I drive a stick. 2004 Subaru Impreza WRX with the 5-sp. My commute is 7 miles one way, including a steep uphill/downhill, about a mile to the freeway, and varied stop and go driving until I reach work. Even though I do a lot of cruising, I typically get under my car's estimated city mileage even with mixed highway/city driving. On my 200+ miles trips, I have been able to get about the EPA estimated highway fuel economy, and sometimes better.
Nothing is going to be an insignificant cost. People still repair older vehicles. Some might rebuild engines, replace clutches, rebuild transmissions on cars 10+ years old.
In looking at the way the battery packs are constructed, I don't think that the entire module needs to be replaced. There are already thousands of these cars produced, and I suspect there might be millions by the time owners will need to pay out of pocket for replacements. There are several aftermarket suppliers for cell phone, notebook computer, and camera batteries. Someone will be looking to make money selling aftermarket battery replacements.
The Prius battery uses 38 battery packs. It should be possible to replace these packs rather than the entire battery stack. Right now, there's probably little demand for an aftermarket supplier, since the batteries are still under warranty. Still - designing an aftermarket replacement for the individual packs shouldn't be much different than making a clone of a Canon camera battery. Toyota is selling over
200,000 hybrids a year in the U.S.. With that many vehicles, someone is going to see the profit in making a replacement battery down the line.
Doesn't really matter. I think in 10 years, NiMH battery technology will still be in common use, and there will be someone looking to sell aftermarket replacements. Maybe the technology has peaked, but there will always be pushes for lower manufacturing costs, and expertise in NiMH battery technology will still be around.
I never advocated a "plug-in" hybrid. I think in the long-run, that would be the way to ensure a low service life for hybrid batteries. I've never heard an advocate of "plug-in hybrids" mention that it would likely mean reduced battery longevity.
It's a crapshoot with almost any part of a car. People faithfully maintain their cars and important parts still fail prematurely.
"*" wrote in news:01c73329$517bebe0$1591c3d8@race:
I can only speak for Honda hybrids, but Honda has issued documents for use by emergency service crews on how to avoid possible shock from the HT current.
Simply put, you do one of two things:
1) Turn ignition key to OFF. If that cannot be done, you
2) cut negative cable from 12V battery and remove the main fuse, which is identified on the fuse box lid. Either will isolate the HT current so rescue may be carried out right away.
HT wires are orange for easy identification, and are under the car, well away from the normal cut zones any fireman would use.
Anyone who wishes to see these documents may view them here:
It's not about voltage, it's about available short circuit current. The higher voltage of the hybrid battery packs is a small risk, the big risk is what happens when the pack is shorted. The available short circuit current is very high and the AH capacity of the pack is also high meaning it can sustain a big honkin arc for a significant amount of time which itself will burn through stuff, possibly a gas tank, possibly the battery pack itself can explode or catch fire spewing toxic chemicals and smoke.
Typically the EPA numbers for standard are lower than for automatic, and typically I exceed their rating for automatic with my standard. I'm not a "Mario", but I'm not a "granny" either and still I do better than the EPA numbers with a conventional vehicle and a standard. The EPA numbers for the hybrids are by all accounts vastly inflated over real world numbers.
People repairing old cars have ready access to inexpensive parts recovered from crashed vehicles. This will not be the case with items such as the battery pack in a hybrid. A conventional car will be significantly more economical to repair and maintain than a hybrid will, and that's even assuming parts are available at all for the obsolete hybrid since they are being produced in vastly lower numbers than common conventional cars.
Millions is in my opinion an overly optimistic number. And for any given model with it's unique and non standardized battery pack try a hundred thousand at best. A very small market compared to the phone and laptop markets you mention. This means if there are after market packs available they will be quite expensive. This can even be seen in the laptop battery after market where many of those after market batteries cost more than the OEM packs originally did.
As for replacing modules, a lot of people think that, but it simply won't work that way. All the modules in the failed battery have the same wear and tear on them and if you replace one failed module this month, expect another to fail next month.
See above re: replacing individual packs.
As for someone seeing the profit in making replacement packs down the road, that goes exactly back to my point about economic maintainability and that profitable a.k.a. expensive after market battery will simply not be economically viable to replace to keep a 15 year old obsolete car running.
