Chinese-owned formerly British car brand MG has announced a surprising new battery warranty. It’s not just a few more years, but for the lifetime of the vehicle and unlimited miles.
This has the potential to change the way consumers view EVs, tackling one of the main fears they have about needing an expensive battery replacement after a few years of ownership.
The new guarantee is currently only available in Thailand and relates to four models – the MG4, MG Cyberster, and MG MAXUS 7 and 9. There’s no statement about the minimum capacity required below which replacement is mandated, and MG hasn’t said when or if the warranty will be rolled out into other regions. But it is industry practice to try out new features in a small market to assess impact before wider execution.
MG is a famous British brand that is just turning 100 years old this year, a milestone it recently celebrated at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. The company is best known for its two-seater sportscars, particularly the MGB from the 1960s and 1970s.
However, it fell on hard times as part of MG Rover, which went into administration in 2005. It is now part of massive Chinese automaker SAIC Motor, the largest vehicle manufacturer in China, producing over five million units in 2023. SAIC is owned by the Chinese state.
Lithium-Ion battery technology is capable of around 1,000 charge-discharge cycles before it starts to lose capacity...
The lifetime warranty, albeit a small step so far, has significant implications. Battery durability is one of the many things that those concerned about the trend toward electrification are most worried about. Unsurprisingly, most consumers’ frame of reference is smartphones, which have batteries that go rapidly downhill after three or four years of use.
This is because people charge their phones every day, and sometimes even more often. Lithium-Ion battery technology is capable of around 1,000 charge-discharge cycles before it starts to lose capacity, and as it approaches 1,500 cycles, it is likely to be considerably depleted and need replacement. With daily charging, that’s around three years of use.
However, this is not the usual regime for an EV. The average American driver travels about 40 miles a day, and in the U.K. it’s half that. Almost all mainstream EVs now offer at least 200 miles of WLTP-rated range, and many deliver more than 300. That means the cars won’t need to be charged, on average, at least every five days in the US and ten days in the UK. So those 1,000 battery charging cycles will theoretically last more than a decade.
There is also battery technology increasingly being deployed that is much more durable. Another Chinese firm, BYD, uses Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) chemistry for its Blade battery, deployed in the road vehicles it sells in Europe. This promises 5,000 charge-discharge cycles, three to four times as many as traditional Lithium-Ion batteries. MG also uses LFP batteries for some of its vehicles. As an added bonus, LFP chemistry doesn’t contain cobalt and has a better safety record too.
While MG’s lifetime battery warranty announcement is a bold move, it’s not as audacious as it looks. Most manufacturers already guarantee their EV batteries for eight years, usually for 70% capacity. This wouldn’t happen if they expected most of their packs to last less than this, otherwise they would be saddling themselves with a potentially bankrupting replacement bill. So the warranty is more like evidence that, now we have more experience of the EV market, battery replacement just isn’t happening with the frequency some expected.
Then, of course, there are all the other concerns that drivers have over electric vehicles, such as the range on a single charge, charging speed, and their purchase cost, to name just a few. There’s a lot more for EV makers to contend with before the general public is comfortable with electrification going mainstream. But a manufacturer having the confidence to guarantee their batteries for life is at least a step in the right direction.
