Mercedes EQA tops EV battery retention study; Teslas lag — SkimNews
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- Mercedes EQA leads AVILOO's 500,000-test battery study with a median 94% state of health at 150,000 km, ahead of the Hyundai IONIQ 5 at 93.8% and the BMW i4 at 93.6%; the IONIQ 5 actually tops the chart at lower mileage, holding 97.1% at 50,000 km before the German pair overtakes it
- Tesla Model 3 lands at 88.9% SoH at 150,000 km—the second-worst result for a battery of its size—while the Tesla Model Y posts 90.3%, putting both Teslas in the bottom third of the 20-model ranking and undercutting the durability reputation Tesla has marketed
- Nissan Leaf (86.7%), MINI Cooper SE (87.1%), and Renault Zoe (87.3%) bring up the rear, all sharing small ~40 kWh packs that accumulate more charge cycles per kilometer; the Cooper SE is the sharpest faller in the whole study, dropping 7 points of SoH between 50,000 and 150,000 km
- The within-model gap runs as high as 13.5% between the best and worst individual examples of the same car, meaning a 'good' and 'bad' IONIQ 5 on the same lot are genuinely different products—and nothing on the window sticker or dashboard SoH readout, which every brand calculates differently, reveals which is which
- AVILOO's newer data has been kinder to Tesla's LFP packs, which held their charge better than the nickel-based Model 3 in a separate study, partially blunting the headline result for the world's best-selling EV maker
- Mercedes-Benz, Volvo, and Porsche Holding have named AVILOO their preferred independent battery-testing provider for European dealerships; AVILOO's methods are TÜV and CARA certified and its database has now passed 1 million tests across the Americas, Europe, Australia, and Asia
- AVILOO launched a Battery Warranty this summer across 12 European countries that pays out £2,700 ($3,600) or €3,000 if a pack drops below an individual SoH floor within a year, monetizing the same per-car diagnostics that produced the rankings
Why it matters: Used-EV buyers now have the first large-scale independent ranking to lean on, but the 13.5% within-model SoH spread means two identical cars can deliver materially different real-world range—so an individual battery test or AVILOO's new warranty matters more than trusting a model average. Tesla's bottom-third finish is the headline reputational hit: the brand's 'batteries outlast the car' pitch now has a publicly measured gap behind it, though its newer LFP chemistry has tested better.
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