Like Ni-CD batteries which have nearly disappeared from the market? Don't count on availability and if there is availability it will be special order and expensive making it uneconomical to try to keep your
15 yr old hybrid running whereas your 30 yr old conventional car is still economical to maintain, at least if you're not in the rust belt.
You never hear advocates pushing their favorite thing talk about it's drawbacks. The plug in hybrid approach clearly puts more and deeper discharge cycles on the battery pack which will shorten it's life expectancy. A home brew conversion may well have poor charging characteristics further damaging the battery.
The point and fact is that a conventional car simply does not contain the limited supply, not salvageable components that a hybrid does. I can blow the engine in a 20yr old conventional vehicle and still go to the salvage yard and get a perfectly serviceable engine for vastly less that you could ever get a battery pack for a hybrid for.
Right now there's a recovered Prius battery on eBay (item #
230058162370) for $700. I'm not saying it's going to cost as much as a traditional internal combustion engine to maintain. Still - you'r painting this gloom and doom scenario where everything that can go wrong will go wrong, and will cost an arm and a leg to repair.
Toyota already has sold over 1/4 million hybrid cars.
I posted this earlier but Google Groups is rather batty right now. Since the original Prius came out, Toyota hasn't replaced an entire battery stack, but has replaced individual failed modules under warranty. The general recommendation with consumer electronics batteries is that they should be replaced together as a set, but apparently these hybrid systems do fine with individual modules replaced as they fail. Just like any car, I suspect that the rate of failure will go up with age, but that's not much different than the rate of parts failure for any car.
There have been documented cases, like several Prius taxis in Canada that have gone well over 300K kms on the original battery.
I think worst case scenario (for the Prius) is that enough battery packs fail at once that it makes sense to replace all 38 together. By that time, someone should figure out that they can make money selling high quality direct drop- in aftermarket packs that can be installed into the stack for less than OEM prices.
NiCad disappear from the market? You can still buy NiCad Makita batteries. I can still go to Fry's Electronics and get NiCad AAs. Certainly their use and availability has gone down for reasons of capacity and toxicity. I don't see the same problem with NiMH technology being rare and/or prohibitively expensive in 20 years. I don't see alkaline cells being gone in 20 years, even though NiMH cells are approaching them in rated capacity.
And I'm not advocating a plug-in hybrid.
I don't know why you're singling out hybrids. If the ECU in a late 80's car goes out by the next decade, I don't know there are going to be any replacements available.
I'm not saying buying a current hybrid makes economic sense. You'll have to buy one for different reasons. However - I dooubt they'll be a disaster to fix if the battery runs into problems. If I bought one, I'd be happy to get 200K miles out of one, like some people already have achieved with the Prius. My dad's '96 Buic is already ready to give up the ghost after less than that.
I've heard some are averaging 50+ while others aren't. This may be a case where YMMV, literally.
I really doubt anyone is under the impression that they've buying a current hybrid because the net fuel savings will offset the increased cost. Right now, people are early adopters, much like I was when I bought my first DVD players in 1997 for $1100 and $600.
However - it has been shown that bad cells can be replaced individually. If they do fail, I don't think it's all at once. I'd think in the future there might be more advanced monitoring systems and that failing cells could be detected early and replaced as preventative maintenance. As it is now, one failing doesn't seem to mean that the next one is bound to go bad in a month.
There are real world cases where people have gotten more mileage out of hybrids (on the original battery) that most get out of standard cars. There are plenty of hybrids that have gone beyond 100K miles, and there hasn't been a documented case where there's been catostrophic failure of multiple cells.
Again - nobody is buying current hybrid cars simply because they think they'll save money overall. I don't think the original poster is asking that question. The real question is whether or not it's going to be possible to service these cars in the future, and whether shops will be able to service them.
I take my car to Art's Automotive (Berkeley, California), which is a Japanese car specialist. They will service all Toyota and Honda hybrids. They were considering servicing Ford and other hybrids, but probably can't justify the cost of subscriptions for all the info services for just one model.
