Electric vehicle Q&A: How long can I expect my battery to last? And what happens when it dies?

Q: Having bought an EV, I’m now wondering what kind of lifespan I can expect. What are the options once the battery capacity depletes? – M Chambers, from Co Dublin

A: The first and most important thing to note here is that if you’ve just bought a new electric car, then the battery’s lifespan is extremely unlikely to be your problem.

How so? For several reasons.

First off, batteries have proven to be much more robust and long-lived than we thought possible when the first Nissan Leaf and Mitsubishi i-MiEV models (remember the i-MiEV?) arrived on Irish shores back in 2012.

Back then, the worry was that an EV battery could be dead within a few years, leaving you with a potential five-figure cost to replace it. That didn’t really happen, though.

Sure, a few individual batteries had issues, but thanks to ever-improving ch...
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