What has the weight of the battery to do with degradation speed? It is the cycle count which determines battery aging, and for the same distance driven, a Tesla has far fewer battery cycles than a smaller vehicle. The energy consumption of a Tesla is higher than that of smaller vehicles, but by a surprisingly small amount, as kinetic energy can be (partially) recovered. At highway speeds, a Tesla even sometimes consumes less energy than some smaller EV due to its better aerodynamics.