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It looks like they have the BEV lasting just as long as ICE car without any battery replacement. Has it turned out that way? Seems like owning an electric car

It looks like they have the BEV lasting just as long as ICE car without any battery replacement. Has it turned out that way? Seems like owning an electric car for 18 years really hasn’t been a thing since the model s was released in 2012, but is it projected to last that long.

toomuchtodo 1mo ago
Yes. EV Batteries Last Way Longer Than Expected - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43001996 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43001996 - February 2025 (2 comments) New study shows: EV batteries last much longer than expected - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42228901 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42228901 - November 2024 (70 comments) https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=ev%20batteries%20last&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
trollbridge 1mo ago
Certainly not the case for hybrids like Priuses. The battery system lasts 10-15 years and 150k-200k miles. Any ICE car on the market now should be expected to last a lot longer than that; I drive cars that are 25+ years old and really don't need much significant in the way of repairs.
- FabCH 1mo ago
  Hybrids are the worst of both worlds when it comes to maintenance. They have their benefits and are key to fighting climate change, but mechanically you inherit all the problems from both sides. There is no way you are driving a 25 year old car without serious maintenance like exchanging the timing belt. Add the frequent oil changes and all other yearly maintenance and it does add up. Compared to a BEV, where you literally only need to change the break pads, and you may or may not need to change the battery, and the batteries keep outperforming the expected lifespan. BEV are simply mechanically much simpler devices.
  - gibspaulding 1mo ago
    > Hybrids are the worst of both worlds when it comes to maintenance. While this seems intuitively true, I have some pushback, and I think that the reliability record of e.g older generations of Prius backs me up. While you do have effectively two cars (an EV and an ICE) crammed into one, you’re not actually using both at full capacity all the time, which cuts down a lot on wear and tear. Your ICE is almost never run under load before it warms up, and is kept running at its most efficient rpm most of the time, your transmission is running under less load since it has help from the electric motors, and is often simpler (the aforementioned Prius does not have a reverse gear for example). No it’s not nearly as simple as a BEV, but a well implemented hybrid system is absolutely an upgrade from a full ICE vehicle.
    - joshdont 1mo ago
      Personal experience backs up. Had a 2009 Prius, let it go because I did a terrible job handling rust buildup. Was still running great on the original battery pack with nearly 200k miles when we sold it. Only significant problem was pothole related damage.
    - cucumber3732842 1mo ago
      >you’re not actually using both at full capacity all the time, which cuts down a lot on wear and tear. In theory this should be true. In reality hybrids eat motors compared to the same engine in an ICE. That's just what happens you have two ways of making the vehicle go to potentially mask "something's funny" type issues and your customer base is people who are buying an appliance based on an MPG number and some math. With competent ownership (fleet vehicles provide a lot of examples, lots of hyrbrid Fords from the 00s and early examples still around) they come out about the same as an ICE car so you essentially get the hybrid system "for free" from a maintenance perspective. But that's not the median consumer.
    - esikich 1mo ago
      Unless it's -40F, modern cars don't need to "warm up".
  - cgyvbunji 1mo ago
- Mistletoe 1mo ago
  The Prius up until about 2016 uses a NiMH battery that is different than Lithium ones.
- rsynnott 1mo ago
  Hybrid batteries get much more of a work-out than BEV batteries, particularly light hybrids; they're tiny, and get a lot more discharge cycles.
FabCH 1mo ago
As a data point: I’m at year 8 of Model X 100kWh with basically 0% capacity loss. If it exists at all, it’s less than 1-2%, so less than what I can reasonably measure with just the odometer and battery indicator. Nissan Leaf gave BEV a bad name because it had much worse battery tech. Battery longevity is not a problem for modern, or even decade old cars.
- deleted 1mo ago
  [deleted]
bryanlarsen 1mo ago
4% of Toyota engines need to be replaced before 250,000 miles; 3% of Tesla batteries need to be replaced before 250,000 miles. "More reliable than a Toyota engine" is pretty high praise.
wcunning 1mo ago
The issue is less the wear and tear of the battery and motors and more the wear and tear of everything else -- suspension and brake components are going to need replacing, along with radar and ultrasonic modules, etc. These parts will be at least partially end-of-life and hard to get by the end of that 20 year period. Federal law requires some amount of parts availability for 10 years + some release of part designs to the aftermarket after that, but I have a hard time getting parts for 21 year old Ford designs that were less than popular, so I would be surprised if early Tesla models are having an easy time 20 years on. This gets much much worse as you start to look at the number of abandoned EV models from the Big 3, the abandoned/dead/dying companies (Fiskar, Lucid, Lordstown, etc). That doesn't hit the vast majority of all EVs, which are just Tesla, but it does put a dent/makes the buying decision harder. Now expand that to not just Tesla, but what does Tesla do with a Cybertruck? Like all things, the specific product decision matters a lot, and this is a new area (even at 14 years old) so there will be lots of people who optimized for cost and not maintainability.
- coderenegade 1mo ago
  The surprising thing is that parts availability is even worse for new cars. Sensors are built into every part now, so it's no longer just a windscreen or a bumper. If those sensors are critical to the driver assist systems, the car can be a write-off for trivial damage because of the difficulty of getting parts. And in many places, you can't just disable those systems and get on with things, even if the car is otherwise perfectly fine, because the law states that roadworthiness requires the original safety systems to be intact. Even more alarmingly, the speed of revisions now is such that vehicles can have parts that were only used for a very short run before being updated and replaced. Your particular vehicle batch may not necessarily have identical parts to other batches even within the same generation. We're a long, long way from the way things used to be, when parts commonality stretched for decades.
rsynnott 1mo ago
Nissan Leaf went production-scale in 2010. There are still a surprising number of the very old ones around, even though the Leaf had a particularly _problematic_ battery by EV standards.

toomuchtodo 1mo ago

Yes. EV Batteries Last Way Longer Than Expected - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43001996 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43001996 - February 2025 (2 comments) New study shows: EV batteries last much longer than expected - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42228901 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42228901 - November 2024 (70 comments) https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=ev%20batteries%20last&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

trollbridge 1mo ago

Certainly not the case for hybrids like Priuses. The battery system lasts 10-15 years and 150k-200k miles. Any ICE car on the market now should be expected to last a lot longer than that; I drive cars that are 25+ years old and really don't need much significant in the way of repairs.

