Battery swapping is a dead technology, it is simply not economical. It is too expensive, much harder to scale and incompatible with cell-to-chassis designs. Industry barely managed to agree on a charging connector!
Meanwhile, battery longevity is essentially a solved problem. Manufacturers do have an incentive to improve it due to customer demand, and modern NMC chemistry, cooling and BMS have improved significantly to the point where they're expected to maintain 70-85% capacity after 10 years[1], far from worthless. At this point, components like the motor likely fail before the battery does.
Given the much lower failure rate of everything else in an EV, TCO is dramatically better than ICE cars even with degradation[3].
Manufacturers like Mercedes even guarantee 70% health after 8 years (a worst-case estimate).
There is a significant commercial incentive for aftermarket battery repair shops. EVClinic[2] is very successful and a glimpse into the future.
The Tesla Model S has been out for almost 13 years, so you can already see it.
Your phone doesn't have liquid cooling temp management and is probably recharged daily. With a car that has 300 miles range, a lot of people probably only do a full cycle every week.
So 7000 to 8000 euros to replace a battery of a 80 to 100k car?
It depends on how many miles it has driven and how much other maintenance the car has had. It's a big expense but a battery dying is probably comparable to a timing belt breaking, those aren't cheap either and thats not even for luxury cars...
First of all, as your article shows, batteries rarely need replacement at all, even at very high mileage. And those are old vehicles, battery management and cell chemistry are much better now.
We had a 2010 Ford Transit van (diesel) and after 189000km, we sold it because the parts were becoming too hard to source (disclaimer: in New Zealand).
13 years old dead luxury cars are worthless, yes, especially when the tech is quickly evolving. That doesn't say anything about how long it takes for them to die or how reliable the tech is.
Meanwhile, battery longevity is essentially a solved problem. Manufacturers do have an incentive to improve it due to customer demand, and modern NMC chemistry, cooling and BMS have improved significantly to the point where they're expected to maintain 70-85% capacity after 10 years[1], far from worthless. At this point, components like the motor likely fail before the battery does.
Given the much lower failure rate of everything else in an EV, TCO is dramatically better than ICE cars even with degradation[3].
Manufacturers like Mercedes even guarantee 70% health after 8 years (a worst-case estimate).
There is a significant commercial incentive for aftermarket battery repair shops. EVClinic[2] is very successful and a glimpse into the future.
[1]: https://www.geotab.com/blog/ev-battery-health/
[2]: https://evclinic.eu/
[3]: https://evclinic.eu/2025/12/31/diesel-mythology-vs-ev-realit...