What will a Chevy Volt replacement battery cost in 2020?

[mikewitteman]

I was wondering what it would cost to replace my Chevy Volt battery in 2020. So I did an analysis that you can see by clicking here.

[Kurt_Woloch]

I'd calculate this a bit differently. GM already now lists the spare part price at only a bit below $3,000. Some independent dealers go even lower, I think the lowest one I saw was $2,250, but don't quote me on that. However, in this part price, I think some costs like research, development and building of the manufacturing plant are not factored in, I guess those are rather factored into the sale price of the car itself.

Because those are not factored in, I'd expect the price of the battery pack not to go down substantially over the next 8 years. However, I expect some increase of capacity for the same price. How much? Well, I'll calculate with the improvement of NiMh batteries there. 8 years ago, NiMh AA cells just broke the capacity barrier of 2.0 Ah, and now they are at 2.7 Ah, so the improvement would be 35%. So for about $3,000 plus labor, you would get a new battery giving you a range of 54 miles.

As for new breakthroughs in chemistry... unfortunately, the Volt is not built to hold batteries with other chemistries. For instance, Lithium-air-batteries may require some flow of air which the Volt doesn't provide, so while they will be able to be found in newer cars, there will be either no way or only an expensive way of retrofitting the 2011 or 2012 Volt with such a battery.

But never say never... in the last 30 years, there have been substantial improvements in battery technology. I got a RC car for Christmas 1983. The battery pack for it cost about EUR 30 and had 1.2 Ah of capacity. In 1987 the same size battery had increased in capacity to 1.4 Ah. And just a month ago, I bought another replacement pack which this time has changed from NiCd to NiMh, cost only EUR 24,90 and has a whooping 4 Ah... more than 3 times as much as the first pack, for a lower price. This would mean a change of about 5% per year in the price/capacity ratio. A similar change has come for the AA size, where you can now get 2.1 Ah cells for about the same price 0.45 Ah cells had in 1981, which is an improvement of about 5.3% per year.

[pdt]

IMO standardization will be critical to bring costs down. If every vehicle has specialized cell dimensions and construction, replacements will not be cheap.

[bonaire]

2020 - what we should see are cells which are maybe 50% more dense and allow for more capacity usage. Given that, you should be able to install a similar sized pack of 24 kWh using 20+ kWh from it. I hope that the software that drives the charger and discharge curve analysis is field-upgradeable to support next generational packs. Price should be roughly the same as today's $3000 in 2020. Remember, these are battery systems - with semi-complex cooling fins intermixed between every other cell and all sorts of balancing wires integrated per cell.

I do want to see new packs utilize fewer, chunkier cells, though. Today's 288 cells equate to 96S3P of 15Ah cells. In the future, I hope to see 192 cells in 96S2P with maybe 30Ah+ cells (21.3kWh+). WIth fewer cells of higher capacity, you have less circuitry (balancing), labor to assemble, fewer cooling fins and possibly smaller packaging overall and lower weight.

20kWh usable capacity would be a great future for Volt or any EREV of this car-size.

[Motown1999]

I am wondering in 2020 if we will be seeing Chevy Volts for sale on Ebay with mileage numbers like this Ford Escape Hybrid taxi with more than 347,000 miles on them and, if so, what kind of battery performance will there be.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/1-OWN...item46000f2f49

[Hoonose]

In the future there will bound to be cheaper batteries available on ebay from wrecks, like with the Prius.

[MrEnergyCzar]

I doubt you'll ever need to replace the battery...so what if after 10 years your range drops to 18 - 45 miles.... We were supposed to be replacing all the Prius batteries by this time as well, never happened...

MrEnergyCzar

[DCFusor]

I'd have to cross my fingers on increased capacity - we're sort of at the limits of what can be done with what's in the periodic table. It's not a Moore's law thing at all - you've already got energy density competitive with high explosives, the best you can do with chemistry of the elements we have - and there aren't any missing ones at this point. There'd be about 25% more if you could use fluorine with Li in a rechargeable, but...so far you can't, and I wouldn't want to be close to that anyway.

I mean, this isn't computers where the transistors can be made almost arbitrarily small, and you can always write more efficient code (up to a point). It's more like - have you ever heard of someone coming up with a new gasoline that has 25% more energy density? No - you can't really do that, you're stuck. (well, you might burn boron hydrides or something but...) This is closer to that model than the computer one where we can get used to things just magically getting better all the time forever.

This: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Prius says yes, after a long time the Prius doesn't perform any worse than new. But it doesn't say they actually tested the battery capacity, which is a lot less important to the Prius than it is to the Volt, since the latter can run battery only, and the Prius can just start the engine more often. I know my NiMH's around the shop have a definite end of life in my tools...though presumably the autos manage them a lot better than a hand drill does there's still gotta be a limit.

Heck, I'd like to have the Volt's battery system (theres a lot more to this than just the cells themselves) for my home! These beat the old lead acid submarine batteries I use to pieces.

[larry4pyro]

Over on the Leaf forum someone called a Chevy dealer asking about the $3,000 battery. Turns out that the cost of the battery enclosure, you still need to add three or four cell modules estimated to cost $1400 each. So the rumours is the Volt battery runs between $8K - $9K. I read Mikes battery cost estimate and the costs for the various options sound reasonable. My guess is a battery replacement 8 or 9 years from now will only be around $4k, which includes trading-in the old battery. It would really be nice if the future battery also had a bit more range.

[Prius2Volt]

I don't expect it to drop from the $3k price. GM has very good accountants. They know what things cost "down the road". I'm guessing they pre-calculated what the cost will be 7 years down the road or so (assuming the R&D is being depreciated over 5-7 years) and that's the price they decided to go with (ignoring what it costs today). So that way, people debating to buy the car today but concerned what the battery replacement cost may be 7-10 years down the road, can see the price today as it would be in 7-10 years and make a clearer purchase decision.

Personally, if I have the Volt working great in 7-10 years and it is just a lower battery range that I am experiencing, the I can see justifying a battery replacement at that price. Labor won't be too excessive, as the battery is designed to drop out easily for replacement/service.