Check this out. A Kia Niro that has gone over 90,000 KM with 1% degradation. But you are OK to lose 11% of capacity after 14,000 miles for an expensive Tesla. A cheap KIA doesn't have that issue. Gee, I wonder why?
Well, I do not own a type rating in the Kia Niro but:
The video show that the full charge voltage is 4.14V/cell.
For NMC622(which it seem to have) the full charge standard is 4.20V/cell.
This means, in plain words that the Niro seem to have a top buffer.
As NMC will degrade (from calendar aging) about the same as Teslas NCA cells we can be sure that degradation has happend.
If it do mot look like any degradation it is very probable that Kia hides the degradation by reducing the top buffer.
When it is done this way it will look like no degradation until the top buffer is eaten up, and after this it will show.
Tesla do not really hide any degradation as the do not have any top buffer.
If you had a choise of either;
-Buying 70kWh but newer being able to use more than 65 of these( but not seeing any degradation initially) or
-Buying 70kWh and being able to use all 70 initially.
What road would you choose?
Below is a chart from a research report ( there is a lot of this kind of research and they mainly tell us the same thing).
Teslas ”classic” battery is NCA. Model 3 in europe get NMC and maybe NCMA now.
Nito has NMC622 cells.( most common type of NMC in the recent years research)
We see that there is not a big difference in the degradation.
Kia can not stop the mechanic of degradation so they most certainly will degrade. But we might not see it initially because they probably have hodden this in the top buffer.