Quote:
Originally Posted by pawoSD
The battery isn't going to last forever, and to keep that car on the road beyond the death of that battery, a very expensive new (energy intensive to produce) battery will need to be installed, and the old battery (energy intensively) recycled.
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Indeed. I've a friend out in Portland from my days in the electric vehicle hobby. He bought one of the first Honda Insight hybrids when they first came out. Battery packs on these were nothing more than 150 to 200 nickel hydride D cell (yes, flashlight D cell) batteries strung together in series.
A few years down the road, his battery pack started showing signs of age and lowered capacity. He was already well past the 80K mile warranty on the battery pack. He asked the local Honda dealer what it would cost for a new battery pack. He was quoted $5500 PLUS labor.
Being used to working on electric vehicles, he eventually figured out how to disassemble the battery pack, install new D cells and solder them back together. But even just paying for the D cells alone, it still ran him $1500 for the required number of nickel hydride D cells.
And from what he related, you definitely don't want to try to drive an early Insight with the IMA turned off or inactive due to a dead battery pack - that little 3 cylinder gas engine couldn't get the car out of it's own way by itself according to him.
Toyota initially offered an 8 year/80K mile warranty on the battery pack for the Prius as well. But I've noticed in the last couple of years they've dropped that to 3 year/36K miles.