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CDA
May 09, 2023
Tesla has made public the level of degradation of the batteries of its models after 322,000 km of use… and it is surprisingly positive.
One of the concerns that potential electric car buyers have is the battery life of your vehicle. Greater degradation of the same implies less load capacity and, therefore, less effective autonomy. Some draw the analogy with cell phone batteries and fear that the charging capacity of their car will suffer significantly over the miles.
Tesla, the biggest seller of electric cars on the planet, just gave us a hint about this and has revealed the average degradation of the capacity (and autonomy) of its car batteries electricity in its new “Impact Report 2022”.
They barely lose 12 percent of their total capacity
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According to the company, the average loss of battery capacity after 322,000 km (200,000 miles) is 12 percent of original capacity. “Even after 200,000 miles of use, our batteries lose only 12 percent of their capacity on average.”
This data is somewhat worse compared to what Tesla itself pointed out in its “2020 Impact Report”. In that study, the company pointed out that the battery capacity retention, on average, was at around 90 percent (so 10 percent degradation) after 200,000 miles of use.
What is the average autonomy that an electric car should have? The figure is put by Elon Musk
Tesla refers only to the degradation of the batteries of the Model S and Model Xpresumably because it has more long-term data on these vehicles than on others in its range (Model 3 or Model Y), and it is about average data since the charging process and the conditions of the cars are very heterogeneous (fast charges , loads at home, etc).
The good news from these data is that old batteries, and not so technologically fine-tuned, already show a fairly high energy retention capacity. This is getting better with timewhich implies that the degradation figures will be lower in the future.
