The good news is that technological progress more than offsets the effect of a warming world, even (hopefully) extreme scenarios like warming of 4° C. Those older batteries, which have a median lifespan of around 15 years in the current climate, would decrease by about 20 percent to a median of 12 years under 4° of warming, the study finds. But newer batteries, which have a current median lifespan of 17 years, should still last about 17 years on average under such conditions.

Older batteries also have a greater distribution of aging. The percentiles are much closer to the median for newer batteries, which under the worst conditions might see a lifetime degradation of up to 10 percent; by contrast, older batteries may suffer a loss of 30 percent or more.

“I think these improvements are well-known to experts in the field. But when I started this project, I was looking at web forums and reading how people were deciding on cars,” Wu said. “There are still a lot of durability concerns about EV batteries.”

After modeling battery lifetimes in 300 cities around the world, Wu and his co-authors found that with older battery technology, countries with the lowest GDP per capita had the greatest reductions in battery lifespan. Under the worst outcomes, Africa, Southeast Asia, and India could see those EV batteries lose 25 percent of their lifespan, compared to 15 percent in Europe or North America. But newer batteries should lose only 4 percent of their lifespan at worst in low-income countries and remain stable in the affluent West.

Of course, this assumes that those lower-GDP nations adopt EVs with the same kinds of battery technology we see in more well-off markets, and they don’t take into account factors like vehicle reliability, changes in powertrain efficiency, or whether charging infrastructure will remain stable in a warmer world. But it’s just another bit of data we can point to showing that EVs aren’t really that scary, just different.

Nature Climate Change, 2026. DOI: 10.1038/s41558-026-02579-z (About DOIs).