Tests on used electric cars show that battery health varies between vehicles, even at similar mileages.
Battery degradation is a key concern for buyers of used electric vehicles (EVs). An analysis by Austrian battery-testing company AVILOO found that four popular EV models retained between 86.3 and 92.8 per cent of their battery health after 150,000 km.
AVILOO, located in Wiener Neudorf, analysed more than 500,000 individual battery tests from the years 2022 to 2026, covering 20 EV models. The diagnostic test from AVILOO requires connection to the diagnostic port of a car and takes about three minutes to estimate the battery’s state of health (SoH), which refers to the current capacity relative to its capacity when new. The company has not disclosed how many individual cars were tested.
This study offers median data for battery health on four different car models. Tesla Model Y (78.8 kWh) registered 94.5 percent health at 50,000 kilometers and 90.3 percent health at 150,000 kilometers. The Volkswagen ID.4 (77 kWh) recorded 95.3 and 90.6 percent, and the Hyundai Ioniq 5 (72.6 kWh) 97.2 and 92.8 percent. The Nissan Leaf (40 kWh) recorded 91.1 and 86.3 percent, respectively.
Battery health also varied considerably between vehicles of the same model. At 150,000 km, the difference reached about 11 percentage points for the Model Y and 13.5 points for the Leaf. “The truth in this data is that averages hide a lot,” AVILOO’s chief executive Marcus Berger says. “A gap of ten or fifteen percent in state of health is a real difference in range, in what a car is worth, and in what you can rely on it for.”
The report does not compare battery degradation from fast charging and home charging or provide a breakdown based on climatic conditions. The report gives figures for different mileage ranges, and not the same cars tracked over time. AVILOO claims that its three-minute FLASH Test is able to assess the condition of batteries using its predictive models. AVILOO states that at least 95 per cent of reference measurements have a maximum deviation of ±3 per cent compared with its PREMIUM Test.
Since there is no data available with reference to India, the study cannot establish battery degradation under Indian driving conditions and temperatures. But for secondhand electric vehicles buyers, the study highlights the importance of checking the battery health of individual vehicles rather than relying only on mileage. The warranties for high-voltage batteries differ according to manufacturers and models of the vehicles.
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