“Just to be fair, hybrid battery packs seem to have no problem getting to 200,000 miles. Like gas engines, some will fail before then, but there are ones around with over 10 years and 300,000 miles.
Toyota, for example, warranties their batteries 100% for at least 100,000 miles.
Electric-only vehicle battery packs should probably perform similarly.”
Yes there may be some Prius driving around with 300k miles. But you know what? You could take the battery out of the Prius, and the only thing you would notice is a slight reduction in mileage. In other words, it doesn’t really matter, and that battery riding around in a 300k Prius is probably completely useless anyway.
There will be no 300k Tesla battery packs. Period. Its the only means of propulsion, and you most certainly will notice when it starts to be a problem.
And its not quite like a gas engine. It will start to fail on the very first day. That’s right. That’s how all batteries function. Every single time they are charged and discharged, their efficiency drops slightly. This is why my car engines tend to last longer than my cell phone batteries. They always will.
Then there’s the ‘bricking’:
http://theunderstatement.com/post/18030062041/its-a-brick-tesla-motors-devastating-design
Anyway, back to normal battery life - Tesla knows exactly what it is. They have to have tested it. And people are constsntly asking the question on their website...and they never get a straight answer. That makes me very suspicious the battery life expectancy isn’t much longer than the 8 year warranty.
Sounds like there might be a business opportunity for someone to convert “bricked” Teslas to gasoline power. It might end up being less expensive.