Canada

The batteries on modern EVs doesn’t wear anywhere near the rate that people think they do. A properly cared for battery (which doesn’t require much care other than keeping it charged properly) will easily last 15+ years — and likely beyond the lifetime of the car they were installed into. Manufacturers already offer 8+ year battery warranties on new EVs, because they know they can easily beat that (barring a manufacturing defect of some kind).

(In Japan, Nissan has been taking cells out of old Leafs that have at least 80% remaining capacity and are making them into home power packs. The Nissan Leaf was one of the first EVs and used an older battery chemistry — and even there, the batteries are typically outliving the cars they were originally installed into).

It’s a little difficult to say with certainty what the lifetime of an EV battery is going to be like right now, as EVs with modern chemistries aren’t yet 15 years old (they’re more like 5 to 7 years old at most). Anecdotally, those I know with EVs in that age range typically have less than 1% capacity loss (and ODB-II reader can typically check this for you, so it’s not difficult to determine).

Now of course it’s possible that someone has abused the hell out of their vehicle in ways that reduce the battery life (like routinely driving it to completely pull-over-to-the-side-of-the-road empty before recharging) — but as mentioned above an ODB-II reader will quickly show what the battery capacity is like. Hopefully used car sellers would check this themselves and provide it to buyers — but if not, ODB-II readers on Amazon aren’t terribly expensive to buy to check for oneself.

Battery wear concerns are going to be more for “classic” EV collectors in 30+ years time, and won’t be for your typical EV driver.