One of the issues that the motor industry has yet to solve when it comes to the used EV market is the condition of the battery and how it might have degraded over time – a subject that is of major concern for would-be buyers.
While most manufacturers offer extensive warranties for battery failure, generally eight years and 100,000 miles, these often only cover total failure or much reduced capacity. There is little or no guarantee over how much charge it is likely to hold at any given point in its life, something that has probably been affected heavily by previous use.
That’s why a new white paper published by Autovista Group is so interesting – it examines how the condition of the battery can be assessed in a meaningful and standardised way for the used buyer, producing a battery health check.*
The document has been created in Germany from a partnership with TÜV Rheinland and battery analytics specialist TWAICE. The latter has pioneered technology to evaluate the true remaining quality of individual batteries based on how they were treated by previous users. It does this by creating a digital twin of each battery and simulating the impact of operating conditions, driving style, and charging behaviour.
Jonas Keil, battery engineer at TWAICE, said: “Many people underestimate the impact of battery treatment. At the three-year point with 28,000 miles on the clock, a battery that has been poorly treated will perform worse on promised range by about 5%. This gap will only increase over time because battery quality, once lost, cannot be recovered.”
Autovista estimates that improved and verifiable battery quality, provided in the form of a battery health report, delivers up to £400 higher remarketing results for a three-year-old used C-segment BEV in Germany.
Lennart Hinrichs, commercial director at TWAICE, added: “What we are working on now is establishing this report as a standard in the industry. However, that can only be realised if information on battery treatment becomes available as a standard data item on every used EV transaction, similar to details on age, mileage and equipment.”
*The full report can be accessed at https://autovistagroup.com/battery-health-reports-whitepaper.
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