Higher mileage EV – good or bad?

I’m changing my car and have seen a 2021 ID4 with 40000 miles at a VW dealer.  How well do the ID4s or EVs in general cope with millage and would it be a good long term prospect?  I would probably keep it for another 6 or  years doing 7k a year.

It a choice for me between the ID4, or something like a 2022 skoda octavia IV or 2023 Suzuki Swace with about 10 to 15 thousand miles.  I like the idea of an EV but wondering if it’s worth going for one over a newer plug in or self charging hybrid.

Thanks.

In 2021 we had a new Ioniq Electric (not the 5) on lease for 2 years. It was great. In Feb we bought a 2020 example of the same car with 73k miles, it was exactly the same as the new one.  The maximum range we see on the dash is the same, and it’s a reliable number.

There is far less to go wrong on an EV, and the stuff that is there is subjected to much less heat and vibration. Modern cars have good battery management so you really don’t have to worry.

We do about 7k a year in it and we save about £80 a month in fuel.  EVs are brilliant.  Although iD4s not as brilliant as some others 🙂

Find out how to do a test on battery health, take it from there.  Have they done all the software upgrades, is this from a VW dealer? The software for the main display had some  big upgrades I believe.

No direct relevance,  my EV is on 185k km, and chugging on

Three factors in battery life:

Age: Renault guarantee 8 years I don’t know about others, treated well cells can last twice that.

Number of cycles: 1000 is a commonly cited number before significant deterioration. I’ve had mobile phone batteries last longer than that even though in terms of charge rates and use of capacity they are pushed harder than in most cars. In the Zoe that equates to about 300 000 km.

Battery management and use: charge between 15 and 90% and the battery will last better than if you run the car flat out to 5% then plug into a fast charger and charge to 100%

The Tesla Roadster dates from 2008 and until quite recently there were examples in the small ads on their original batteries.

I wouldn’t be worried about the battery in a used EV. On the other hand some suspension components are probably going to be subject to a harder life due to the weight and driving style, so maybe budget shocks etc into the plan?

Abused the battery of a Model 3 LR for 3 years and it’s lost 10 miles of range despite being filled to 100%, drained to less than 10%, and then Supercharged on the motorway.

Bought my Leaf with 4k on it. Now has 90k on it. Battery has degraded a small amount but the suspension is totally knackered. Its 10 years old.

“Number of cycles: 1000 is a commonly cited number before significant deterioration”

1000 charge cycles is about three years – I’d hazard a guess that’s bollox.

On driving style I don’t see EV drivers being hard on their cars. Once owners get beyond the initial “WOW !!” they cruise around enjoying the peace, calm and smooth ride.

You can’t sit at the lights riding the clutch in an EV, you can’t rev it to bits from stone cold, it won’t suffer from short journeys, the road brakes hardly ever do any work… it’s hard to do anything that will result in premature failures in an EV which makes them less of a lottery second hand.

The suspension components are designed for the load (with the possible exception of Tesla front arms 😉 ) IME bigger heavier cars have longer lasting suspension parts than small light ones.

1000 charge cycles is about three years – I’d hazard a guess that’s bollox.

Well rather than guess use your browser. Lithium battery cycle life has many variables depending on how much of their capacity is available and how fast they are charged at what temperature. The early Nissan Leafs suffered premature failures because their batteries were pushed to hard but 1000 cycles before significant deterioration is a conservative figure for recent EVs.

As for three years from 1000 cycles where do you get that from? In the Zoe 1000 cycles is over 300 000km and not many people do 100 000km a year. In a Model 3 LR more like 450 000km. Keep the charge in the middle of the capacity range and expect more. There are reports of cared for Tesla Model S reaching 700 000km

Model S owners

I think that 1000 cycles thing is a pure guess as well.  3 years? Bs.

They should have a battery health report.  Else do some YouTube work and test drive

The 1000 cycle thing is a finger in the air thing, but don’t forget it’s 1000 full charge/discharge cycles, so basically the range x 1000. On my car that would be somewhere between 250000 and 300000 miles, which with my current mileage would be 30-40 years. I’m expecting something else to expire before the battery, not least me.

What is a battery cycle?

So reading that a partial discharge cycle can be as destructive as a full one, or not depending on rate of discharge. Also they consider a battery to be ‘significantly’ depleted when down to 80% of its initial life.

