Energy Matters Forums

[zzsstt]

I was talking to a Toyota rep. a few days ago, and he stated that by 2020 Toyota will have an electric version of every model, and that diesel will have been dumped. This started me thinking. Fossil fuel powered cars these days last for ages. A petrol vehicle will last 250,000km or more without a problem. A diesel will last almost indefinitely if serviced regularly. The point of failure on modern cars is almost always electrical or accident damage.

It is fairly common practice for a car to be resold several times, slowly moving from new/nearly new through to the P-Plater cheapy. Over that time it is likely to have it's major mechanicals repaired or replaced if the body has been looked after. The end of a cars life these days is most often when the cost or repairing accident damage is higher than the value of the car, at which point the major mechanicals are often reused in another vehicle. This is a great advance from when and where I grew up, at which point a car was likely to die from rusting before its 10th birthday.

Now we see the increase in sales of electric cars. What will this do to the lifespan of a car? The batteries are garuanteed for 8 years, so the Toyota rep. tells me. That's a fairly short time in the life of a modern car. It's in the nature of batteries to fail. From experience the more high-tech the battery, the more likely it is to fail - I have yet to own any battery (power tool, car, phone, lead/acid, lithium or anything else) that lasted more than a few years. Toyota obviously see the life expectancy of their car batteries to be slightly more than 8 years, but I'm guessing not too much because manufacturers normally fix a warranty period to end just before they start getting too many claims!

So, how much is a new set of batteries? Cheap enough to be worth "re-batterying" a 10 year old car? Who's going to be buying a 7 year old battery car, knowing that in a year they may be up for a relatively massive expense? What will an 8 year old battery car be worth, with the knowledge of that potential cost lurking in the mind of the buyer?

I guess from an "eco" point of view, are the savings involved in running one of these cars for (lets say) 10 years outweighed by the potential that they will only last that long?

[Tracker]

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Your comments are confirmed in practice..
I have noted how the Toyota Prius (is that right) sits in numbers at Pickles Auto Auctions.
They seem to be ignored , and I think this is because "Knowing" people are aware of the issue with batteries.

I'm surprised at the suggestion of an 8 year (possible) life.
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[munter]

I don't think this will be the issue you are anticipating. Yes batteries will fail, but battery costs will also fall and by the time it is necessary to replace the battery the purchase costs won't be anything like the current battery costs. In fact, aside from the rapid advancement in technology that is going to happen with the mass production of the electric car making early ones obsolete I can see electric cars lasting just as long as petrol models. I can also see that it is inevitable that there will be failures amongst the first generations of electric cars that some people will pitch as evidence that electric cars are hopeless. In the long run though, these failures won't stop the electric car.

On to the prius - if you see a cheap prius at the auctions why not consider it? I'd suggest they are sitting there because of fear, uncertainty and doubt in the minds of the buyers rather than any genuine issue of battery replacement.

Remembering that prius battery packs have lasted over 300,000 km http://www.caradvice.com.au/14639/toyota-prius-the-taxi-champion/ OK - this is a taxi and the conditions are different, just like regular taxis rack up large mileage but still - it is a very impressive record for just the second generation of hybrid technology.

Also remember that a prius battery is only 1.3 kwhr and electric car battery packs are (depending on whether you are talking cells, packs or including BMS) ranging from around $400 US/kwhr to (from memory) $1000/kwhr. So lets take the most pessimistic assumption and assume failure at 8 years - 2012 for 2004 models. Is a replacement cost of $600 really a reason to trash a car? Not to me. Particularly as it may also be an opportunity to upgrade to a newer chemistry and pack in more capacity or end up with a lighter pack.

By all means look out for traps in new technology but I suspect in this case you are unnecessarily concerned.

[bpratt]

Has anyone checked out how hard or easy it would be to change a battery pack over in say a Prius ?


Pull figures out of the air, say a battery pack is $1000, what if it is such a huge job (I don't know), that perhaps it might be a whole day job, and service dept. labour cost might be another $1000+


Someone got some actual facts on this ?

[zzsstt]

I don't think this will be the issue you are anticipating. Yes batteries will fail, but battery costs will also fall and by the time it is necessary to replace the battery the purchase costs won't be anything like the current battery costs

I'm not out to knock the technology, I'm just interested in what might happen. However in response to your comment, the other issue is that battery technologies will change. It might not even be possible to get a battery to fit a Prius in 10(?) years when they fail! Then there are all the other associated parts, electric motors, computers and the like. It's easy to pull a dead motor out of a car and stuff another one in, but with mechanics costing $80 an hour and probably little potential for "DIY", what does the future hold for electric vehicles?

