My car is almost four years old and its battery has lost about 1% capacity. These things don’t wear out that quickly.

> My car is almost four years old and its battery has lost about 1% capacity. These things don’t wear out that quickly.

Probably because Tesla undersells their batteries. During hurricanes or other disasters Tesla routinely unlocks the software limit, allowing customers more range (https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-unlocks-full-battery-capacit...).

It's the same with HDDs and SSDs, which always carry a decent safety margin to account for media wear.

Only certain models are software limited, and the 85 isn’t one of those. They actually substantially overstated the capacity: the 85 means 85kWh, but the actual usable capacity is only about 77.5kWh. (https://electrek.co/2016/12/14/tesla-battery-capacity/)

The SoC window is not 0 to 100%, it's might be eg. 15 - 75 % or something. That's also why you don't notice battery degradation, since the window might be moving (keeping constant energy limits for 0 and 100% charged).

For kWh capacity it's just a matter of counting the cells. Actual kWh will vary abit by measuring technique but I assume there is a way to drain the nominal Wh:s from them.

That is good to hear as I typically only consider used cars and other than range, concerns about how the battery capacity holds up long term have kept me from really considering EVs. What do you drive? Tesla? Leaf? Something else?

It’s a Model S 85 with not quite 60,000 miles. From what I hear from other owners, this is slightly better than average but not much. I haven’t done anything special to treat it well, either. I charge it to 90% nightly (the default), charge to 100% before long trips, and have used Superchargers for maybe 20% of those miles.

Not sure what the parent drives but there are a number of variables to consider, for example with Tesla supercharing often will degrade the battery faster as will charing it in trip mode for the same number of miles driven, but there is a good amount of data out there for this car.

https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1110149_tesla-model-s-b...

"But, overall, the data offer some basis for confidence that a Tesla Model S will lose—on average—less than 15 percent of its battery capacity over the average 150,000-mile (250,000-km) life of a vehicle."

I have a 2011 volt and have had negligible degradation. Thats an N of 1 but from GMs data, degradation hasn't been an issue in volts.

Tesla gives their powerpacks a 10 year full warranty but projects a 15 year lifespan.

Even if it is scrapped after four years, if it keeps generating this kind of savings for that period, it’s still a 600% return on capital. Turning $40MM today to $240MM 4 years from now is a deal any business would take in a heartbeat.

I think your maths is off.

$40m * 4 = $160m

$240m / $40m = 6 years

Edit: Mixed up cost and income?