at end of life.

[Raxacorico]

And today I caught an article about blocking electric cars going into older multi-storey car parks for weight reasons but no mention of the fact that modern cars in general are much heavier. A LR Disco 3 is 2.7 tones, I don't see them being blocked from multi-storey car parks.

I saw that on Fully Charged - one of Robert's Rants. Another EV scare story. There are umpteen SUV's that are much heavier than the average EV.

[ozzymac1]

In response to the article by Rowan Atkinson on EVs, I disagree with his negative view. While EVs have their limitations, battery technology is rapidly improving, and manufacturers often offer warranties for 8 years with a minimum capacity guarantee. Battery recycling is also advancing, allowing for the recovery of valuable materials. Moreover, ongoing research aims to increase energy densities and reduce the weight of batteries over time. It is important to acknowledge these advancements and consider the potential benefits of EVs.

[goldconch]

Rowan's not wrong. Batteries are consumables, including all rechargeable Li-Ion technology dating from the 1980s. I'm on my 3rd Li-Ion battery on the MacBook I'm using to type this. They do degrade over time/charge cycles. Happily, there is an emerging circular supply chain industry in Li-Ion battery recycling which means the batteries are no longer trash (eg. see Tesla co-founder's venture, Redwood Materials). There are now bids for bulk sorted old used Li-ion batteries from landfills. VW's MEB platform will probably adopt newer solid state battery technology as it rolls out 2026+ (see Toyota-Panasonic breakthrough announcements).

[sidehaas]

A modern EV battery with bottom/top buffers, active cooling and an effective BMS is a different beast from a MacBook battery. It's warrantied to 70% after 8 years and there is little reason to think it will become useless before the rest of the car does, so I definitely wouldn't describe it as a consumable. However recycling is obviously important.
I'm also hoping a market might grow in conversion of used EV batteries to a home battery. Even if it degraded to 50% by the time the rest of the car fell apart, you still have the equivalent of 3 Tesla power walls or something, that's worth a lot of £. I've seen a video where it was done (with a used ID battery module) on YouTube but the process looked pretty intricate and possibly dangerous so definitely not a skilled DIY job.