If you own an electric vehicle or you’re going to buy one here’s some important information you need to know about the warranty exclusions and exceptions for batteries. And when I say, if you own or going to buy one you’re going to own one because they’re not going to have any gas cars pretty soon. You’re going to have to own one. Well, what about electric vehicle batteries? Well, they all have a warranty and the warranties have exclusions. This is the exclusion generality as listed by GreenCars. Use of non-standard charging. Okay, that makes sense. You don’t want to plug it into just any kind of plug or have any damage caused by installing non-approved parts. What does that mean? What if you put on fancy wheels? What if you put on maybe a higher amperage radio? what if you change the computer in the car? What does that mean? 

Non-standard parts use the battery as a stationary power source. Some vehicles allow you to reverse flow the battery to power your house if your power goes out, does that void your warranty? You should check with your vehicle. Caused by opening the battery coolant reservoir You probably don’t want to do that. Failing to install software updates. Well, think about that. your electric vehicle is going to have regular updates just like your phone and your computer. Your car gasoline car doesn’t have that, but what if the update also changes something about your vehicle you don’t like maybe it makes the door chime a different noise. Maybe it forces you to put on your seatbelt before you can start the car. Maybe it doesn’t allow you to put in certain radio stations, who knows what their update will do. Well many times when there’s a computer update or a phone update that you don’t like you just ignore it. Well if you ignore it on your electric vehicle, you might not have your warranty on your battery. 

Caused by repairs performed by non-certified technicians. Well, I guess electric vehicles have to go back to the dealership to get repaired. There are no more third-party repair shops or independent garages that can work on electric vehicles. 

Lifting the vehicle from underneath the battery instead of body lift points. Well, what happened if your car needs to get towed? And the tow truck company doesn’t know where to jack it up and they put the lift under the battery. And damage the battery who’s going to pay for that? Your battery’s not warrantied. Does the tow truck company have 30 grand to replace your battery?

Failure to make repairs. Well, again, if your car is showing you a warning light, and your repair estimate is $2,000. You might say well I don’t have the money right now it’s still driving so I’m going to keep driving it. Well, that might void your battery warranty. On your gasoline car, you can ignore the check engine light as long as the vehicle is driving. If you exceed towing limits. Most electric vehicles you don’t want to tow anyways. 

General abuse and neglect. That’s a catchall. They could say whatever they want. Well, what else could void the battery? Here’s a message from an electric vehicle forum that has a snippet from an owner’s manual that says the guarantee on high-voltage batteries does not apply if the defect has been caused by the battery not being used and handled properly. This applies in particular to charging the battery. Using rapid charge three times in a row. So this is something that you might want to be aware of. How often do you do rapid charging? This is a snippet from the Kia owner’s manual. That’s not where the last one came from. That came from a different vehicle. Kia their own owner’s manual talks about DC fast chargers. The quickest way to charge electric vehicle use of DC charge should be kept to a minimum in order to help prolong high voltage battery life. So what if you use it on a regular basis? What if you travel and you need to DC fast charge? So you’re not waiting four hours to charge up twice a day. Will that void your warranty? It says here Kept to a minimum. That’s in their owner’s manual. Is that an official policy? At this point, it’s unknown how warranty decisions will be made, but be aware of what the requirements are for electric vehicle battery warranties to be made, maintained, and eligible. So you don’t end up with a dead battery in five years but you can’t get paid for it because you violated some warranty requirement.