That is the story I hear. But if cost savings is not the reason then why would anyone pay more money for a car that would only deliver the performance of a lesser priced one.
Again, then why would anyone buy one if there is no cost savings and likely an increased cost in operation..
Not at all, I'm pointing out one area where there is guaranteed to be an expensive repair, something that simply does not exist with a conventional car. I haven't even got into what will happen if the control electronics fail. They are usually pretty reliable, but will be a nail in the hybrid coffin if they fail out of warranty.
Compare the number for any given model of hybrid to any given model of conventional. Then also factor in the interchangability of drive train parts between many different related models of conventional car and look for the (non existent) equivalent in the hybrid world.
The simple fact is that excluding tax subsidies, buying a hybrid car now will cost you more and you won't likely recover that cost in any reasonable time from fuel savings before you are hit with very expensive out of warranty repairs.
This means in all reasonable probability you will be spending several thousand dollars on a fashion statement. If this is ok with you and your budget fine, but don't delude yourself into believing there is any actual monetary savings for 99% of hybrid users.
They are "cheeping out" and hoping the rest of the modules last until the warranty runs out. Good for them, bad for the consumer.
Of course they "do just fine", the problem is that the failure is likely to progress to the other equally old modules in short order meaning repeated trips for replacement and increased labor costs.
Yes, battery failures will increase with age. The analogy does not carry over to other car parts however.
Simply because they rack up miles much faster so those 300k klicks occur while the battery is still young. Battery failures are related mostly to age and abuse, not cycles.
Less than OEM prices does not change my point about the economics for repairing a 15 yr old car. A $3k aftermarket pack (were such a thing to be available at all) may well sell better than a $4k OEM pack, but either is the nail in the economic coffin for the 15 yr old car.
A nail in the coffin, particularly since the 15 yr old car is no longer a trendy fashion statement and because at 15 yrs much of the rest of these economy cars will also be worn out and undesirable.
I said "nearly" and that is very much true. Outside of "legacy" replacements they are essentially gone. Almost nothing new is manufactured with Ni-CD batteries due to their poor performance compared to newer technologies.
Toxicity has nothing to do with it, it is simply poor performance compared to newer technologies. Newer technologies have toxicity as well as do older technologies like lead-acid which still are around because they scale far better and more economically than the newer technologies when weight isn't an issue.
I didn't say they would be, I indicated they would not be much cheaper since they have already matured. This means that today's $4k Ni-MH pack, if it is still available in 20 yrs will cost the inflation adjusted equivalent of perhaps $3.5k which still makes it the nail in the coffin for the old car.
Alkaline cells may well be gone by then given both price and capacity are getting very close. When there is no cost savings associated with the one time use batteries they will fade away.
Nor am I. I'm just noting another issue that the rabid hybrid junkies are overlooking. This problem would not affect the average consumer who just drives the hybrid as-is.
Call your local auto salvage place and ask how many ECUs they have sitting on the shelf. ECUs are rarely damaged in a wreck (unless it burns) so there is an abundance of them available. The same should in theory apply to the ECUs of hybrids, but not to the battery packs in many cases since their size makes them pretty vulnerable to damage in a good crash and safety concerns make even slightly damaged ones worthless other than scrap value.
Exactly, they are a present a tax payer subsidized fashion statement and a display of technology that solves a non existent problem, though components of the technology could develop further to solve real world problems.
You set your sights too low and your dad doesn't do enough maintenance. Conventional vehicles with proper care are well known for lasting 300K miles or more (unless in rust belt). A company I used to work for had a shop pickup that was well over 300K and had nothing but regular oil changes, brakes and tires done. Still ran flawlessly and this one was even in the rust belt. Someone out in the dry desert could easily expect to reach 500k miles.
I never argued that the upfront costs of a hybrid are going to be recouped with fuel savings. I just question your insistence that there's almost a certainty that battery failure is going to be rampant and replacement is going to be expensive down the line.
No - apparently they've designed their system in a way where individual packs can be replaced succesfully. If that's the case, it's better for the consumer if it's out of warranty.