Both these things mean that using the phrase 1000 cycles to significant deterioration is not particularly instructive – three years at around 1 partial discharge per day IS about 1000 cycles.

Anyway I think we are probably on the same side of the argument – the thing that lets EVs down is not the battery life but the price, the construction methods (carbon cost of build and mining batteries etc),the charging infrastructure and the failure of the rest of the complicated electronics leading to prohibitive repair costs and plummeting resale values out of warranty.

Well rather than guess use your browser.

1000 partial charge/discharge cycles is clearly not a useful metric with EVs as they get charged every time you lift off the throttle and discharged when you put it back down.

40k is nothing for a modern battery. Remember that the cars that are now old are very early efforts. Nissan Leafs had very crude battery management at first and they would overheat, leading to knackered ones still on the market. This was the first iteration I think pre-2013. They introduced many software updates to manage the heat by managing charge and discharge current, but their fundamental problem was that there was no battery cooling. The 40 and 62kWh versions managed ok though as they had the benefit of Nissan’s prior experience.

Actually based on my experience whole vehicle life carbon consumption,  reliability and total cost ownership leave me think they are better for most people.   I also live somewhere where depreciation of ev’s is very low ( unless you own an ipace or Fischer ). So, no don’t agree with you probably. 🙂

Re. Leafs – I live Norway. It’s not very warm here , there are lots Leafs running around with pretty good batteries, Inc mine.  If you live in Singapore,  Texas, Call, where it’s much warmer then the uncooked battery and degradation are a real thing.

Honestly that Engineering Explained link is just cut and paste opinion and pretty unuseful

OP a 3 year old  iD3 with 40000 miles on the clock is not high milage. TBH thats barely run in.

Remember that there is no engine, gearbox, clutch etc that need regular service or can be gorillas by bad driving, just an inverter, motor and reduction box (all sealed for life components). AL should be fine providing the car hasn’t been doing burnouts repeatedly and frankly you’d know this as the tyres would be worn out.

Check the brake pads, (liable to be fine as most EV braking is done with regen). I think the expectation is the front pads last to over 50k miles, rear brakes are drums but again are pretty much bomb proof. Suspension should be fine, the whole EV weight issue thing is really just BS tbh, the Id4 has an uprated rear suspension to handle this.

Battery will need a health check but generally just check the projected range at full charge as this will also show the way the car has been driven but again, the VW batteries are pretty damn tough (good BMS system) so should be fine.

My boss has an Id4 with similar age/milage and its had zero issues. the car feels like newt and is incredibly smooth and quiet to drive.

@molgrips does the ID4 have a poor reputation for reliability?  I had thought that as it’s a VW the quality would have been pretty good (although I’ve never owned a VW).  Interested to hear if the ID4 is known to be probalmatic.

I’ve asked the dealer a couple of times for a condition report of the battery as I think the VW approved used scheme is meant to provide one.  Haven’t heard back from them yet though.

The reputation VW has is just good marketing from a 1980s advert. In user surveys they don’t tend to do particularly well.

does the ID4 have a poor reputation for reliability?

I really don’t know. They do have a rep for having terrible infotainment systems and intrusive safety systems though. Other brands do better in both those areas.

My mate has one and was after another so he must have liked it.

Thanks for all the advice everyone,  it sounds like 40K miles is nothing to worry about.

I was waiting for them to give me a px price for my car as the dealer is a distance from, they hadn’t got back to me but I’ve just been on-line and it’s reserved now 🙁

I’ll move more quickly next time.

I follow all these threads out of interest and enjoy putting people straight when they are BSing on the subject of battery life, etc, so as always thanks for the information.

It seems that like everything in life these days you have to love or hate things ?

I still drive an 03 T4 which I am having the rot sorted on but will eventually own an EV I imagine but I do have a genuine mistrust of technology. I tend to buy things when they have lost most of there value as a Yorkshiremen and while I expect the bones of the EV to work, I do wonder about the infotainment/screen side of things as they get older.

Phones, laptops, Chromebooks, etc all eventually stop updating, will this happen to cars? (Obviously this will be all cars, not just EV’s).

My van doesn’t even have electric windows and at 21 years old just trundles happily on.

