Battery Life In Electric Cars
The average lifespan of a battery in a new electric car might surprise you, it did me. I suspected the usable life of a battery pack in todays electric cars would not be significant enough to necessitate the larger sticker price and it turns out I was wrong. Furthermore, taking into consideration the cost of regular maintenance on a typical combustion engine, even when you do have to replace an electric car battery you may still be way ahead.
Testing Usable Life Span
There have been specific cases of electric cars like the Toyota Rav 4 EV reaching 100,00 miles on it's original battery with no significant loss of battery life. The battery in question is the Nickel-Metal Hydride (NiMH) battery, which is composed of cells, otherwise known commonly as the rechargable batteries you buy in the store. In electric cars however instead of say a AAA or D battery, the NiMH battery in your electric car utilizes cells on a much larger scale.
Testing on the NiMH Electric Car battery life was done by the Southern California Edison, Electric Vehicle Technical Center(pdf). They state that the likely hood of your typical electric car cell battery life to be anywhere in the 130,000 to 150,000 mile range. Considering you don't have to perform regular maintenance like oil and air filter changes, over the life of the vehicle the cost of replacing the battery would be far under gas engine maintenance costs.
Cost Of Replacing Electric Car Batteries
The cost of replacing the battery in a Toyota Rav 4 EV, in the example above, may be the exception to the maintenance cost comparison rule. Recent figures put the RAV 4 EV NiMH battery replacement cost at $14,000. This would be for a custom pack that would provide 2000 usable cycles, compared to 1000, which translates into about 8 years of normal driving. The NiMH for this particular vehicle seems high, but smaller vehicles like the new Toyota Prius have battery replacement costs of uner $3,000.
In closing, before jumping on the bandwagon and becoming an early adopter, check out what the replacement cost for the battery will be. However, as years pass and electric cars become more popular, the price of these NiMH replacements will be dropping dramatically just like any technology that becomes old hat.
NiMH Battery
Tags: battery, electric car, hybrid, NiMH, Prius, replacement
November 13th, 2008 at 12:03 am
It is quite accurate to say that EVs require practically no maintenance, and because of the fact that they cost a fraction of what an IC cars costs to drive, EVs practically pay for themselves !
May 20th, 2009 at 4:43 am
Xebra appears typical of the greensters; forever trotting out selective facts and half truths, and in this case blatant untruths. EVs acquisition costs are NOT a fraction of IC types. Now lets work on the whole story. The greensters have been forcing utilities to convert coal fired power plants to use natural gas as their fuel source for the last 30 years. This consumes trillions of cubic feet of this petroleum product which has succeeded in squandering its supply and driving up its cost 300%. Natural gas is the world’s preferred home heating fuel, and in so doing the greensters have succeeded in imposing this 300% hidden regressive tax on all Americans to further their narrow tree hugger agenda. A significant adoption of EVs will accelerate this squandering of a fabulous home heating natural resource and further drive up its costs to everyone.
October 6th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
I agree with Marvin. The cost to re-charge a EV negates whatever good feeling the owner may have of saving the earth. You are burning more coal by using the car than if you had a regular gas vehicle. You can check out more information on making your car more efficient by going to http://www.valleysearchlight.com/car.
October 25th, 2009 at 8:31 am
A modern diesel will give you at least 40MPG. 4 dollars a gallon equals 10 cents a mile.
In comparison I doubt any EV-maker will guarantee a 100,000 mile lifespan on their battery packs. But even so they would have to price replacement packs at $ 10K to get the “fuel cost” down to 10 cents a mile (+ el). And then the cost of running either vehicle would be about the same (Diesel maintenance and price of electricity more or less same amount).
You may very well buy an EV for ecological reasons, but certainly not for economic ones.