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Electric car startup Better Place liquidating after $850 million investment

Discussion in 'Prius, Hybrid, EV and Alt-Fuel News' started by John H, May 26, 2013.

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  1. 3PriusMike

    3PriusMike Prius owner since 2000, Tesla M3 2018

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    I'm not questioning the math of the number of batteries, etc. It is the idea that you are going to get anywhere near 70% of the retail price of a car battery back just because it is now derated to 80% of its capacity. First, the utility doesn't need them packaged into a car crash safe array. Second they buy wholesale, not retail (essentially) compared to a car buyer. So, to a utility the value of each MWh is lower to start with by at least 2x (just my guess).

    Mike
     
    #21 3PriusMike, May 28, 2013
  2. John H

    John H Senior Member

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    If you can pull out the standard form factor cells and repackage them into what the utility, data center, solar farm, hospital, etc ... need then you have a market for recovering some of the initial cost. It would be great if you could recover 70% but that might be a stretch as you say. The economic factors would also be impacted by the availability and cost of new cells, the disposal costs of used cells, etc ... We will have to do something with the used cells either way.

    The point I am trying to make is that these used cells at 80% might not be suitable for the mobile applications, but they still have lots of life for non-mobile applications and the markets for the used cells will expand. It is worth some engineering effort to make reuse practical.
     
    #22 John H, May 28, 2013
    iplug likes this.
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