Does anyone here have any info or thoughts as to how VW's "8-Year" battery warranty will actually work? How is normal "Battery Health Degradation" 1) assessed, and 2) accounted-for for warranty pro-rating purposes? My simplified illustrative "example": A new battery propels car 250 mi at "standard" test conditions. After 7 years, the battery only propels the car 10 mi at the same standard conditions. Q: Has the battery "failed" under the terms of the warranty? An aggressive debater might argue, "No it hasn't - the battery has not 'failed' - it still DOES propel the car 10 miles." This is an admittedly extreme and simplified example only for illustrative purposes ... ... I'm confident that VW would "warranty-out" a battery which only provided 10 miles of propulsion after 7 years (assuming no abuse) ... but at what "pro-rated" terms? What if it the 7-year max range was 150 mi (e.g. greater than a 5% "range degrade" per year) ... what if it was only 100 mi ... ???
After conducting a bit of pre-purchase "tooth pulling" research ... I've got the answer from VW. The "Performance Metric" for the 8-year/100k Mile is battery warranty is "Net Battery Capacity" VW warrants that this value will remain above 70% for the warranty period. No statement is provided re: pro-rating. It does include the statement, " ... if battery is completely replaced ... the replacement may not be of an 'as-new' condition with 100% net capacity" Also confirmed that Net Battery Capacity CAN be read by field-techs. (i.e. it doesn't require an off-site "data dump analysis" by the VW Mothership)
