Volvo XC40 aka Geely full electric car has battery life predicted of only 3 to 5 years

@ninalanyon cars don't need review and Americans would rather kill everything than stop making civilization impossible with the cars.

@ninalanyon Nothing to do with extinct Cretaceous reptiles. Those are sensible claims, for they are for the life of the [i]present[/i] batteries in the [i]present [/i]model of that Chinese-built car by a Chinese company. (Just as is MG, now.)

Also of course they can't predict how any individual set of batteries will be affected by driving and re-charging conditions beyond the manufacturers' control; hence the wide estimate.

Nobody can predict the service lives of batteries of equivalent (or greater) capacity and power, not yet developed. I do though wonder if a law of diminishing returns will come in, so developments that include increasing the battery life will become slower, smaller and more expensive for increasing cost. The battery makers are busy trying to find better materials than lithium but there must be only so many potential (!) alternatives suitable in all respects.

Meanwhile I do take it the scientists and engineers are also investigating sensible alternative materials to those made from petroleum derivatives, for all the plastics, paints and lubricants used in battery-powered cars... Errr, are they? I hear or read very, very little publicity about that.

@ArishMell Not literal dinosaurs of course, they were actually quite successful. But the metaphorical dinosaurs of the oil business and conventional car manufacturers. As far as I know no current or even previous generation EVs have batteries expected to last only three years. Most seem to outlast their warranty which is typically eight years.

As for lubricants, well EVs need far less than ICE vehicles because only the bearings need lubrication and they are sealed. So the total volume of lubricant in an EV is measured in decilitres at most not the ten or more litres needed for an ICE car. And it lasts a lot longer than the lubricants used inside an internal combustion engine.

And yes diminishing returns will set in. The growth of pretty much everything follows a sigma curve, struggles to get going, accelerates as the technology becomes better understood, and finally slowing as it gets closer to physical limits.

As you say no on can predict the details of the performance and longevity of as yet undeveloped battery technologies. However, we can be confident that there will be technologies that are at least in some senses better than what we have now.

@ninalanyon Not at all. Yes battery tech is getting better and charge density gradually improves on a per-cell basis, but it's not just a case of stuffing as many cells into the physical space as economics and legalities will allow. Most EV owners are going to have the shits when their 'eco warrior' vehicle only has 75 pct or less of it's originally specified by the manufacturer charge capacity after 5 or so years and therefore theoretical maximum range under 'normal' driving conditions is significantly reduced. Then the owner either has to replace the vehicle with a new one or is up for anything up to $50k to replace the battery module with a new one (and then the old battery module becomes scrap). That's hardly 'eco friendly' like EV's are made out to be. ;-)

@butterflybaby75 [quote]Most EV owners are going to have the shits when their 'eco warrior' vehicle only has 75 pct or less of it's originally specified by the manufacturer charge capacity after 5 or so years a[/quote]

Except that this is also not generally true. Certainly my Tesla S had more than 75% of it' rated capacity at five years old.

@ninalanyon Remember your Tesla is a high end EV and a Geely pretending to be a volvo xc40 is a low end EV with shit Chinese quality build and design. EV's are just another machine and quality counts. Not the badge or a fancy name. I bet Tesla over time will let quality slacken in order to lower costs and compete for market share when all the mainstream car makers go hardcore into EV's to steal Tesla's cult lead.

@butterflybaby75 So you have some statistics showing that XC40 batteries are down by more than 25% after five years?

Edit: Can't find details about Volvo but MG which is also Chinese and a lot cheaper have a seven year 80 000 mile warranty and will repair or replace the battery if it drops to 70% capacity in that time.

@ninalanyon It's the lifespan predicted by the 'panel of experts' whoever that is. But being a cheap as chips EV not much better than a Nissan Leaf don't expect world-beating eco-warrior thunbergism.

@butterflybaby75 [quote] 'panel of experts' whoever that is.[/quote]

So. the supposed opinion of a group of unidentified people. Sounds really trustworthy.

@ninalanyon I just don't believe the bullshit that the eco warriors spout as there's little if any real-world data for anything other that Tesla's and other EV models that have existed globally (but not in Australia) for around 10 years or more yet.

@butterflybaby75 I don't have any solid statistics handy by I've just read a statement by Viking, a big Norwegian company that provides roadside assistance for car owners and they say:
[quote]Det har gått mange myter om hvor lenge et elbil batteri holder, men nå som elbilmarkedet har fått noen år på baken, ser vi at alle erfaringer så langt tyder på batteriene vil vare hele bilens levetid og vel så det.

Nissan gikk ut med at et elbilbatteri holder i gjennomsnitt 22 år, og en elbil har i gjennomsnitt 10 års levetid. Det er med andre ord ikke bruken, men etterbruken, som er utfordringen med dagens elbilbatterier.[/quote]

Translated by Google because I' too lazy to do it myself
[quote]There have been many myths about how long an electric car battery lasts, but now that the electric car market has had a few years under its belt, we see that all experiences so far indicate that the batteries will last the entire life of the car, and that's fine.

Nissan assumed that an electric car battery lasts an average of 22 years, and an electric car has an average lifespan of 10 years. In other words, it is not the use, but the after-use, that is the challenge with today's electric car batteries.[/quote]

Nissan have a press release from 2018 which says:
[quote]Rolle, Switzerland, 23 March 2015: Five years and more than 35,000 European sales since the launch of its all-electric LEAF, proprietary data released by Nissan for the first time shows that 99.99 percent of its battery units remain entirely fit for purpose.

The failure rate of the battery power unit is less than 0.01 percent - or just three units in total - a fraction of the equivalent industry-wideꜞ figure for defects affecting traditional combustion engines.[/quote]
https://web.archive.org/web/20181016105923/https://newsroom.nissan-europe.com/uk/en-gb/media/pressreleases/131212