Bet that Chevy Volt sounded like a good idea at first…
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It depends on the battery chemistry used some last longer or can take more charge cycles for example but the age of the battery is going to be the most important thing.
One thing that you would have to be wary of with a used EV is the range it shows on the dash when fully charged may not be the real range as with each of the battery packs they can only tell how charged it is by voltage and not the actual capacity which would have to be checked either by doing a range check of the car your going to buy by driving it the stated range and seeing what it really is or by taking the packs out and doing a complete charge and discharge test on the packs by using a battery analyzer to drain the battery pack at different rates to determine how much real capacity is left.
People might be selling used packs cheap but they would have to be checked for actual capacity. Now if your only using it to do short trips you might not notice for a while and may be okay.
So to know the history of a used battery pack your going to need to know what chemistry it is (tesla uses 3 different types depending on usage) so you can work out the likely shelf life, number of charge discharge cycles the cells can take and also how hard the pack was used or was it used in a hot climate as all will effect the performance of the battery pack, then also a real capacity check done with a battery analyzer which logs the data.
The new standard range Tesla battery packs are lithium ion phosphate which is also what they use in there powerwall packs for the home, they tend to be pretty good with a long shelf life time iirc like 10years and 2750-9000 charge cycles. The other two chemistry's tesla uses have the following charge cycles. 250 to 1500 charge cycles for NCA cells 200 to 2500 charge cycles for NMC cells Not sure what the shelf life of these two are but has to be less than 10 and normal lithium ion are something like 3-6years but these could be better than that.
So knowing what the chemistry is important as it could make a big difference, i would think age would be a bigger concern as if the standard range Tesla is like 300miles the amount of cycles means the lithium ion phosphate battery theoretical mileage would be pretty large 825k to 2.7mil miles. But that is theoretical as many things will reduce that and the shelf life will be the biggest problem.
I think there will be a need for independent battery checkers that offer a warranty who can be trusted otherwise it will be a crap shoot on what you will get and then there will be people faking the tests somehow telling you its only a couple of years old when its much older etc.
I feel like a lot of people will get burnt buying old EV's, also because of the battery's i feel like they will end up like iphones and meant to be thrown away and replaced with new ones rather than the old gasoline and diesels of old which can be kept running a lot longer for less money.
Sorry for the wall of text haha, i got reading into the batteries and thought i should not waste what i read lol.