FabCH 1mo ago
Hybrids are the worst of both worlds when it comes to maintenance. They have their benefits and are key to fighting climate change, but mechanically you inherit all the problems from both sides. There is no way you are driving a 25 year old car without serious maintenance like exchanging the timing belt. Add the frequent oil changes and all other yearly maintenance and it does add up. Compared to a BEV, where you literally only need to change the break pads, and you may or may not need to change the battery, and the batteries keep outperforming the expected lifespan. BEV are simply mechanically much simpler devices.
- gibspaulding 1mo ago
  > Hybrids are the worst of both worlds when it comes to maintenance. While this seems intuitively true, I have some pushback, and I think that the reliability record of e.g older generations of Prius backs me up. While you do have effectively two cars (an EV and an ICE) crammed into one, you’re not actually using both at full capacity all the time, which cuts down a lot on wear and tear. Your ICE is almost never run under load before it warms up, and is kept running at its most efficient rpm most of the time, your transmission is running under less load since it has help from the electric motors, and is often simpler (the aforementioned Prius does not have a reverse gear for example). No it’s not nearly as simple as a BEV, but a well implemented hybrid system is absolutely an upgrade from a full ICE vehicle.
  - joshdont 1mo ago
    Personal experience backs up. Had a 2009 Prius, let it go because I did a terrible job handling rust buildup. Was still running great on the original battery pack with nearly 200k miles when we sold it. Only significant problem was pothole related damage.
  - cucumber3732842 1mo ago
    >you’re not actually using both at full capacity all the time, which cuts down a lot on wear and tear. In theory this should be true. In reality hybrids eat motors compared to the same engine in an ICE. That's just what happens you have two ways of making the vehicle go to potentially mask "something's funny" type issues and your customer base is people who are buying an appliance based on an MPG number and some math. With competent ownership (fleet vehicles provide a lot of examples, lots of hyrbrid Fords from the 00s and early examples still around) they come out about the same as an ICE car so you essentially get the hybrid system "for free" from a maintenance perspective. But that's not the median consumer.
  - esikich 1mo ago
    Unless it's -40F, modern cars don't need to "warm up".
- cgyvbunji 1mo ago
Mistletoe 1mo ago
The Prius up until about 2016 uses a NiMH battery that is different than Lithium ones.
rsynnott 1mo ago
Hybrid batteries get much more of a work-out than BEV batteries, particularly light hybrids; they're tiny, and get a lot more discharge cycles.

FabCH 1mo ago

As a data point: I’m at year 8 of Model X 100kWh with basically 0% capacity loss. If it exists at all, it’s less than 1-2%, so less than what I can reasonably measure with just the odometer and battery indicator. Nissan Leaf gave BEV a bad name because it had much worse battery tech. Battery longevity is not a problem for modern, or even decade old cars.

deleted 1mo ago
[deleted]

bryanlarsen 1mo ago

4% of Toyota engines need to be replaced before 250,000 miles; 3% of Tesla batteries need to be replaced before 250,000 miles. "More reliable than a Toyota engine" is pretty high praise.

wcunning 1mo ago

The issue is less the wear and tear of the battery and motors and more the wear and tear of everything else -- suspension and brake components are going to need replacing, along with radar and ultrasonic modules, etc. These parts will be at least partially end-of-life and hard to get by the end of that 20 year period. Federal law requires some amount of parts availability for 10 years + some release of part designs to the aftermarket after that, but I have a hard time getting parts for 21 year old Ford designs that were less than popular, so I would be surprised if early Tesla models are having an easy time 20 years on. This gets much much worse as you start to look at the number of abandoned EV models from the Big 3, the abandoned/dead/dying companies (Fiskar, Lucid, Lordstown, etc). That doesn't hit the vast majority of all EVs, which are just Tesla, but it does put a dent/makes the buying decision harder. Now expand that to not just Tesla, but what does Tesla do with a Cybertruck? Like all things, the specific product decision matters a lot, and this is a new area (even at 14 years old) so there will be lots of people who optimized for cost and not maintainability.

coderenegade 1mo ago
The surprising thing is that parts availability is even worse for new cars. Sensors are built into every part now, so it's no longer just a windscreen or a bumper. If those sensors are critical to the driver assist systems, the car can be a write-off for trivial damage because of the difficulty of getting parts. And in many places, you can't just disable those systems and get on with things, even if the car is otherwise perfectly fine, because the law states that roadworthiness requires the original safety systems to be intact. Even more alarmingly, the speed of revisions now is such that vehicles can have parts that were only used for a very short run before being updated and replaced. Your particular vehicle batch may not necessarily have identical parts to other batches even within the same generation. We're a long, long way from the way things used to be, when parts commonality stretched for decades.

rsynnott 1mo ago

Nissan Leaf went production-scale in 2010. There are still a surprising number of the very old ones around, even though the Leaf had a particularly _problematic_ battery by EV standards.