I don't buy it. I would expect a failure mode more like a bell curve. Maybe a few fail under warranty and are repaired. Extremely few should fail during the sweet spot of ownership. By maybe 100K miles I'd expect a few owners might find one gone, and in California that would be repaired under warranty. That early, I don't expect a rapid succession of failing packs unless the charging system failed or there was an unauthorized modification. If it's really old, then perhaps they will start to fail. If you've got 200K miles on a car, then maybe it is time to get a new one.
I also don't think it would be that difficult to make a an aftermarket replacement pack. Each pack is just 6 NiMH cells in series, placed in a metal case with connectors. I can still find replacement batteries for my 16 year old Sony cordless phone with a sealed lead-acid battery. I do expect that it would make economic sense for someone else to fashion a high-quality direct drop in module. And again, I think they could all be replaced at once for less than you've been quoting as the replacement module cost.
Like hoses, belts, gears, bearings, shocks, etc.
I don't know. The '32 Ford Coupe was trendy many years down the line. Strangely enough, the 92-95 Honda Civic is the current equivalent among the aftermarket crowd.
I believe NiMH has reached a fairly good spot when it comes to consumer electronics. I think the only reason NiCad is still around is because their internal resistance is lower than NiMH which helps with some of the high-drain power tools.
Alkalines will never go away because people still use them in remotes, wall clocks, etc. I still run into people who are convinced that alkalines last longer in all applications including digital cameras.
Batteries have a finite life span - period, this is well known. It is also well known that a large battery pack is expensive and will always be expensive even if it has been produced for years. The raw materials in the battery are expensive and only get more expensive every year.
Taking those facts and extrapolating them to a car that is entirely dependent on a large battery pack for it's operation and is also an "economy" car meaning it is light weight and not built for long service life, you reach the undeniable conclusion that when the battery pack fails when the vehicle is perhaps 15 yrs old at most, it represents the end of the viable service life for the vehicle.
No, that is cheeping out since it allows them to replace only the one module that has failed while the remainder are close to failure. If the battery in your conventional car was composed of six separate cell modules instead of a composite unit, it would be a complete waste of time to replace one failed cell this week, another next week, another two weeks later, etc. Same concept as replacing the one tire that has failed the "penny test" while not replacing the other three that are .005" away from failing the test themselves.
The failure rate of a battery does not follow a bell curve. The starting slope is almost vertical with early failures in the first hours of operation or even on the assembly line. There is then a big plateau of the normal life span followed by a rather abbreviated bell curve down the failure slope.
Put simply, if it works when it's installed in the car it will remain working for it's predicted life span and then fail shortly after that. Outside of abuse, it's an electro-chemical thing that is well known.
I never said it would be difficult to make. I said that it is quite possible that it won't be made due to the expense of tooling up to produce a pack that has little demand. For a company that does go to this effort, they will not be selling it at bargain basement prices.
Believe it or not many of those small oddball replacement battery packs are made to order, something that will not be the case with a big automotive battery pack.
Develop a business plan for selling after market packs and approach the battery manufacturers to see if one will work with you. Perhaps you'll become rich.
The exact cost of the pack isn't even the issue, it's the cost of the replacement pack vs. the value (or lack thereof) of a 15 year old work out economy car. Putting a $3K battery into a car worth $500 simply doesn't make sense in the real world. When you put that $3K battery into the car and the electric motor or the motor controller fails six months later what do you do, keep throwing money at a piece of junk?
All of which cost less than $20. The analogy simply doesn't hold. Wheel bearing failure that costs $50 to replace does not make a 15 yr old economy car uneconomical to fix, a battery pack failure that costs $3K to replace does make a 15 yr old economy hybrid car uneconomical to fix.
I'm not in the "import tuner" world, but I strongly suspect that particular trend related to a design change and / or emissions regulations.
Ni-CD is still around as replacements for legacy items where the charger can't handle NI-MH properly for the most part. Expect Ni-CD to disappear entirely in the near future.
Alkalines do generally last longer than the equivalent Ni-MH batteries, however they are one time use as well. With newer fast chargers and Ni-MH batteries that don't cost any more than alkalines those alakline junkies will be few and far between rather like the vinyl record or tube amp junkies.