It must also be considered, of course, that the manufacturers have no interest in extending the life of cars (or anything else). If a car lasted forever they wouldn't sell many new ones. This fact drives product development as much as anything else - there must be a reason for people to buy a new product. At present people are buying electric cars to "save the planet", most likely without too much thought about whether keeping their existing car would in fact be better for the environment. It is clearly not in the interests of the manufacturer for people to keep anything for very long, so it is a reasonable hypothesis that by the time the current crop of electric cars start to suffer battery failures that it will have been made "a better option" to buy a new one.....

I admit that I am old and cynical. I have been involved in product development and big business for many years, so I know what goes on. At the moment "green" sells, and people are an easy hit. People want luxury, and they want new and flash and impressive. They also want to be told they are doing the right thing. The electric car (and many other supposedly green products) provides people with a new, flash, luxury toy that (they are told) is actually the responsible thing to do. Tell people what they want to hear and they won't question it very much!

My original question, however, was asked because of genuine interest. I have not really investigated what technology these cars use, nor how big or expensive the batteries actually are. I do know that I have a 1957 diesel engine that runs as well as the day it was made. Yes it burns fossil fuel, but I suspect that overall it has burnt less fuel in the last 63 or so years than would have been required to replace it 6 times! I also know that as long as I don't abuse it, and I change the oil regularly, it will keep going longer than I will (assuming I can still buy or make fuel!). That caused me to stop and wonder where the electric car is really taking us!

[munter]

I don't see batteries being any harder to remove and replace than a conventional motor. Granted - I've never changed over either but is there any fundamental reason that a battery should be harder? The issues of mass, modularity, toxicity, temperature, time etc could all be managed with sensible design just as they are with combustion motor cars.

Legacy support? Why would that be any different either? Manufacturers support a product for a certain period and beyond that, aftermarket suppliers can step in if there is demand. After all - you can still buy door rubbers for American sports cars from the 60's. I see no reason to believe that this will be an insurmountable problem for electric cars.

Battery pack replacement info for Prius's isn't that common. The first gen (not sold in any great numbers) have had pack failures but the second gen cars seem to have an improved pack and battery management systems. I just called Chatswood toyota because I need to have my car serviced. Their service department advised that they had never changed a Prius battery pack for 2004 models upwards. When I asked for a quote they looked it up and quoted $2520. That is the current retail price of the pack. Personally I'm surprised that it is that cheap. Knowing where the main pack is located I can't see it taking more than half a day's labour in a proper workshop to change it over. Personally I don't find that figure frightening.
Apparently there is further information about battery pack recycling on their website but I haven't looked it up. I imagine they spend considerable time and effort dissapating the fear, uncertainty and doubt that others propogate in respect of hybrid car technology.

[zzsstt]

I guess that my concern stems from the fact that components for internal combustion engines are cheap and easily available. What's more they have really changed very little in 50 years, and are realitively easily swapped from vehicle to vehicle - for example a Land Rover may have a failed engine, but it can be cheaply replaced with a unit from a Holden, which in turn can be sourced cheaply from a crashed or rusted out vehicle and made "as new" with very little work or expense. Furthermore this can be done at home, safely and easily by any enthusiast.

This compares with a electric vehicle that has a great many controls and components that are not even "user serviceable", nevermind user relaceable. At present the Prius battery pack may have a price of $x thousand, but it is in current production and, as you say, the manufacturer is unlikely to quote an enormous price because they don't wish to scare off customers. However when the next generation of batteries, motors and controls comes along will they still support the old versions? For how long?

Combustion powered cars tend to keep going if treated well, and in all but the most catastrophic failures these engines can be repaired quite cheaply. Batteries and electronic controls on the other hand tend to have a fixed life, independent of how well they are serviced. Whilst an "industrial" electric motor can have new brushes and be rewound, does the same apply to the (presumably) higher tech motors in a Prius?

In the past, again as you say, third party companies have set up to supply parts for older vehicles. However these are small parts - there is no third party company providing engines for old cars. There are several reasons for this, "it's incredibly expensive to make an engine from scratch" being the biggest one! so these third party companies make small parts and let individuals or other companies use them to repair the old engines. The result is that when all is said and done it is possible to replace the engine in that old Land Rover, using small parts from third party companies and a reconditioned engine made by a large car manufacturer. At the end of the day, it is therefore financially viable to buy and run an old car. If the old car costs $5K, even if the engine dies catastrophically it can be replaced with one from a dismantler, at home, for a few hundred dollars.

When a Prius is worth $5K, that battery pack will (assuming it is still available either OEM or third party) likely to still be costing $2250 or so. It is questionable as to whether it will be practical, legal or otherwise possible to replace it at home, so factor in half a days labour ($500 or so?). There is really no option for one from a dismantler, as they will all be the same age and all failing, and unlike an internal combustion engine there is not the option to fit new rings and bearings and be good as new again.

