Battery life expectancy and cost to replace

Not to dampen the mood, but everyone seems to assume that the battery would just continue along at 20% (or whatever) capacity... I think it is more likely if/when a battery gets that bad it will have failure modes that are more catastrophic (shorted or open cells) that do more than just limit capacity. It is likely to throw error codes, and prevent the car from operating at all.

It would be nice to think that new battery technology could be retrofitted and there would be an option for an aftermarket replacement that is a 'low cost' or higher capacity drop-in. This may be likely for a high volume vehicle like a Tesla, Leaf, Volt, or similar. I'm not holding my breath for the Clarity however because there will never be enough of us to make it worthwhile for someone to develop such a replacement.

 

Because the 12-Volt battery is charged from the Li-Ion battery through a DC-to-DC converter, the Clarity would not be viable without at least enough Li-Ion battery to perform that function.

 

I’m putting all this in the Chicken Little folder.

 

The 2018 Clarity is my third hybrid. (First gen Insight, first gen Volt) both previous cars went well past 100k miles with little or no degradation of battery function. I am expecting the same from the Clarity.

 

Thanks for the insight on that.

 

I can echo the low degradation for the Gen 1 Volt. I had a 2012 that I sold in Sept of 2019 with 82k miles. The electric range when I sold it was very nearly what it was when the car was new. I do think some of the buffer on the low end had been lost, because occasionally the car would complain that the battery charge was too low if you restarted it after the battery was completely discharged. This was a known issue as the Volt aged and the solution was to get the dealer to reset the low threshold on the battery. Of course, this would have caused the range to have dropped 2-3 miles, so I was hesitant to do it. I just started holding about 60% (mountain mode on that car) of the battery and using it just before I was able to charge, rather than ever driving the car with a discharged battery. This pretty much fixed the issue, and usually I waited too long to go back on EV and had a mile or so left in the battery anyway when I got to a charging destination. A side effect of holding the battery and driving first on gasoline was that the gasoline engine seemed to operate at lower RPM. And the 1st gen Volt could be really noisy.

 

Agreed. It does provide some clarity.

 

It has 10 yrs, 150k miles warranty in California. At that point I am ready to junk the car.

 

Hey, there is some pretty serious talk about 'million mile' batteries (or beyond).
Would you junk your car after 150K if it had a million mile battery?

 

Million mile battery... Maybe junk the car, but not the battery. But I wonder if you will ever be able to buy a new car with no battery and put your old battery in it. Would require a lot of standardization and planning by the auto industry. I'm not sure if such a utopia is possible.... Even if you try to take care of a car, it is usually showing its age at 150k - 250k miles, not to mention style and technology changes. A million miles would go all the way from 8 track tape players to current radios for some drivers.

 

That’s kind of the opposite of what NIO is doing. A car with the ability to swap out batteries of various capacities.

But we live in a world where different phones use different cables and even the same brand changes those every few years. The concept is certainly possible, but every manufacturer will have their own system.

 

I'm guessing you meant sell to let someone else decide how much it's worth to recondition/use, but I wouldn't consider a car with junk/no value at 10 years to be good -- there's a 2007 Civic in my driveway and that replaced a 1995 Neon. 10 year cars remind me of the 1978 Fairmont we had when I got my license that seemed like such a worn out old unreliable piece of junk...in 1987. And even during those 10 years cars back then needed all sorts of weird repairs and maintenance. Cars these days seem to be an order of magnitude more reliable.

However, I suspect most Clarities will last a lot longer than 150K miles/10 years with original battery -- it's probably not a binary "good/bad". I'd predict a lot of cars will continue to have decent EV range (30+ miles to pick a number), some have will very degraded range (10-20 miles?) but operate perfectly fine as a regular hybrid, and a few will be unusable without replacement.

