EVs are a relatively new technology, and there simply is not enough long-term real-world data to know how batteries perform over a full vehicle lifetime — making EV ownership a leap of faith.
This concern was more valid in the early 2010s, when EVs were genuinely new and longitudinal data was sparse. It is considerably less valid today. The first generation of mass-market EVs — including the Nissan Leaf (2010), the Tesla Model S (2012), and the Chevrolet Volt (2011) — have now been on the road for over a decade, and substantial data exists on how their batteries have actually performed in real-world conditions over time.
Data aggregators including Geotab, Recurrent Auto, and researchers at universities worldwide have now analyzed hundreds of thousands of real-world EV driving records. The picture that emerges is consistent: degradation is slow, predictable, and far less dramatic than early concerns suggested. Vehicles with 300,000 km or more on their original battery packs are not uncommon in the data, and the failure rate of battery packs before the end of their warranty period is low.