Study highlights improved longevity of battery electric vehicles
A study has found that battery electric vehicles are now more reliable and can match the lifespans of petrol and diesel engine cars and vans.
A multinational team of researchers used nearly 300 million UK Ministry of Transport (MOT) test records charting the ‘health’ of every vehicle on Britain’s roads between 2005 and 2022 to estimate vehicle longevity and provide a comprehensive analysis of survival rates for different powertrains.
The team found that early Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) were less reliable than internal combustion engine vehicles but rapid advances in technology have enabled newer BEVs to achieve comparable lifespans.
Researchers found that BEVs demonstrated the most rapid improvement in reliability, with a 12 per cent lower likelihood of failure for each successive year of production, compared to 6.7 per cent for petrol and 1.9 per cent for diesel vehicles.
Publishing their findings today (January 24, 2025) in Nature Energy, researchers from Birmingham University, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), University of California San Diego, and the University of Bern, Switzerland, reveal that on average, BEVs now have a lifespan of 18.4 years and can travel up to 124,000 miles, which they said surpasses petrol cars in mileage.
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