Battery wear by mileage: Tesla, Nissan Leaf and Chinese models
The average EV loses 2.3 percent a year. That figure comes from Geotab’s 2026 study of 22,700 real vehicles across 21 models. At that rate eight years leaves about 82 percent.
The average hides the point. At the same mileage an LFP pack sits at 93 percent while an air cooled Nissan Leaf in a hot climate sits at 80. Three things decide it: chemistry, pack cooling, and the share of fast charging.
What wear means and how it is measured
Battery state of health, or SOH, is one number: how much energy the pack holds today against how much it held when it left the factory. A 75 kWh pack that now holds 68 is at 91 percent.
That number lives in the car’s computer and is read with a diagnostic tool or a cheap OBD adapter.
The range the car promises you on a full charge is something else entirely. It is calculated from your last few journeys: drive around town for a week and it climbs, come back from Gudauri once and it collapses. About the actual state of the pack it says almost nothing.
One more thing, and it applies to every figure below. Wear does not proceed evenly. The early years are steep, then the curve flattens and barely moves for years afterwards. Five percent lost at 50,000 km does not mean twenty will be gone at 200,000.
The average figure, and what sits behind it
The largest public dataset belongs to the telematics company Geotab. Its 2026 analysis took in 22,700 EVs across 21 models and put average annual wear at 2.3 percent. At that rate eight years leaves 81.6 percent.
Two years earlier the same company measured 1.8 percent. At first glance batteries got worse. What actually changed is how we charge: the share of fast charging went up, and the figure answered immediately.
The most useful part of the study starts here. Geotab split the cars by charging habit.
- Where under 12 percent of sessions are DC, wear runs at 1.5 percent a year.
- Where DC is frequent but mostly on units below 100 kW, the figure climbs to 2.2.
- Where DC is frequent and over 40 percent of sessions exceed 100 kW, wear runs at 3 percent a year.
Over eight years the first group keeps 88 percent and the last keeps 76. Same model, same age. The only thing separating them is where the driver plugged in.
Heat was counted separately. Cars in hot conditions lose an extra 0.4 percent a year, and the study calls a place hot when more than 35 percent of days go above 25 degrees. Tbilisi, Rustavi and Kakheti clear that bar comfortably every summer.
Three chemistries, three different behaviours
The rest of this article is about models, but chemistry acts before the model does. There are three families and they do not behave alike.
- NCA and NMC, the nickel chemistries. High energy density, meaning more kilometres for the same weight. In exchange they are sensitive to high state of charge and to heat. This is Tesla Long Range and Performance, Volkswagen, Hyundai, Kia and most European models.
- LFP, lithium iron phosphate. Lower density, but far better calendar life and more cycles. Sitting full barely bothers it. This is BYD’s Blade, CATL packs, and Tesla’s base rear wheel drive versions.
- NiMH. The hybrid battery. Unlike lithium it does not lose capacity slowly; it stops one day. Covered separately below.
Tesla: what the real data shows
Tesla has the most measurements behind it, because the car logs detailed telemetry itself and you can read it over OBD.
The manufacturer’s own figure
According to Tesla’s annual Impact Report, at 320,000 km Model S and Model X lose 12 percent on average, and Model 3 and Model Y lose 15.
That figure needs one caveat. The company published it itself, from its own connected fleet, so it is not an independent measurement. On the other hand it does not contradict the other sources, so it is not worth dismissing either.
An independent measurement
The Norwegian tester Bjørn Nyland measured a 2019 Model 3 Long Range at 164,541 km: down 8.2 percent, sitting at 91.8. Thirty percent of its energy had come from fast chargers, the rest from slow ones.
That is the ratio Geotab rates as the best case, and the result came out better than typical. The curve above puts roughly 90 percent at the same distance.
The cell supplier matters
The Swedish platform Carla worked through nearly 10,000 records and sorted Model 3s past 100,000 km by pack supplier.
| Pack | Version | Capacity remaining |
|---|---|---|
| CATL, LFP | Base rear wheel drive | 93.3% |
| LG | Shanghai Long Range and Performance | 91.5% |
| Panasonic | Long Range and Performance, 77.8 kWh | 89.8% |
| Panasonic | Base, 52.4 kWh | 88.2% |
The usual first reaction is that the table has been printed upside down. The cheapest version, the one with the shortest range, held up best of all. That is LFP doing what LFP does.
Cell imbalance, and why it hits Tesla
A battery is not one large cell but hundreds of small ones. Over the years they drift apart: one holds a little more, another a little less. That is imbalance.
And the weakest cell limits the whole pack. The moment one of them hits empty, the car calls the entire battery empty, even with energy still sitting in the rest. Range falls while capacity has gone nowhere.
Why this hits Tesla in particular
Tesla uses passive balancing: it bleeds off excess energy from the high cells as heat until the low ones catch up. The process only switches on as charge approaches the top.
The conclusion sounds odd but it is straightforward. A car that spends months never going above 70 percent never gets the chance to balance.
