How many electric cars have ever had to replace their batteries?

Every time electric cars are talked about, those on social media begin to appear who claim that after certain kilometers you have to change the battery and that, as we all know, they are really expensive. Is this the reality of electric cars, or is it a myth? There is already a study that has analyzed the issue, and it concludes that we should not worry about electric cars manufactured after 2015. The study is from Recurrent Auto, and for this, they have analyzed more than  20,000 electric vehicles.

This extensive study has found that on average only 2.5% of electric cars have had their batteries replaced. That is to say, although on social networks some insist on saying that it is almost certain that we will have to change it for a new one, in reality,  it is very rare for the battery of an electric vehicle to present some type of fault that forces us to replace it with another one. The most relevant thing, on the other hand, is that the study shows that it is something that depends a lot on the year of manufacture of the vehicle. And more specifically,  the older the electric car,  the greater the likelihood that it will need a completely new battery at some point.

No, of course, you do not have to change the battery in electric cars except in rare exceptions.

While for electric cars manufactured before 2015, the battery replacement rate reaches 13%, the study shows that for those manufactured from 2016 onwards this same rate plummets to  1% or even less. If we delve into the data we will see that some of the oldest cars, from which data has been analyzed and extracted for analysis,  were from the year 2011. And it is something that not only has to do with the battery itself because technologically they have evolved and better chemical compositions are used today, but it is also due to the cooling systems.

As I also explained to you a long time ago, there are different types of cooling systems for the battery of electric vehicles. And over time these systems have been perfected. Today, most vehicles use more effective liquid cooling systems, which prevent overheating under load – for example – and therefore reduce degradation and the formation of dendrites. The BMS, which are responsible for managing the charge and temperature of the cells and the battery pack, have also been improved.

Among the data offered by Recurrent, they have found that from 2015 to 2022 batteries have grown by 122% on average in electric cars. That is, electric vehicles now have a greater energy storage capacity. This also favors the fact that, even if there is a certain degradation, the remaining range is still sufficient to last longer before having to be replaced.

Although it is not discussed in depth, it should also be noted that previously the industry relied on NCM batteries as the main chemistry to offer the highest energy density and charge and discharge capacity. And yet, the trend has changed, because more and more manufacturers are now betting on LFP batteries. Not only because they are cheaper, but also because they offer a longer useful life,  are noticeably safer and it has been proven that they do not suffer as much degradation during charge and discharge cycles. They are batteries that can be charged to 100% and discharged to 0%, without suffering the problems that NCM batteries suffered.

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