 

Personally I don't enjoy driving a car with more than 150k miles (a high mileage highway car or a body on frame truck could be different). At that point the chassis/insulation/suspension is degraded to a point where it doesn't provide a good driving experience. Unless it is some sort of future classic I would let it go.

 

That was kind of my point as well. After 150-250k miles, most cars aren't any fun to keep around. And since it is unlikely the battery can be easily removed and re-used in another car, having a battery with a life of a million miles seems little better than having a battery with a useful life of 250k miles. Yes, I know they may be able to be re-purposed for back-up power applications, etc, but at what cost and real end value? Maybe a fit for semi-trucks that routinely run approaching 1 million miles... but I don't see the value for consumer automobiles.

 

That battery may already exist, but we need to talk about how the car will fall apart around the battery. Much the same way a Ram truck falls apart around a 500K mile Cummins diesel.

Now, if it were simple to transfer such a battery into another vehicle, it might be a worthwhile investment. But many EV enthusiasts tend to poopoo today’s battery technology because of all the great breakthroughs that are just around the corner. What’s the value in moving a battery from car to car if the battery is yesterday’s dirty diapers? Or, what amount of time will it take to put a million miles in a car? Answer, 250 miles a day, everyday for 11 years. That’s 4000, relatively full charge cycles on a 300+ mile battery. Not an unreasonable number from some of the more reputable battery manufacturers. Realistically, it would take 20, 30 or 40 years for a car the hit the million mile mark. These techno marvels that we’re driving will be as outdated as a flip phone by then and most of the gadgets onboard will have been rendered non-function or cost prohibitive to repair. The batteries will probably seem as sophisticated as today’s lead acid batteries.

 

Yes of course, actually when I look back I have sold most of my previous cars just before 90k miles and 6 years, and they were in excellent condition for a second owner. I think Clarity will be the same and easily last 15 years. We also have a 2007 Civic (my wife's) but I don't like driving it.

The EV market in US is currently completely distorted by heavy subsidies, so few people keep their electrified cars that long. It just makes sense to dump it in 2-3 years and get another EV with tax benefits. I see many 2-3 year old EVs in the market with around 20k miles. If the market is similar to last year I might switch to a 2021 Clarity toward the end of the year (I have a late 2018 model). At some point subsidies will be reduced and you want to have taken advantage of current subsidies as much as you can.

 

The million mile battery will be useful for trucks, delivery vehicles, and taxis. For a passenger BEV it is overkill. A semi typically lasts 750k-1m miles. But such a battery could also benefit a PHEV, because you can reduce the buffers. Imagine you could use 16 kWh instead of 12.5kWh from the Clarity battery, that will give you 60 miles EPA range with the current battery size. I think governments should remain supportive of PHEVs, because there is more potential for developing PHEVs that BEVs. A 450 mile BEV won't have a major advantage over a 300 mile BEV, but a 60 mile PHEV is obviously more usable than a 48 mile PHEV.

 

On a recent story on Radio-Canada (in French) a company in California B2U storage solutions is using EV batteries from cars to store electricity from their solar panel field generated during the day for use later when demand is higher and solar is less useful. The concept seemed to be relatively simple as they were stringing used EV car batteries. All was controlled using a program that talks with the different car batteries. What piqued my curiosity was during the story, they were dismantling batteries from Claritys. One shot shows about 20-30 Claritys. Does anybody have insight as to why so many Claritys are being dismantled for their battery packs. Link to story below.
I own a 2019 Clarity 61000 kms. Very satisfied, even in winter.
https://ici.radio-canada.ca/recit-numerique/5749/californie-emmagasine-energie-climat

 

These are quite likely the BEV Clarity's. They were only available as leased vehicles and once the leases ran out, Honda took them off the road (this is a good use for their remains). They had a larger battery than the PHEV's (25.5 kWh instead of 17).

I think there were only around 1000 BEV's produced.

 

Definitely BEV (all electric) Clarity’s. You can tell by looking at the wheels (black wheels with silver inserts).