So what looks to many owners like a contradiction is really two separate things. Charging to 80 percent daily is right for the pack. But if you never fill it and never leave it plugged in, you lose range anyway, for a different reason.
An LFP Tesla lives by different rules
The voltage of an LFP pack barely responds to a change in charge. Across the middle of the range 30 percent and 60 percent look nearly identical to the computer, so working out the state of charge is hard. The one place it can recalibrate is a full battery.
So Tesla’s manual for LFP cars says it outright: set the daily limit to 100 percent and charge fully at least once a week. On a nickel pack the same advice would be harmful.
Skip it and the percentage starts lying: jumping suddenly, or showing an unexpectedly low figure mid journey. Nothing is wrong with the pack; the computer has simply lost count. A few full charges sort it out.
How to check it and how to correct it
- Imbalance is measured in millivolts. In a healthy pack the spread between cells stays within tens of millivolts; a three digit figure under load is already a problem.
- You need an OBD adapter to read it. On a Tesla that means Scan My Tesla, on other brands Car Scanner.
- Correcting it takes time. Balancing runs at milliamps, so a noticeable imbalance needs weeks or even months. One night will change nothing.
- The most effective advice is the dullest: leave the car connected to an AC charger as often as you can, including after charging finishes. That is when balancing happens.
The Nissan Leaf: a case of its own
The Leaf is one of the most common EVs in Georgia and the only mass market model with no active pack cooling. The battery is air cooled, which in a Rustavi summer means roughly that it is not cooled.
Everything below follows from that one decision.
Twelve bars and what each one means
The Leaf reports battery health with twelve bars. Most drivers naturally assume each is worth the same. They are not, and that is where the mistake is usually born when buying.
So twelve bars does not mean a healthy pack. Losing one bar, on the other hand, is no cause for panic: the ones after it disappear three times faster. For a number you can trust you still want LeafSpy or a diagnostic tool.
The warranty normally covers eight years or 160,000 km, and the pack is replaced when the display drops to eight bars, roughly 66 percent.
Rapidgate
This is a Leaf specific behaviour and hits the 40 kWh version hardest. On several consecutive fast charges the uncooled pack heats up and the software cuts power.
On a long drive it looks like this: first charge 35 to 40 kW, second around 26, third 15 to 19. Nothing breaks; each stop is simply longer than the one before it. On the Batumi road the difference is well felt by evening.
A 2019 software update eased it without removing it. If you are taking a Leaf on a long trip, plan around it.
Which Leaf is which
The 24 kWh ran from 2011 to 2015, the 30 kWh in 2016 and 2017, the 40 kWh from 2018, and the 62 kWh Leaf Plus from 2019. The early 24 kWh cars are the most problematic: no cooling, and a pre 2015 cell chemistry that handled heat considerably worse.
In fairness, the average across a large modern Leaf pool sits around 91 percent today. But such pools are dominated by newer 40 and 62 kWh cars living in temperate climates. A 2013 24 kWh car shipped in from a hot country has nothing in common with that average.
Chinese models: still too new for statistics
BYD, Changan, Chery, Zeekr and the rest arrived in Georgia in volume only recently. Nobody anywhere has 200,000 km statistics on them; not enough time has passed. What does exist is encouraging.
A 2024 BYD Seal in Australia was down 4.92 percent at 50,000 km: usable capacity had come down from 82.56 to 78.5 kWh. The reading was taken over an OBD adapter with Car Scanner, meaning from the car’s own log.
That is a Blade pack, so LFP, and its advantage shows up precisely where Georgian life is. A driver in a flat with no home charger, who takes everything from public DC and charges to full, loses far less on an LFP car than the same habit costs on a nickel pack.
Two things still deserve caution.
- Not every Chinese car is LFP. Many models carry either LFP or nickel NMC depending on the version. Establish which before buying, because the care rules differ.
- A Chinese market car normally has no valid warranty here, and battery diagnostics are often only available in Chinese language software. That is covered separately in Chinese EVs and GB/T.
For comparison, one entirely independent European test: the German motoring club ADAC ran a Volkswagen ID.3 for 160,000 km over four years and the pack kept 91 percent. That is nickel chemistry with liquid cooling, the middle ground where most European models sit.
The hybrid battery: a different story entirely
Priuses and their relatives vastly outnumber EVs in Georgia, so this part earns its place too. A hybrid carries a nickel metal hydride pack, and it does not behave like lithium ion.
Lithium loses capacity slowly. NiMH dies differently: internal resistance rises, modules drift apart from one another, and one day the car throws a warning triangle. Range does not gradually shrink; the system stops.
Service life is normally eight to ten years, or 160,000 to 240,000 km. Heavily used cars, taxis among them, frequently pass 300,000. That is no accident: a NiMH pack suits constant work better than standing idle.
And one specific piece of advice that pays for itself. This battery has a cooling fan and filter, behind the rear seat. A filter packed with dust chokes the air, the pack overheats and dies early. Toyota’s own service bulletin for Priuses built between 2003 and 2020 names dust in the fan and filter directly as a cause of fault codes P0A80 and P0A7F. Cleaning it is cheap and quick. If you have bought a used hybrid, start there.
