A two-year payback for buyers of future hybrids?

Car battery company EnerDel predicts that consumers will start getting a two-year payback on hybrid electric cars, once a new generation of batteries are mass-produced.

Charles Gassenheimer, the chairman of parent company Ener1, gave a presentation at the Jefferies Global Clean Technology Conference on Thursday in New York, where he said lithium ion batteries in development will bring costs down substantially.

Click on the image to see a photo gallery of upcoming electric cars.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

He said EnerDel intends to have a manufacturing line operating in 2010 that is capable of making 300,000 car batteries a year for hybrid electric vehicles that run partially on a battery and partially on an internal combustion engine.

With gasoline prices at about $4 per gallon, current market conditions would enable a person upgrading from an SUV to a Toyota Prius to recoup the initial cost in about seven years, according to a Wall Street Journal column Wednesday.

That figure subtracts the money received from unloading a tough-to-sell SUV. (See this online calculator at Fueleconomy.gov for a more general assessment.)

Gassenheimer at EnerDel said long-sought advances in lithium ion battery technology can bring that payback period down to fewer than two years. The auto industry is following what the consumer electronics business did in the early 1990s, when it moved from nickel-based batteries to lithium.

"Why we're shifting to lithium from nickel is because it's half the size, half the weight, and two times the energy density. Most important is a substantial reduction in cost," he said.

The company has a deal to supply car batteries to Think Global in the "2009-2010 time frame" for its all-electric towncar. Gassenheimer predicted that EnerDel will sign on to supply two more automakers with batteries before the end of this year.

EnerDel is designing batteries for hybrid electric vehicles like the Prius, as well as plug-in hybrids, which use the internal combustion engine to charge the battery that runs the car.

Gassenheimer claimed that the company's battery chemistry and design are safe, and promise better battery life and performance. A lithium ion cell phone battery can only take half its original charge after two years. But EnerDel batteries maintain the same capacity after 300,000 cycles, the equivalent of 10 years of life, he said.

Farther out, supplying utilities with energy storage "could be bigger than the auto market in front of us today," Gassenheimer claimed. Specifically, he said utilities need ways to store electricity generated by variable renewable sources, wind and solar power.

There are several other battery companies moving into the electric-vehicle market, some of which are using lithium-based batteries, while others, such as PowerGenix, are using nickel zinc because it promises lower costs than lithium ion.

Gassenheimer said that by 2011, there will be 75 car models with lithium ion batteries.

"It's pretty clear some real players are starting to commit real dollars to this space," Gassenheimer said.

[rcrusoe]

What's the cost to dispose of your old batteries? Green gets expensive when the cleanup of 1 compact fluorescent light bulb can run over $2000?

"According to the newspaper Ellsworth American, Brandy Bridges of Prospect, Maine, has been given a conservative quote of $2,000 for toxic cleanup of one CFL broken in her home."

http://www.naturalnews.com/021916.html

[purcell429]

Whoa whoa... has anyone read the WSJ article? This guy sounds like a GM executive. He assumes that it takes 7 years to recoup the cost because you have to sell your old car, which is only worth $5,000. I suppose of course, assuming that a 2000 ford explorer with 75,000 miles on it (blue book value of $7500) would actually last 7 more years at 15,000 miles per year without any work needed. This hack uses the fuzziest math I have seen in a long time. He should have compared a new prius to a new explorer to see the real cost differences.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/04/business/04leonhardt.html?ref=automobiles

"While the F-250 costs $100,000 and a fully loaded F-150 ? the better-known, smaller Ford pickup ? costs about $70,000, a Ford Focus still costs less than $40,000 over five years. A Honda Civic Hybrid does, too. A Toyota Prius costs only a little more. A Subaru Outback station wagon runs $50,000 or so."

I drive a 1993 jeep grand cherokee with 150,000 miles on it. Do I really expect that If I were to go out tommorow and buy a prius that it would take 7 years to recoup the costs? No way! I expect that I need to buy a new car, since mine is falling apart! Call this hack out on his biased article!

[mishmash0101]

The problem with justifying the purchase of any vehicle solely on fuel mileage is that even at 15,000 miles per year and $4 a gallon, there just isn't much savings ($1,00-$2,000 per year on average) to offset the incredibly marginal high price ($20,000+) of a new vehicle (when compared to your existing vehicle) - regardless of the mileage increase.

This is why common sense says that the real bang for the buck isn't going to be seen (e.g. the tipping point) unitl gas reaches double ($8 per gallon) of what we are seeing now . When this occurs then the payback time will be half of what it is now and much eaiser to justify on financial grounds alone.

[carlhage]

Besides higher power and more usable capacity per size and weight, some of the new batteries have been tested to last 4-8000 cycles vs 500 for current laptop-style Li-Ion batteries. Both current NiMH and new Li batteries are recyclable and don't contain toxic material like lead or cadmuim.

Usually "payback" means the fuel savings to recoup extra costs of hybrid-electric over conventional cars, not for replacing a SUV with a Prius. At $4/gal, 15K mi/yr, 50mpg, a Prius needs $1200/yr in fuel vs $2400 for a car with 25mpg, or $1800 at 33mpg. So there is somewhere between $600-1200/yr savings.

Adding a larger battery to make a plug-in might reduce the $1200/yr to maybe $600/yr. You can buy a new-technology plug-in Li-Ion Prius battery now, but it costs $10K. Hopefully this will come down by a factor of 2-4.

The Prius doesn't save that much because it uses so little fuel. Adding hybrid technology (or lightweighting with carbon fiber) to an SUV would double all these numbers, e.g. save $2400/yr, so adding +$5K would have a 2 year payback.

A Wired article says don't replace your Hummer and buy a Pruis-- it's bad for the environment. That's true if you crush the Hummer, but if you sell it and keeps a guy from buying a new Hummer, then the new Prius is way better from the start.

[jlfelder]

What is this endless obsession "payback" of a hybrid. Not everything decision has to be based strickly on money. You don't want to be stupid about it, but other factors can enter the decision matrix. How about the payback of leaving more resouces for my kids and grandkids. It strikes me that it is the self-centered "it-allabout-me" folks who obsess on the extra few hundred or maybe few thousand in life-cycle costs of a hybrid.

In my experience people who say that they could never buy a hybrid because they could never recoup the higher price in fuel savings also tend to be the people who purchase $30-$35k SUVs and trucks over $20-$25k sedans or wagons. What is the payback period on an the marginal extra utility of an SUV over a wagon when it not only cost more to purchase, but more to operate?

So I say so what if I never recoup all of the upfront costs of a hybrid. My payback is that I sleep better at night knowing that I am doing something to reduce my resource consumption level.