Of course it is possible that battery technology will have improved to the point that a new battery pack will only cost a small amount, though that seems unlikely because no other battery technology (including lead/acid) has really done that so far.

It is entirely true, you can still buy "door rubbers for 1960's amercian sports cars". But that argument does not stand up for many reasons. The cars in question are expensive collectors items, and yet the door rubbers are both inexpensive and almost certainly the same as the aftermarket door rubbers supplied for 90% of the cars built from 1960 to 1990. I doubt that the Prius will become a cherished collectors car (I may be wrong, but other than the VW Beetle few utility vehicles become mainstream collectable), the components in question are almost certainly model specific - not just batteries but computers, controller and motors - and they are not "low tech" items that can be cheaply manufactured directly or under contract in relatively small quantities by the third party parts makers.

I have no doubt that they have a great deal of information about recycling the batteries. As you say, the first wave of eco-consumers buying these vehicles will likely be very aware of recycling and the other associated "green" issues. But these are new car buyers, not people needing old runabouts. Their mindset, or perhaps the mindset attributed to them by the car manufacturer, is demonstrated by the need to have information about the "recyclability" of these cars, rather than the ability for them to be kept going! They have been offered an 8 years warranty on the batteries, which is more than enough because they probably don't intend keeping the car for more than 3 years and 8 years warranty reassures them that it will be easy to sell or trade after 3 years. They have been told the car can be easily recycled, which as you say removes the fear of buying a steel box filled with heavy metals and other scarey stuff. But I'm guessing that few of them have put much though in to whether, after they have traded the vehicle, it will run another year, 5 years or 10 years before it is "recycled". Though lets be honest, how many of them have actually wondered whether it might be better overall if they simply kept their old car!

I cannot predict the future. I can, however, categorically state that car manufacturers make no money from old cars (especially if the parts are made by third party companies!). It is in their interests to sell new vehicles, which can only be achieved by two means:

1/ Cars die, or are removed from the roads for other reasons (legal, safety, fuel changes, parts availability etc.), and new cars have to be bought to replace them.

2/ People are persuaded that buying a new car is a good thing to do, either to save them money (lower running costs or finance payments), impress their friends, save the planet etc. depending on their motivation.

The electric car is a wonderful fit for item 2/ in this current climate hysteria. I'm just not sure it isn't also a good fit for item 1/ !!!!

[TerryB]

Before I begin let me state that I do own a Prius (so maybe I am biased!) but I am not sure your concerns are completely valid. A few points:

What's more they have really changed very little in 50 years, and are realitively easily swapped from vehicle to vehicle - for example a Land Rover may have a failed engine, but it can be cheaply replaced with a unit from a Holden, which in turn can be sourced cheaply from a crashed or rusted out vehicle and made "as new" with very little work or expense.

This may have been true of cars built up until the late 80's or maybe even early 90's but if you look under the bonnet of any new car I would doubt that there is much chance of swapping an engine from one new car to another new car - firstly unless the dimensions are exactly the same they will simply not fit in most modern engine bays but also all new cars have an array of electronics, emission controls, air conditioning, etc, that are all built specifically to fit the engine and car. The computer control unit for most cars is neither cheap or readily exchangable between models so your concern about repairing a 15 year old Prius could equally be applied to any other modern car. Based on my experience of older cars parts for old Toyotas are generally easier to find that old European cars (although not as easy as old Falcon or Holden).

The batteries are garuanteed for 8 years, so the Toyota rep. tells me. That's a fairly short time in the life of a modern car. It's in the nature of batteries to fail. From experience the more high-tech the battery, the more likely it is to fail - I have yet to own any battery (power tool, car, phone, lead/acid, lithium or anything else) that lasted more than a few years. Toyota obviously see the life expectancy of their car batteries to be slightly more than 8 years, but I'm guessing not too much because manufacturers normally fix a warranty period to end just before they start getting too many claims!

I am not sure why you think that because the battery is guaranteed for 8 years that it will fail shortly after that? The engine in most cars has a 3 year guarantee but you don't expect those to fail after 4 years do you? In general a company doesn't want more than a few percent of items to fail in the warranty period and they would generally expect the item to last at least double the guarantee if looked after correctly - based on that you would have to think that Toyota are expecting the batteries to be good for around 15 years or 320000 km (200000 miles) which seems to be borne out by the evidence of high milage Prius's that are around.

One thing that you may not be aware of is that the battery in the Prius is managed very carefully by the computer system and is never charged to more than 80% of capacity or discharged below 20%. The reaon batteries in phones, computers, power tools, etc, tend to fail is that they are usually run through full charge/discarge cycles regularly (ie. up to 100% then down to flat before being recharged again) which tends to shorten the battery life fairly dramatically.