Renault guarantee 8 years I don’t know about others,

I would be investigating if that warranty is transferable to a subsequent owner or if it only applies to the original owner

I had one issue with my ID3. It needed it’s no.10 battery module replacing on 2 years old / 30k, all sorted under warranty. The battery warranty is 8 yrs or 100k miles on all IDs and by the sounds of it it’s a modular battery so if there’s a battery issue then only one section would likely need replacing. All VW dealers will be able to test the battery health, but only selected dealers can actually do the module replacement (Mine was tested in Skipton, the work had to be done in Leeds, they gave me a courtesy car). The car was perfectly fine to carry on driving btw, until it was convenient to get the work done and I wasn’t aware of any range loss, so no idea what the actual problem was.

My Ioniq has 46500 miles on it when I bought it. It had a battery check from a Hyundai dealership by it’s previous owner and there were no issues.

Fully charged this morning and it registered 210 miles based on my superb driving!

Went to York on the motorway 70 miles at motorway speeds 5.5m/kWh, returned via fast A roads and slower B roads with a lesser efficiency (hillier) and similar distance. Around 45 miles remaining.

Is like to think the battery will last for many more years.

I got similar numbers yesterday going to Southampton. 5.4m/kWh driving at the speed limit, nearly all motorway. Around 210 miles of range at that rate which is more than the WTLP number still after 78k miles.

Phones, laptops, Chromebooks, etc all eventually stop updating, will this happen to cars?

Yes but it’s impact will be less. A car only has to do one thing. The reason your laptop needs to be updated is to remain secure and to work with other services and software, which is its main job. Your car’s job is to move; extra services and online facilities are secondary. So whilst in the future the live traffic routing feature might not be available, for example, the car will still work as a car. If it is found to be insecure via its online services, these could simply be disabled. Not so easy with a laptop. That said there are many very old computers doing critical roles because they aren’t online and they run the same software all the time so nothing changes.

OP a 3 year old  iD3 with 40000 miles on the clock is <em style=”box-sizing: border-box; –tw-border-spacing-x: 0; –tw-border-spacing-y: 0; –tw-translate-x: 0; –tw-translate-y: 0; –tw-rotate: 0; –tw-skew-x: 0; –tw-skew-y: 0; –tw-scale-x: 1; –tw-scale-y: 1; –tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; –tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; –tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; –tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246/0.5); –tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; –tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; –tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; –tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; color: #000000; font-family: Roboto, ‘Helvetica Neue’, Arial, ‘Noto Sans’, sans-serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ‘Segoe UI’, ‘Apple Color Emoji’, ‘Segoe UI Emoji’, ‘Segoe UI Symbol’, ‘Noto Color Emoji’; background-color: #eeeeee;”>not high milage. TBH thats barely run in.

+1

Middle son has company pickups, he’s just got a new one to replace his  previous +100,000 miles 2-year old one.

This is “high mileage”.

Seeing as there’s Tesla’s out there with moon mileage (200000+) in the US, I don’t think high mileage with an EV is an issue as long as you do your due course and check the history of the car as you would normally do with a used ICE car, check service history, battery health check etc.

With an ID.3, I’d be more concerned about the notorious VW infotainment system and all the glitches/bugs it has. It is the same one used in the mark 8 golf and various Skoda/Seats and the issues have been widely reported in media.

TBH thats barely run in

Well, no thats obviously not the case on an EV, from day 1 things are only wearing out. ‘run in’ relates only to ICE engines and bedding them in.

An average EV should have had a much easier life than an ICE car because of what Edukator says above.

I wouldn’t touch a Tesla 2nd hand mind, just because of the cost of repair/replacement of body panels.

With an ID.3, I’d be more concerned about the notorious VW infotainment system

This and the fact they are dull as dish water

I wouldn’t touch a Tesla 2nd hand mind, just because of the cost of repair/replacement of body panels.

Surely something like that would be for insurance to worry about in most cases, not sure why you’d base a car purchase on your perceived cost of panels.  I’d also suggest this all might well be pub talk BS (I’m not having a dig at you personally, cos I would have said the same about Tesla parts cost, until I actually experienced it first hand). I had someone reverse their van at speed into the side of my new Model3 front passenger door, smashing up the door and wing mirror. the total insurance bill was £1700, I’m pretty certain a new BMW or Audi new front door, body shop spray, new wing mirror, parts either new or salvaged from the old door and labour, would be the same sort of price on insurance claim. I had a Tesla mobile service guy drive to my house and program 2 new keys, total cost £39.99 (no part was warranty). I bet you wouldn’t get any other car manufacturer supply 2 new car keys and deliver them to you, for £40. The same mobile service guy drove to my work and fitted a new front near side window glass, total cost £271 (no part was warranty), Autoglass quoted £600, National glass quoted online £900.  I have the invoices for the keys and window glass in my tesla app, if you don’t believe me. I will say that I laughed at him when he offered to quote me for Tesla(him) to fit the window glass, I had the same perception as you of Tesla.