Not really emissions. The '96 model versions actually had a similar
4-wheel double-wishbone setup that the tuners like for the upgrade options. The engines were also pretty similar. However - in '96, Honda decided to go with a boxier, less sleek design that they thought would appeal to a more "mature" audience. The '92-95 version had a smoother look.
Alkalines are still valuable for any number of things. You can drop one in a remote control and have it last two-three years without self- discharge being an issue. They're ideal for wall clocks. You can drop one in an emergency flashlight, and it'll still fire up fine in five years.
I still don't see anything on the horizon that's going to displace NiMH chemistry for most standard-sized cells. The 1.2 V nominal cell does really well as an alkaline/carbon cell replacement in most electronics. Maybe NiMH technology is mature, but I can't see anything or any reason why it might be gone in 20 years.
I don't know about the Saturns, but I do know of some specialty shops that want their customers to know that they will be servicing hybrids. If you're talking about most parts of the internal combustion engine, I would suspect that most competent auto mechanics should be able to perform such tasks. If there's a problem with the battery or hybrid system, they should be repaired by the dealer under warranty.
I don't think these systems have been proven to be unreliable - at least the ones employed by Toyota and Honda. If this is really what you want, you shouldn't be scared that you'll be stuck with a hunk of useless metal down the line.
BTW - I remember going to Yosemite National Park last winter and summer. I rode in several of the fleet of 18 diesel-hybrid buses. I noted that they were extremely quiet for diesel vehicles, and apparently the electric motor really helps with acceleration. They're made by Gillig Corp, with a hybrid system from GM's Allison Transmission division. I think this is a great idea given the performance advantages and emissions reductions.
Yes, yes this is common knowledge at least among the electronics crowd.
wrong, your looking at this incorrectly.
yes, exactly.
This is also correct for making an OEM lookalike battery pack.
OK, hold on a second.
Electric motors aren't like a gasoline engine, they have few wearable items. Brushes and bearings. Both of which are readily available. And I think your all assuming the motor controller is a lot more fragile than it really is.
With vehicle electrical systems the most common failure is the sensors. Why? because the sensors are in an unfriendly environment.
With a hybrid you also have a gasoline engine to deal with and this has got it's own expense in a high mileage engine
So the solution for a 15 year old worn out economy car with a bad battery pack is very simple and obvious. You pull out the engine and battery. You replace the battery with a much larger battery, and you replace the control electronics with new electronics that run the vehicle as a 100% electric car. There's already a company that has designed all of this.
Sure, the cost of conversion is in the $3-5K range. But, you have to look at it this way. A new 100% electric car (if they are even available) is going to be in the $20K range. You might get 100K miles out of it before having to replace the battery pack. A used hybrid that has been retrofitted
to be 100% electric is going to cost around $5K And your going to get
100K miles out of it.
This is where it makes sense. All those used Priuses, once their owners cannot get a replacement battery and their gas engines die, those vehicles will be scrap value only. But when this happens they won't be so old that all their paint will be coming off and they will have looked like they made it through a war. There will be plenty out there that have excellent bodies and have never been in an accident.
No, I'm not. Spending $3k or so to repair a 15 year old worn out economy car worth perhaps $500 (both adjusted for inflation as needed) simply does not make economic sense, particularly given the probability of other failures on the worn out vehicle.
No, I'm not. I'm pointing out that replacing a $3k battery pack on a car worth $500 doesn't make sense to begin with and when it's a 15 year old economy car the probability of other failures makes it even more ridiculous.
Remember we are talking about a hybrid here, not a pure electric car, so it is subject to the same potential failures as a conventional vehicle in addition to those specific to a hybrid.
Incorrect, the most common failure is the connectors. Since those connectors are often integral to a particular sensor it may seem like a sensor failure, but it isn't generally.
Everything in a motor vehicle is in an unfriendly environment. Heat, cold, moisture, corrosive chemicals, etc., but still the failure point is most often the electrical connectors since they are the most difficult to seal from the corrosive moisture without using expensive connectors.
Exactly. If it was only the IC you'd be in reasonable shape swapping in a salvaged engine to get another few years of service life, but add in the guaranteed failure of the expensive battery pack and it's simply not economical.
