The introduction of a standard battery health check will help to stabilise the used electric car market, and in turn boost new car sales, according to battery insights and AI company Altelium.

An independent and credible statement on the current condition of each battery would help considerably with buyer confidence

Speaking at a recent Vehicle Remarketing Association (VRA) meeting on used electric vehicle sales, Alex Johns, business development manager at Altelium, explained that the lack of access to information about individual car battery health was acting as a brake on the market. But he added that this should be ‘taken off’ soon as the use of battery reports becomes more commonplace.

Buyers of second-hand EVs tend to have just two questions about a used car – what is its range and how long will the batteries last? Without the answers to these questions, Altelium says it’s “almost impossible” for dealers to set a resale value with confidence – and that this could in turn inhibit drivers from buying new to begin with.

At the VRA meeting – held late March – chair Philip Nothard explained that an accurate, credible statement on the current condition of each battery and its likely future degradation would help considerably.

A survey of VRA members working with used cars saw 70% say it’s one of the key items on their wish list:

• Better national charging infrastructure
• An independent, industry standard method of checking battery health
• Reduced energy costs to make charging cheaper
• Further improvements in EV range
• Government support to encourage adoption of used EVs.

“The relationship between a battery and its lifespan isn’t as straightforward as a car engine and its mileage, and dealers know this,” Altelium’s Alex Johns explained.

“As Donald Rumsfeld famously said, this is a case of a ‘known unknown’; dealers have been calling for an independent source of information, which tells them exactly what they need to know about the health of any individual car’s battery at the point of sale.”

It’s an area that Altelium says it can play a role in; its platform can read EV battery data to produce a report indicating the state of health, along with vehicle range, and how that compares to what would be expected for that make/model with its particular age and mileage. This provides the independent assessment that dealers have been calling for.

“As information such as the Altelium EV Insight for dealers become widely available, dealers and customers will gain confidence in the future condition and value of their EVs, which will steady the market and help both the used and new EV car markets grow. Our reports give a much-needed injection of information and confidence for the market,” Johns concluded.

The BVRLA is also running an event on battery health for its members. Its ‘Battery Health Deep Dive’ takes place on Tuesday 16 May 2023 and includes speakers such as Altelium’s Alex St Johns. More details are here.