I wouldn’t touch a Tesla 2nd hand mind, just because of the cost of repair/replacement of body panels.

What an odd statement.

This 1000 cycles thing……and the surprisingly high mileages people are claiming that indicates…..

This might be a stupid question but does a recharge that happens at any state of battery charge not count as a single cycle? And if you were to look at a 2nd hand car and see a battery report isn’t it going to show you a cycle count of every charge regardless of how small or total it is? To get mileage the figures quoted that’s basically the range of the car times 1000. Surely no one drives it like that. If you charge at home and do say a 50 miles round trip commute people must be putting their car on charge every day or every other day. Surely most people don’t let their batteries run so low that when you take it out in the morning it’s got just enough to do the planned trip and no more – i.e. no capacity to do anything unexpected.

A friends (old…) Leaf has now dropped to around 50-60 miles but he’s had it for years. He bought it knowing it was an early model with a compromised battery & its degradation was expected. But for what it gets used for its still a perfectly useable car (to him).  I would have no issues buying a modern EV with a high mileage & I wouldn’t class 40k as high.

You’re right, no-one drives like that, the manufacturers encourage behaviour that will maximise battery life and most people are wary about getting so low they might run out.

The Tesla app is a good example. It shows orange when your battery is low then gives guide words suggesting you don’t need to fully charge except for “voyage”. It subtly suggests keeping the battery in the optimum zone.

I generally avoid running the battery low except when packing as many kms into the day as possible – the lower you go the faster you charge.

‘I wouldn’t touch a Tesla 2nd hand mind, just because of the cost of repair/replacement of body panel’

Any car can have bonkers expensive body repairs if you get caught out by a sticky out piece of metal reversing in the dark, and it hits an awkward corner.  Take it from me ( 🙂 ) and don’t think the same on your merc will be any cheaper…

<quote>This might be a stupid question but does a recharge that happens at any state of battery charge not count as a single cycle? </quote>

no – a single cycle is the equivalent of 0% to 100% charge, not just any charging event.

eg if you drained the car from 100% to 75%, then recharged it to 100% (ie a 25% charge), it would need 4 of these recharges to be counted as a single cycle, 4 x 25% = 100%

thats why if a battery is quoted as being able to provide 1000 charge cycles before its capacity ends up being reduced below 80% , and the cars range is typically 200miles to a full charge. The number of miles a car travels before the battery capacity will be lower than 80% of its original capacity is going to be around 200000miles.

The battery is constantly discharging and recharging as you drive anyway, so the real number of miles is probably going to be a bit less than the simple maths above

I was about to post something similar to julians. To quote the paper Edukator linked to –

For example, if a battery is discharged to 50% of its capacity and then fully recharged, that’s defined as half of a charge/discharge cycle.

If you redefine a cycle as any charging event as some people seem to be doing then as Molgrips points out you’d be doing a “cycle” every time you took your foot off the accelerator, in wehich case you could do 1000 “cycles” just popping down to the shops. Just shows that taking a rule of thumb and arbitrarily redefining the terms does not necessarily result in anything useful..

Autotrader UK are doing a YouTube series thing on 430K mile Tesla which was interesting and included things to check, which although specific to Tesla I am sure can be applied across the board.

https://youtu.be/2HlyQy9WRlc?si=jYE9jz1ZXh5bhbek

This guy was a PistonHeads user who started a YT channel fixing up bangers and then moved to EVs years ago before they properly took off. He’s just bought a 188000 mile electric van:

His 2nd video on it is about the battery… which tests as retaining 83%.

So with 40k, you’ll be fine.

OP did you buy it in the end and if so, how is it going?

I know other bits of the car are susceptible to the same wear and tear as ICE – brakes, suspension erm…. what else is there? Electronics, I guess….. but what are the engines themselves like? Simpler for sure, less moving parts, gearboxes, clutches and so on, and we have electric motors in plenty of industrial transport and general industry applications, are these broadly speaking the same tech scaled up or down from hairdryers and hoovers?