Just to give you an idea of the cost savings I am getting out of the Prius. I purchased it early last year from a government fleet and paid $18000 for a 2.5 year old Prius with just over 50000 km on the clock. We drive around 20000km per year and hopefully it will last us for around 10 years (possibly be passed on to my daughter in around 5 years time when she gets her licence). For around the same price as the Prius our other option was a Toyota Camry. If we base the fuel economy on the sticker values the Prius uses 4.4l/100km whilst the Camry is 9.9l/100km (in real life I am actually getting slightly better than that for the Prius whilst a friend of my who has a 2006 Camry uses around 12l/100km around town but I will give it the benefit of the doubt and use the sticker value). So for each 100km I am saving 5.5 litres of fuel - over the 20000 km/year that works out at 1100 litres saved per year - my average price for petrol in last 12 months has been $1.30 so annual savings are around $1430. Multiply that by 10 years and the savings are around $14300 (of course I expect petrol prices will go up quite a bit in the next 10 years so the savings could be much higher than that). I could easily see the savings adding up to more that the purchase price of the car over the 10 year period.

Now even if I have a battery failure before the 10 years are up and have to pay $2500 for a new one then I am still going to be way ahead. Similarly if at the end of the 10 years the car is worth nothing instead of being worth $1000 or $2000 then that will not bother me either.

Also realise that there are savings with the Prius design as well - there is no clutch or gearbox to go wrong (I had to replace both on my previous car and that was not a cheap exercise at all!) and the brake pads on my one have done 80000km and are still not even half warn (as the electric motor does most of the braking).

Personally I think a second-hand Prius from a well maintained fleet is the second-hand car bargain of the year. For under $20000 you get a great car that is one of the most comfortable cars to drive (particularly in traffic), very quiet, great front and rear leg room (rear headroom can be tight for people over 6 foot but for the rest of us it is fine!), fantastic reliability and world leading economy for a family car.

[zzsstt]

I'm glad you're happy with your Prius. I also share some of your thoughts about modern cars, though behind the scenes in fact many components are shared between models and even brands of car, but I do believe that it's generally easier to keep a 1970's car on the road than a 2000's model will be, for exactly the reasons you state.

My concerns over battery life is based on experience of batteries of all sorts. No matter how well batteries are managed they never seem to last more than a few years. It would be great to think that Toyota have solved that problem, but only time will tell. The batteries are the major "new concept" in the Prius, so the manufacturer will have given them the longest warranty with which it feels comfortable in order to reassure buyers. My experience of large companies would be that they may in fact even push their luck a bit to gain a few extra sales - they will have had AU$40K in the bank for 8 years "making interest" even if that's when 10% or more of the batteries fail. Hence my concern.

Choice of car is very personal, and based on many factors. I cannot drive a Prius, and nor would there be any point in me doing so. Where I live a 4wd is mandatory, and the nature of my driving is such that I doubt the batteries would ever charge. On the other hand, I get about 8l/100km out of a diesel Prado, and much the same from a Hilux, so I'm doing better than a Camry!! There is also some concern over the towing ability of hybrids - the Lexus 4WD hybrid (at least the US version) has a reasonable claimed towing capacity but my local Toyota dealer tells me that towing causes the regenerative braking to overheat..... I do not know for sure either way!

On the other hand, if I lived in a city and changed cars every 3 years then a Prius may well be on the list.

[PeterC]

You might be interested to know that you can buy a kit to add a substantial amount of extra battery in parallel with the Prius battery. [http://nilco2.com.au/ or search with "plug-in prius conversion"]. This extra capacity can then be charged from the mains which can be greenpower. You can therefore convert the second-hand Prius for $5000 to a plug in hybrid and get the petrol use down to less than 2L/100km on short trips (10s of KMs). On long trips it seamlessly reverts to its normal mode and normal petrol consumption.

Back to the original question. One thing being seriously looked at is battery swapping as a way to give extended range to EVs. In that case it is like swapping gas bottles for the BBQ. Your BBQ may last however long it does but you don't worry about your gas bottle.
I have a home-converted battery car. After 18 months there is no sign of any decline in the battery performance. I expect to get a decade from my battery at which point I review the options for making a better battery or just augmenting the existing one if it is still OK with reduced capacity or whatever. Making up new battery packs to suit older EVs as upgrades or just to match original specs should be a growth area.
The battery management in a commercial car is likely to be integrated into a battery pack. What sits outside that 'black box' is probably going to be relatively simple: a motor controller black box and the motor. I would expect a lot of cars to use an appropriately sized but otherwise fairly generic motor and ditto for the controller. In an older EV there would probably be a fair bit of swapability.