Most people miss this when calculating EV battery life

People usually think about it like this. If a battery is rated for 1,000 cycles, and one full charge lets you drive 500 km, then the battery should last about 500,000 km.

But there is one important thing missing from this calculation: regenerative braking.

In an electric vehicle, when you slow down or brake, energy flows back into the battery and is then used again for driving. This process still counts as battery usage.

For example, if during a drive the energy reused through regenerative braking equals50% of the energy originally used from the battery, then driving 500 km does not consume 1 cycle, but about 1.5 cycles.

Recalculating with this in mind, 500 km uses 1.5 cycles, which means a battery rated for 1,000 cycles would last around 330,000 km.

That’s why EV battery life should not be estimated only by “how far you can drive on a full charge,” but also by how much the battery is actually used during driving.