6.3 The battery warranty
It is hard for anyone to say how long a battery will
last, still that is one of the most crucial issues for
the economy of all-electric cars next to their
relative price, especially if one doesn’t dare
anything than to expect the residual value to be
zero if/when the battery warranty ends. Nissan
Leaf comes with a 5 year or 100.000 km battery
warranty (whichever comes first) in Sweden. In
California, carmakers are legally bound to give 10
years or 150.000 miles warranty (whichever comes
first). Currently, batteries improve at a relatively
high pace. We believe it would be better if
carmakers used that improvement to improve
battery lifetimes and battery warranties rather than
to increase the range of the all-electric car in
bootless efforts to get the range on electricity
closer to the ICE car range