Out of today's media debacle comes an interesting revelation...

[ViperRT10Matt]

Bob Lutz, in his rebuttal to the absurd Reuters article, said in print that the Volt's battery cells cost about $6,000. This is the first time I've ever heard anyone actually connected with the car give a hard indication of what the batteries cost.

[djskii02]

I own an auto shop and I checked on All Data (I company that reproduces original shop manual information and has OE price lists and part numbers) and the battery was priced at 2900.00 which I thought was very reasonable considering standard Hybrids cost around 3K. But then add tax and installation. I wouldn't stress over it. I expect this battery to last (when properly cared for) over 10 years easily. I guess we'll see.

[DonC]

He said $350/kWh, which is pretty good, but that's probably on the best day, and the power electronics are almost as much, though they should drop in price. More interesting is that the ELR will show up at the Detroit Auto Show, that he's seen the second generation Volt, and that there will be other vehicles using Voltec.

[Ziv]

That is very interesting, I was just discussing this with Einar and I though that the $3000 replacement price was underwritten by GM to reduce potential purchasers concern about possible pack replacement. Patil stated back in 2008 that the pack price was around $625 per kWh. To hear Lutz say that it is now $350 per kWh, or around $6,000, is good news indeed. I have been under the impression from statements of current or former GM execs that the price for the pack is around $8k to $9k, but that would seem to be wrong.
So Reuters actually accomplished a good turn with their hack article, by getting Lutz to state what the current price of the pack is.

[Mathew Hennessy]

I've been thinking that the $3k figure implies that you give them the old battery for recycling/rebuilding? That would make sense.. IIRC they also won't sell a Volt battery to anyone that isn't a GM dealer/service center.