Ford reveals true battery cost

Say what? All the Lithium chemistry batteries take less space than nimh. You can see in the toyota alpha or new honda civic. Mercedes didn't even need more space in their S400 hybrid for the battery than the normal car. The costs, I am assuming will go down like consumer electronics lithium versus nimh. In cars they seem to be at paridy. It is a major assumption that nimh which has had most of its costs wrung out of it will be less expensive than lithium in the future. The DOE, nissan, tesla, lg, a124, panasonic are working hard to make sure lithium drops in cost. BMW, Mercedes, honda, ford, gm, mitsubishi, hundai, kia, nissan, etc. Have made their newest designs in Li. My best guess is that any new toyota first released in 2015 or later will be Li also. I like the possibility of lithium polymer in a non plug in.

My lap top lithium polymer battery has lasted longer than any nimh that I ever owned. It is likely that some lithium chemistries will last longer and be more reliable than nimh. The problem is it is difficult to test these things for long periods of time. By the time the prius phv batteries are 10 years old, I would expect the new ones to be quite different. I don't think the lithium toyota (or nissan, ford, gm, bmw, etc) are unreliable now, but there is risk they got it wrong. Honda seemed to get their nimh SOC wrong in programming and has a high level of failures. The promise is there for higher reliability. Hundai is guaranteeing their batteries for life, but its a warranty claim. We won't know for sure until the batteries are old. The DOE goal is for 15 year useful life, but we aren't there yet.

 

There's also the fact that they own manufacturing and IP that allows them to crank out a lot of cheap NiMH batteries and they've just added the Prius c which, due to its reduced battery size allows them to produce even more NiMH hybrids.

 

And then, there's always the automotive recycling yards.