The Oberlandesgericht Celle has ruled that a used electric car which no longer reaches its original rated range is not, for that reason, defective. The judgment of 2 July 2026 in case 7 U 85/24 was reported in Germany this week, and it sets out the standard a used-EV buyer now has to clear.
The case
In August 2022 the claimant bought a used Opel Corsa-e "20 Edition" from an authorised Opel dealer for €25,500, with 8,485 km on the odometer. The manufacturer's stated maximum range for the car when new was 337 km. The buyer argued that figure was unreachable even in ideal conditions, reporting shortfalls of 20% to 30% and on occasion 43%, and sued.
A court-appointed expert measured the pack. State of health was around 98.5% at delivery and 93.5% when examined some 4.5 years after the car was first registered — roughly 1.44% a year, which the expert placed just below the average loss expected for this pattern of low-mileage use. Winter range of about 220 km was found to be consistent with what the car should do.
What the court held
The buyer lost. The court's reasoning is that a declining usable capacity reflects the electrochemical behaviour of a traction battery and therefore reflects the state of the art. A product that conforms to the current state of the art is not defective merely because its real-world performance falls short of what the buyer hoped for.
The second limb matters as much as the first: the court found that no specific range had been agreed between buyer and dealer as a binding description of the car's condition. A manufacturer's WLTP figure in a brochure or a listing is not, on this reasoning, a contractual promise about the car in front of you.
The ruling draws a line worth understanding. Age-related degradation that tracks normal ageing is not actionable. It is a different question — and a different line of cases — when a car could never achieve its stated range from new, or when a seller has specifically warranted a range or a state-of-health figure. Get the number in writing and it becomes an agreed condition rather than an expectation.
Why this lands on Tesla buyers in Europe's biggest EV market
Nothing in the judgment is Tesla-specific, and that is the point: it is a German appellate standard for every used EV sold in the country, including the growing supply of used Model 3 and Model Y. It arrives as used Model S prices have collapsed while the batteries mostly have not, and it hands the seller the argument in any dispute where the pack is simply old.
The practical consequence is that state of health moves from a complaint to a pre-purchase measurement. That is also the case against relying on the headline number alone — roughly one used EV in 85 carries a cell-level fault that state of health will not reveal. From February 2027 the battery passport QR code will make some of this data available by regulation. Until then, a documented SoH reading before money changes hands is the only leverage a buyer has, because after the sale the court's answer is that the chemistry was always going to do this.