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Electric cars now last as long as petrol and diesel cars

Electric vehicles now have a similar lifespan to their petrol and diesel ancestors – and their reliability, which is already rivalling that of fossil fuel cars, is getting better every year because the technology is still maturing.

That’s the verdict of a team at the University of Birmingham in the UK, who analysed almost 300 million records from the UK’s mandatory MOT test, which measures the condition, age and mileage of every vehicle on the road – the data from 2005 to 2022 covered around 29.8 million vehicles in total.

The results showed that electric vehicles now have an average lifespan of more than 18.4 years, surpassing the average for diesel vehicles, which lasts 16.8 years, and almost equalling the average for petrol vehicles, which lasts 18.7 years. The average electric vehicle now travels 200,000 miles in its lifetime, beating the 187,000 miles recorded by its petrol-powered counterparts but falling short of the 257,000 miles that diesel vehicles average.

The research also shows that long-term reliability is improving: The likelihood of an electric vehicle failing and ending up in the scrapyard in any given year is falling about twice as fast as for petrol-powered vehicles, and about six times as fast as for diesel-powered vehicles.

"The first electric cars weren't as good and they weren't as reliable," said Professor Robert Elliott. "But the bottom line, I think, is that the technology is improving very rapidly. We're not environmental crusaders. We just want to give you the facts. Electric cars and batteries, they're just living longer."

Maintenance costs of electric cars... The mandatory vehicle inspection test used in this research does not include information on the costs of owning the vehicles, that is, how much their owners spend on maintenance and repairs, only taking into account their overall useful life.

On the other hand, other research conducted in the US has shown that the maintenance costs of electric cars are around R$0.22/km (US$0.06 per mile), while for internal combustion engines the value is R$0.37/km (US$0.10 per mile).

On the other hand, a complete replacement of the fleet of vehicles with combustion engines by battery-powered vehicles is hindered by the shortage of raw materials for manufacturing these batteries, especially lithium, which highlights the need for urgent innovations in the field of batteries for a general decarbonization of the transportation sector.

Bibliography:

Article: The closing longevity gap between battery electric vehicles and internal combustion vehicles in Great Britain

Authors: Viet Nguyen-Tien, Chengyu Zhang, Eric Strobl, Robert J. R. Elliott

Magazine: Nature Energy