Tesla's co-founder says car batteries will easily last 15 years

In a recent interview, JB Straubel tried to answer one of the most important questions about EVs - how long will their batteries last. The short answer is at least 15 years but, of course, there are other factors involved in this.

JB Straubel is one of Tesla's co-founders and has been working as a CTO in the company for many years. Only recently, he found a new company called Redwood Materials, which specializes in car battery recycling. So he has a pretty good idea of how much these batteries last.

Aside from the obvious fringe cases where cars need a battery replacement after extreme mileage, Straubel believes that 15 years would be the normal life span of batteries before degradation starts to hurt their performance. Moreover, the engineer thinks that the battery packs will often match the lifespan of the vehicle's itself. Which is kinda obvious - vehicles with more mileage will have less of their battery capacity remaining, but also more regular wear and tear so might need to be replaced for other reasons.

On the other hand, even degraded batteries are quite valuable as they hold tons of rare materials that can potentially be recycled. Straubel's new battery recycling plant is now breathing new life into 8-10GWh worth of batteries per year from hundreds of thousands of cars. Redwood Material has a contract with Volvo and Ford for now.

In the coming years, if Straubel's estimation is right, we should see a significant influx of battery recycling and replacement. You can watch the full interview down below.

In any case, it's still a bit early to have more specific figures on the life span of EV batteries simply because there aren't many EVs that are so old. As adoption increases and early units age we should be able to see more specific numbers. Early signs are definitely encouraging, though.