The range, and what it actually depends on
Where a driveway lands in that range comes down to a handful of things working together: how the ground under it was prepared before the first form went down, how thick the slab is for the load it carries, whether it has rebar or wire mesh tying it together, and how many freeze thaw cycles it sits through every winter at this elevation.
None of those factors act alone. A driveway with a great base but standard thickness and mesh will usually outlast a thicker, better reinforced slab poured on soft, uncompacted ground, because what is underneath decides whether the concrete ever has to fight its own foundation.
The first ten years, if the base held
In the first decade, normal wear is mostly cosmetic. Hairline cracks show up along the control joints, which is the slab shrinking exactly where it was cut to shrink, not a defect. Color mellows a little with sun and weather, and the surface may show light wear in the tire path. None of that shortens the driveway's life.
What starts to show between ten and twenty
Further out, exposure starts to add up. Years of de-icing salt and freeze thaw cycles can wear the top layer thin in spots, especially near the road where salt tracks in first, which shows up as light scaling rather than a crack. Joints that were never resealed can let more water down into the base than they used to. None of this is failure on its own, it is a driveway telling you what its last decade has been like.
What actually cuts a driveway's life short
Most driveways that fail early are not failing because of the concrete itself. Red clay in the subgrade holds water, swells when it is wet, and shrinks and lifts when it freezes, so a subgrade that was never properly compacted before the pour keeps moving under the slab for years afterward. Water running off a downspout or a bad grade along one edge washes fines out from under the concrete and leaves a void the slab eventually settles into.
That is why two driveways poured the same year, in the same weather, on the same mix, can age completely differently. The one on ground that was stripped, graded, and compacted properly holds up. The one poured over topsoil or fill that was never dealt with starts moving within a handful of years, no matter how good the concrete itself was.
What stretches it well past thirty
Keeping water moving away from the slab does more for its lifespan than almost anything else. Downspouts that discharge past the edge instead of alongside it, and a grade that was cut to shed water away from the driveway in the first place, keep the base from ever getting the chance to wash out or hold water against the concrete.
Going easy on de-icing salt, especially through a slab's first winter, and keeping any sealer on a maintained schedule where the driveway has one, both slow the surface wear that adds up over decades. When wear stops being cosmetic and starts looking like movement, a settled corner, a panel that rocks, that is no longer a lifespan question, it is a resurface or replace question, and that decision comes down to what the ground underneath is actually doing.