What to expect at a given mileage
The ranges below follow from the measurements listed above. This is the typical picture, not a guarantee: two cars at the same mileage can end up ten percent apart on habit alone.
| Distance | NCA/NMC, liquid cooled | LFP | Air cooled, hot climate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 50,000 km | 94-96% | 95-96% | 88-94% |
| 100,000 km | 88-92% | 92-94% | 78-88% |
| 200,000 km | 88-91% | around 90%, data still thin | 62-75% |
| 300,000 km and beyond | 85-88% | not enough data yet | usually already replaced |
Two things stand out in the table. In the nickel column almost nothing changes between 100,000 and 200,000 km, which looks like an error and is simply what a flat curve looks like. In the right hand column the spread is enormous, because there the result is decided by where the car was parked rather than how far it was driven.
The high risk group
If your car falls into even one of these categories, checking the pack before buying is not optional.
- Cars with no active pack cooling. Every generation of Nissan Leaf, and the e-NV200. A hot climate shows on them directly and quickly.
- 24 kWh Leafs built before 2015. A double risk: no cooling, plus an early cell chemistry that tolerated heat poorly.
- A car shipped from a hot country that lived outdoors. Heat accelerates calendar ageing even when the car never moves, so low mileage proves nothing here.
- A car charged only on DC for years. Geotab puts exactly this group at 3 percent a year instead of 1.5.
- 2017 to 2019 Chevrolet Bolt and 2018 to 2020 Hyundai Kona Electric. Both had packs replaced en masse over a manufacturing defect in LG cells: all modules on the Bolt, over 75,000 packs on the Kona. On such a car, establish whether the replacement was actually carried out. If it was, that is good news.
- A car left standing for months, particularly full or nearly empty.
What you can actually do
The list is short, and that is deliberate. Worrying about the rest is usually not worth it.
- Establish the chemistry first, then pick the rule. On a nickel pack the daily limit is 80 percent; on LFP it is 100, with one full charge a week. Applying one rule to the other chemistry does harm.
- Reduce the share of fast charging, not the count. What matters is that most of your energy comes from a slow charger. A home charger is the cheapest way to fix that.
- Find shade in summer. For an uncooled pack this is the single most effective measure and it costs nothing.
- Leave the car plugged into AC often. That is when the computer corrects cell imbalance.
- Precondition the pack before fast charging in winter if the car offers it. Charging a cold pack is hard on both. There is a separate winter guide.
- If the car will sit for weeks, leave it around half full.
The full checklist for buying used, together with warranty terms, is covered separately in battery degradation and Georgian conditions. If you are still choosing, the charging cost calculator and the charger list will help.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a battery lose by 100,000 km?
A liquid cooled nickel pack normally sits at 88 to 92 percent and an LFP pack at 92 to 94. An air cooled pack in a hot climate falls to 78 to 88 percent over the same distance. The figures come from measurements by Carla, ADAC and BYD owners.
Which lasts longer, LFP or nickel chemistry?
The measurements favour LFP. Across Model 3s past 100,000 km, CATL LFP packs averaged 93.3 percent remaining against 88.2 to 89.8 percent for Panasonic nickel packs. LFP gives less range on a full charge, but sitting full barely harms it.
Why does Tesla tell LFP owners to charge to 100 percent?
Because an LFP pack’s voltage barely changes across the middle of its range, so the computer cannot work out the state of charge accurately. A full battery is the one point where it can recalibrate. Tesla’s manual therefore asks for a 100 percent daily limit and a full charge at least weekly on LFP models. The same rule on a nickel pack would be harmful.
Does twelve bars on a Nissan Leaf mean the battery is healthy?
No. The first bar only disappears once 15 percent of capacity is gone, so a twelve bar car can be at 86 percent. Every bar after that is worth only 6.25 percent. Only LeafSpy or a diagnostic tool gives you a reliable figure.
How much does fast charging accelerate wear, in numbers?
In Geotab’s 2026 study, cars where under 12 percent of sessions were DC wore at 1.5 percent a year. Where DC was frequent and over 40 percent of sessions exceeded 100 kW, the figure rose to 3 percent a year. Over eight years that is the difference between 88 and 76 percent.
Sources
- Geotab: EV Battery Health Study, 22,700 vehicles, 2026
- Electrek: Tesla on battery degradation at 200,000 miles
- InsideEVs: Model 3 Long Range, 164,541 km, 8.2 percent
- InsideEVs: Carla data broken down by pack supplier
- InsideEVs: BYD Seal, Blade pack, 50,000 km
- Volkswagen: the ADAC ID.3 test, 160,000 km, 91 percent
- Electric Vehicle Wiki: Leaf capacity bar thresholds
- Green Car Reports: the Bolt and Kona battery recalls
- Toyota service bulletin: hybrid cooling fan and P0A80
More guides
See also
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