Over 360,000km on one battery — South Africa’s highest mileage electric car

South Africa’s highest-mileage electric vehicle (EV) is a first-generation BMW i3 owned by Capetonian Shaun Maidment.

Maidment’s i3 achieved the milestone of 200,000km covered by early 2019, less than three years after he bought the EV.

By September 2023, the i3’s odometer had climbed to more than 360,000km.

Maidment told MyBroadband the car’s initial high mileage was primarily down to his commute between his home in Pretoria and his workplace in Roodepoort for several years.

This added roughly 150km to its odometer every day, which works out to over 3,300km in a month.

At one point, Maidment also had a driver who took him to work at his office at MTN in Johannesburg, after which he would do Bolt rides around the city, which added tens of thousands more kilometres.

Some EVs used for logistics and deliveries may cover hundreds of kilometres each day, like the Everlectric panel vans used by Woolworths.

However, considering these have only been adopted in the past few years, they seem unlikely to have surpassed Maidment’s i3.

Despite being worked hard from day one, the i3 has undergone just two major services, primarily to replace wear-and-tear items like tyres and brake pads.

The only part of the car that has struggled and is proving too costly to fix is the small petrol engine that acts as a range extender (REx) when the battery is depleted.

Maidment said the 647cc engine had started giving issues from roughly 100,000km. He was initially quoted R17,000 to fix it.

After finding a blog that said the issue was a faulty relay that cost just R270, he replaced it himself.

However, the problem went away for only a year, and the range extender has remained broken since then.

At one point, it also had a faulty fuel safety sensor that prevented the entire car from starting.

Maidment has been investigating ways to completely remove it from the car and if successful, plans to share this with other BMW i3 REx owners, several of which have reported similar issues with the extender.

In contrast to the fuel-powered problems, the electrified side of the vehicle has not given any issues.

By the time the car had covered over 300,000km, the pack still had well over 80% of its original capacity available.

Maidment believes that EV batteries will likely outlast the entire lifespans of the cars themselves.

EVs not a must — but an inevitability

While Maidment was an early adopter of EV tech, he is by no means critical of petrolheads. He argues that people should buy a vehicle that works for their particular needs and tastes.

He believes that those putting in high mileage stood to gain the most from switching to electric and has found that farmers, in particular, see the benefit of the technology.

That said, he highlighted that the transition to EV-only for passenger cars was a reality.

Maidment said those who embrace EVs early will soon realise the benefits of minimal maintenance and reduced running costs.

There has understandably been much scepticism about the lifespans of EV batteries, as the technology is much younger than petrol or diesel engines.

However, Maidment’s i3 is one of many in a growing number of real-life examples of high-mileage EVs still running on their original batteries after hundreds of thousands of kilometres.

One of the highest-mileage Teslas is a Model S premium taxi in the UK. It has covered over 430,000 miles (692,000km) on its original battery and has roughly 75% of its original capacity left.

MyBroadband recently also spoke to Freedom Won co-founder Antony English, who built the country’s oldest EV that is still running.

English’s 2001 Jeep Grand Cherokee has covered over 235,000km since he converted it to electric in 2010.

Although he swapped out its battery after a few years, this was primarily because the original was small by today’s standards — with 35kWh storage — and not because of unusual degradation.

The battery he removed was repurposed into a stationary storage system with 82% of the original capacity and replaced with a 60kWh pack that could cover roughly 280km on a single charge.

It was installed in his mother’s house, showcasing another strength of EV batteries — recyclability.