MG’s lifetime battery warranty isn’t the holy grail for boosting EV ownership—yet

This could potentially change the way consumers view electric cars, addressing one of their major concerns about having to replace an expensive battery after a few years of ownership.

The new warranty is currently only available in Thailand and applies to four models – the MG4, MG Cyberster, MG MAXUS 7 and 9. There is no statement on the minimum capacity required to be replaced, and MG has not said when or if the warranty will be rolled out to other regions. But it is industry practice to trial new features in a small market to assess the impact before wider rollout.

MG is a famous British brand only It turns 100 this year, a milestone that was recently celebrated at the Goodwood Festival of Speed.The company is best known for its two-seater sports cars, particularly the MGB of the 1960s and 1970s.

But it has had a tough time as part of MG Rover, which went into administration in 2005. It is now part of Chinese auto giant SAIC Motor, China’s largest carmaker, which will produce more than five million units in 2023. SAIC is owned by the Chinese state.

A lifetime warranty, while a small step so far, has big implications. Battery durability is one of the many concerns of those who are interested in going electric. Unsurprisingly, most consumers’ frame of reference is smartphones, which have batteries that deteriorate rapidly after three or four years of use.

This is because people charge their phones every day, sometimes more than that. Lithium-ion battery technology can withstand about 1,000 charge and discharge cycles before it starts to lose capacity, and as it approaches 1,500 cycles, it is likely to be significantly depleted and need to be replaced. With daily charging, that equates to about three years of use.

But this is not the norm for electric cars. The average American driver drives about 40 miles a day, and in the UK it’s half that. All major electric cars now offer at least 200 miles of range under WLTP standards, and many offer more than 300 miles. That means the cars won’t need to be charged, on average, every five days in the US and ten days in the UK. So those 1,000 battery charge cycles would theoretically last more than a decade.

Battery technology is also increasingly popular and more durable. Another Chinese company, BYD, uses lithium iron phosphate (LFP) chemistry for its Blade battery, which is used in road vehicles it sells in Europe. This promises 5,000 charge-discharge cycles, three to four times the number of charge-discharge cycles of conventional lithium-ion batteries. MG also uses LFP batteries for some of its vehicles. As an added bonus, LFP chemistry contains no cobalt and also has a better safety record.

While MG’s announcement of a lifetime battery warranty is a bold move, it’s not as bold as it sounds. Most manufacturers already guarantee their EV batteries for eight years, typically at 70 percent capacity. That wouldn’t happen if they expected most of their packs to last less than that, or they’d be saddled with a replacement bill that could bankrupt them. So the warranty is more like evidence that, now that we have more experience with the EV market, battery replacements aren’t happening at the pace some had anticipated.

There are, of course, all the other concerns that drivers have about electric vehicles—range, charging speed, cost, to name a few. There’s a lot that EV manufacturers have to address before the general public can be comfortable with electrification. But a manufacturer that has the confidence to guarantee the longevity of its batteries is at least a step in the right direction.

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