Battery Degradation Warranties

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DucRider

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 9, 2016
Messages
599
There has been a fair amount of press about the Bolt EV battery degradation warranty. I thought it would be useful to compare the warranties of all the currently available BEV's.
Does the Bolt have the best warranty? No. But it is better than most.
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In reality, most users will never get anywhere near the "worst case" degradation that would result in a battery replacement. While I wish that GM had used the emerging "industry standard" 70%, I applaud them for putting a hard number on it that people can use to compare and not refuse to cover it at all.

This info was obtained from owners manuals and/or manufacturer websites.
 
Excellent--thank you Gary!

I was going to add this to my spec sheet and this helps fill in some gaps. The biggest remaining gap, which shouldn't be surprising, is the IONIQ Electric. In the UK, it's 8 yr/125mi, which is pretty good. I don't know the capacity percentage. We'll have to see what warranty they give to US cars.

Also, the Spark EV has a 8 yr/100k mi, 65% battery degradation warranty.

It's interesting that GM lowered it from 65% to 60% for the Bolt EV, especially since a 60 kWh battery should have an easier time making it to 100k mi verses the 18.4 kWh battery in the Spark EV. The Bolt EV battery will need a third fewer cycles to reach 100k mi, so I have to conclude that GM feels the battery degradation will be worse with the Bolt EV than with the Spark EV, or they're making a fundamentally different economic decision with the Bolt EV battery degradation risk.
 
Zoomit said:
It's interesting that GM lowered it from 65% to 60% for the Bolt EV, especially since a 60 kWh battery should have an easier time making it to 100k mi verses the 18.4 kWh battery in the Spark EV. The Bolt EV battery will need a third fewer cycles to reach 100k mi, so I have to conclude that GM feels the battery degradation will be worse with the Bolt EV than with the Spark EV, or they're making a fundamentally different economic decision with the Bolt EV battery degradation risk.

Bolt EV will be sold in hotter places than Spark EV. Even with a TMS, battery temperature will average hotter in hot places. Temperature is a big part of battery lifetime.
 
I did not include the Spark EV because it is a discontinued model, but interesting to note the warranty difference.
 
WetEV said:
Zoomit said:
It's interesting that GM lowered it from 65% to 60% for the Bolt EV, especially since a 60 kWh battery should have an easier time making it to 100k mi verses the 18.4 kWh battery in the Spark EV. The Bolt EV battery will need a third fewer cycles to reach 100k mi, so I have to conclude that GM feels the battery degradation will be worse with the Bolt EV than with the Spark EV, or they're making a fundamentally different economic decision with the Bolt EV battery degradation risk.

Bolt EV will be sold in hotter places than Spark EV. Even with a TMS, battery temperature will average hotter in hot places. Temperature is a big part of battery lifetime.

Moreover, the Bolt 1) will sell in greater quantities and 2) has a much more expensive battery than the Spark EV. All of these things increase the monetary risk for GM. I'm just glad that they have a capacity warranty in the first place. It seems like any serious contender - with the notable exception of Tesla - needs to have one going forward.
 
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