That is about the most absurd thing I've ever heard. You'd have to replace the entire drive train as the existing electric motor in a hybrid isn't going to survive long at all as the sole source of drive power. At 15 years old just about everything else on the hybrid is also worn out so plan on replacing all axle bearings, suspension bushings, springs, shocks, seals, etc.
The interior will also be worn out so figure on seat covers and padding, new carpeting and floor mats new pedal pads, new trim pieces, etc. And all of this assumes you have a vehicle that's spent it's whole life in a nice dry desert, any rust and it's totally hopeless.
One that will be out of business in short order since what you and presumably they propose simply does not make any sense.
After that conversion, the battery pack is the least of your worries. The new expensive battery pack will have a decade of life expectancy, while the worn out rest of the vehicle will have a few years at best. Plan on finding a new donor shell for a couple hundred dollars every few years to swap that new drive train into.
Not on the worn out axles, brakes, bearings, seals, shocks and bushings you aren't. That brand new battery, motor and controller might be good for 100k miles, but the rest of the 15 year old economy car certainly isn't.
That much is true. Salvage yards won't even be able to make much from salvage components since there will be little demand for a replacement
15 year old motor controller or worn out seat. The only value left will be as scrap metal and plastic.
Exterior looks don't matter when the drive train, suspension and interior are all worn out, which they will be in an economy car after 15 years of use.
The price of hybrids will come down as more people buy them. And the high mileage figures ARE attainable in the real world, but that depends on one's driving habits.
It is important to encourage people to purchase hybrids to help reduce the looming threat to the environment, and I admire anyone who does so.
I suspect that "John S." is just a sockpuppet for someone who posts similar drivel in other forums.
How would one protect the environment by purchasing a hybrid car that converts energy from one form to another by burning fossil fuel.
They use fuel at real world rates (not EPA ratings) not unlike that of high mpg standard cars. And they use a large number of storage batteries made of noxious materials that will have to be disposed of at some point. Where's the net improvement to the environment.
It's not a function of driving habits, driving habits will give you a big benefit with a conventional car as well. The ability to get high mileage figures with a hybrid is entirely dependent on the type of driving you need to do.
If most of your driving is highway a hybrid isn't going to show any benefit. If most of your driving is stop and go city driving *and* you have good driving habits then and only then will you achieve anything near the claimed MPG figures.
No stop and go driving and / or poor driving habits = no benefit from a hybrid, plain and simple.
And exactly how does the hybrid help the environment more than a conventional high MPG economy car?
By containing more toxic materials that will need to be recycled at it's end of life? Materials that will be transported a great distance by diesel truck to get to the recycling facility?
By doing less work per unit of energy consumed due to it's excess dead weight vs. a conventional car? The same dead weight that also increases the diesel fuel used to ship the car to the dealer vs. the lighter conventional car?
Don't discount the possibility that those who smugly buy a hybrid won't drive more than otherwise to show it off, or make fewer conservation efforts elsewhere due to their misguided belief that the hybrid is some wonderful environmental savior. Hybrids are a real good example of marketing hype over substance.
You're assuming that the rest of the car is transformed new. A 15 year old car is going to have shot bearings, a worn out transmission, sloppy bushings, etc. Spending 5 grand on such a car is not a good deal. If it barely makes sense to spend $1500 to do an engine overhaul, it isn't going to make sense to spend $5000 on such a car.
In reality, such a car is going to recycled for scrap.
Over the life of the vehicle, I believe there will be fewer noxious tailpipe emissions from a hybrid than a similarly sized ICE-only car. I think the hybrid strategy is creative. Use an efficient engine that would otherwise be gutless without the aid of an electric motor. Operate the engine at times where it's most efficient (in terms of fuel use and emissions output).
The problem with real high MPG ICE cars is that they are almost universally gutless and tiny. Maybe diesels are OK, but diesel has higher energy content (meaning higher CO2 output per unit of fuel), limited availability, and low temperature problems.
NiMH batteries aren't super toxic like lead-acid types. Most auto companies making hybrids have already started up recycling infrastructure. If a battery is at end of life, I'm pretty sure dealer service departments will take them.
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