Electric vehicle battery life warranties
We get a lot of questions about electric vehicle battery life warranties. So, we figured we'd put some of the facts and figures on screen for you.
This table shows the warranty period in years/kilometres (whichever occurs first) and battery state of health (SoH) guarantee for the 10 most popular models sold in Australia in 2022. As you can see, most car makers offer an 8-year/160,000km warranty on the traction battery (whichever comes first). Not everyone offers an explicit SoH guarantee (or they've hidden the info really well), but we can see hat 70% tends to be the cut-off. This largely matches what we're seeing in Europe and the US.
| Model | Sales in 2022 | Traction battery warranty period | SoH |
| Tesla Model 3 | 10,877 |
Performance: 8 years / 192,000km |
70% 70% 70% |
| Tesla Model Y | 8,717 |
Performance: 8 years / 192,000km |
70% 70% 70% |
| BYD Atto 3 | 2,113 | 8 years / 160,000km | 70% |
| Polestar 2 | 1,524 | 8 years / 160,000km | 70% |
| MG ZS EV | 1,119 | 7 years / unlimited km | n/a |
| Hyundai Kona | 1,096 | 8 years / 160,000km | n/a |
| Volvo XC40 | 983 | 8 years / 150,000km | n/a |
| Hyundai Ioniq 5 | 756 | 8 years / 160,000km | n/a |
| BMW iX3 | 593 | 8 years / 160,000km | |
| Hyundai Ioniq | 580 | 8 years / 160,000km | n/a |
Compared to Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) warranties
The real question most people ask when enquiring about battery warranty life is: how does this change from my current ICE vehicle? This is a story of two factors. First, there's the likelihood of the main power source failing (be it the engine or the battery). We covered EV battery replacements off in an earlier blog post which you can read here. Second, if the power source fails, does the car maker have my back? Standard manufacturer warranties in Australia typically provide anywhere from three to seven years coverage (about 5 years on average), or from 100,000km up to an unlimited number of kilometres.
In rough terms, if the traction battery needs replacing in the first years of ownership, OEM have got you covered with a warranty period that is quite generous compared to that offered on engines. Of course, should batteries need replacing, we'll be ready to ensure the proper reuse, repurposing and recycling of EV batteries.
