EVs Could Last Nearly Forever—If Car Companies Let Them
In April, a group of people in a red Tesla driving through the Moroccan desert were glued to the odometer on the car’s giant touch screen. “Two million, Hans! Two million,” exclaimed the front-seat passenger to the owner and driver, Hansjörg von Gemmingen-Hornberg. His 2014 Model S had become likely the first electric vehicle to drive 2 million kilometers, or more than 1.2 million miles. The car could have traveled from the Earth to the moon and back, twice, then circled the equator 11 times.
The journey wasn’t entirely seamless. The car has had its share of repairs, including several battery and motor replacements. A handful of gas-powered cars have driven farther, most of all a 1966 Volvo that racked up some 3 million miles over five decades. But such fantastic mileages are becoming far easier to accomplish for ordinary commuters with electric cars. On a technological level, it’s possible that we’re not far from a time when nobody would flinch at an EV with as much mileage as von Gemmingen-Hornberg’s—that is, unless car companies themselves get in the way.
Unlike gas-powered engines—which are made up of thousands of parts that shift against one other—a typical EV has only a few dozen moving parts. That means less damage and maintenance, making it easier and cheaper to keep a car on the road well past the approximately 200,000-mile average lifespan of a gas-powered vehicle. And EVs are only getting better. “There are certain technologies that are coming down the pipeline that will get us toward that million-mile EV,” Scott Moura, a civil and environmental engineer at UC Berkeley, told me. That many miles would cover the average American driver for 74 years. The first EV you buy could be the last car you ever need to purchase.
