The Expert Podcast

If you own an electric vehicle or are going to buy one, here's some important information you need to know about the warranty exclusions and exceptions for batteries. And when I say if you own or you're going to buy one, you're going to own one because they're not going to have any gas cars pretty soon, so you're going to have to own one.

Well, what about electric vehicle batteries? Well, they all have a warranty, and the warranties have exclusions. This is the exclusion generality as listed by Green Cars: use of non-standard charging. Okay, that makes sense; you don't want to plug it into, you know, any kind of plug.

Any damage caused by installing non-approved parts. What does that mean? What if you put on fancy wheels? What if you put on maybe a higher amperage radio? What if you change the computer on the car? What does that mean, non-standard parts?

Using the battery as a stationary power source. Some vehicles allow you to reverse flow the battery to power your house if your power goes out. Does that void your warranty? You should check with your vehicle manufacturer.

Caused by opening the battery coolant reservoir. You probably don't want to do that.

Failing to install software updates. Well, think about that. Your electric vehicles kind of have regular updates just like your phone or your computer. Your gasoline car doesn't have that. But what if the update also changes something about your vehicle you don't like? Maybe it makes the door chime a different noise. Maybe it forces you to put on your seat belt before you can start the car. Maybe it doesn't allow you to put in certain radio stations. Who knows what the update will do? Well, many times when there's a computer update or a phone update that you don't like, you just ignore it. Well, if you ignore it on your electric vehicle, you might not have your warranty on your battery.

Caused by repairs performed by non-certified technicians. Well, I guess electric vehicles have to go back to the dealership to get repaired. There are no more third-party repair shops or independent garages that can work on electric vehicles.

Lifting the vehicle from underneath the battery instead of body lift points. What happens if your car needs to get towed and the tow truck company doesn't know where to jack it up, and they put the lift under the battery and damage the battery? Who's going to pay for that? Your battery's not warrantied. Does the tow truck company have 30 grand to replace your battery? I don't know.

Failure to make repairs. Well, again, if your car is showing you a warning light and your repair estimate is two thousand dollars, you might say, well, I don't have the money right now. It's still driving, so I'm gonna keep driving it. Well, that might void your battery warranty. On your gasoline car, yeah, you can ignore the check engine light as long as the vehicle is driving.

If you see towing limits, most electric vehicles you don't want to tow anyways. General abuse or neglect, that's a catch-all. They could say whatever they want.

Well, what else could void the battery? Here is a message from an electric vehicle forum that has a snippet from an owner's manual that says the guarantee on high-voltage batteries does not apply if the defect has been caused by the battery not being used or handled properly. This applies in particular to charging the battery using rapid charge three times in a row. So this is something that you might want to be aware of: how often you do rapid charging.

Even the owner's manual on the Kia. This is a snippet from the Kia owner's manual. That's not where the last one came from; that came from a different vehicle. Kia's own owner's manual talks about DC fast chargers, the quickest way to charge an electric vehicle. Use of DC charge should be kept to a minimum in order to help prolong high-voltage battery life. So what if you use it on a regular basis? What if you travel and you need to DC fast charge so you're not waiting three or four hours to charge up twice a day? Will that void your warranty? I don't know. It says here, kept to a minimum. That's in their owner's manual.

Is that an official policy? At this point, it's unknown how warranty decisions will be made, but be aware of what the requirements are for electric vehicle battery warranties to be maintained eligible so you don't end up with a dead battery in five years that you can't get paid for because you violated some warranty requirement.