The Expert Podcast

Much of the value of an electric vehicle is contained in the storage battery. And that storage battery is not the same as a car battery you've seen on gasoline vehicles—that little square box with two posts on it and under your hood.

The electric vehicle battery, the EV battery, is portrayed in this photo as the blue part. It's really a flat, big component of the car. It's sometimes a structural component of the car, usually in the floor, that is really the driving force of that vehicle.

Because of that, the battery represents the biggest value in the vehicle. So if you're buying a used electric vehicle, the condition and the remaining life of that battery is extremely important. It's more important than anything else—more than checking the tires, the shocks, or the brakes. The battery itself is crucially important.

The actual engines or motors in an EV are electric. Those are going to last a very long time. They're not like gasoline engines. You know, you've heard the term "internal combustion engine" or "ICE engine." That's the type of engine that burns gasoline. You put gas in the tank at a gas station, and there are literally explosions that happen in that engine thousands of times every minute. Those explosions wear down the engine at a very high rate.

Gasoline engines burn up faster than electric engines. Electric engines don’t have reciprocal parts. They don’t go back and forth. They don’t have explosions. They just spin—kind of like your hair dryer. So they last a long time.

But the battery is something that has a lot of cycles—charge, discharge—and that's where the wear and tear happens. So if you're going to be buying an electric vehicle, you want to make sure that battery is good. You want to have it tested out. You want to have it evaluated by a reputable third party.

You don’t want to leave it up to the dealer that's selling it to you. There’s a link below to a way to have your battery tested before you buy the vehicle. You can ask your dealer if they’ve had it done by a third party or if they're doing it themselves and what the certifications are.

It’s also a good way to find out if there are extra available warranties on the vehicle that you can extend—because the battery has been tested and turned out to be undamaged and in good condition with a long life.

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