What's the cost to replace the Clarity PHEV battery?

Today’s price will not reflect future prices, especially in 8 or so years. Prices could be higher or lower, but today’s pricing should be higher than future prices.

Also there should be battery choices too (new, used, or refurbished.)

 

I imagine that is info Honda might not share. You could call dealer service centers. I presume you want this info for some online/writing content?

Honestly, the price now won't reflect market price in the future. If they sell enough Claritys aftermarket or even Honda will have a replacement pack cheaper than what dealers are paid to change it under warranty.

Again, call up a dealer service center and ask them to sell you one. Say you want one for a project or something.

 

PS, my guess is they don't even have supply to sell extras at this point. I imagine for replacements they lose one that would otherwise go to a production car. I don't know how laws would force them to sell one or not, but my guess is the price would be unrealistically high.

 

The price in 8 years will be significantly less than today but nobody can predict the actual price.

But the bigger question is would you spend the money to replace the battery on a greater than 8 year old vehicle?


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Right. Back when the Tesla Model S85 was still a pretty new model, someone got a Tesla service center to quote an unofficial price for out-of-warranty battery pack replacement, and it was $15,000. This figure was quoted endlessly all over the internet by EV bashers and Tesla haters as indicating an outrageous cost for battery replacement. In reality, I don't think anyone has paid anything near that cost for an actual out-of-warranty replacement, even for the Model S's large 85 kWh battery pack. Also, that price was from several years ago. Battery prices have dropped surprisingly fast over the past several years.

Then perhaps the question you should be asking is whether or not your Clarity PHEV will actually need a battery replacement in 8 years. Aside from the Leaf, most plug-in EV battery packs are lasting longer than most people anticipated.

At any rate, as more than one person has already said, a price quoted in 2018 isn't going to mean much by 2026; nor do we know what will be on the market in the way of refurbished packs from third party sellers.

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I pretty much had the same question. See the thread "Battery life expectancy and cost to replace". I keep my cars for a long time too. I'm wondering if it is going to be worth it to replace the battery. Eight years is nothing. I would want to extend it unless it was really expensive. Then who would want to buy it?

 

There's the rub: The longer you keep a plug-in EV, the more likely it is to need a battery pack replacement; yet the older the car is, the harder it is to justify the expense of a new (or refurbished) battery pack. How many years of life are you gonna get out of the replacement, before you replace the entire car?

But then, you can say exactly the same for gasmobiles and the gas engine. By 2026, it may cost little if any more to replace a battery pack than it costs now to replace a gasmobile's engine.

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When we had the 2008 Prius I was looking into replacing cells rather than the whole battery. With the high volume of Prius cars the detailed instructions were available, and the cost was quite reasonable. Fortunately the car is still going strong (my son has it) and it is pushing toward 200,000 miles so I never had to deal with it. Battery results in Prius cars have been extraordinarily good.

The Clarity is a much different situation than the Prius. The battery is expected to do nearly 100% of the work whereas the Prius was a low duty cycle battery. The Clarity is also a different battery technology and from a different manufacturer.

At this point in my life the car may very well outlast me, and buying a new car, if this one has issues, will be more likely.

 

Unless there becomes a worldwide shortage of some precious metals (a real possibility) or China raises their price to extract them (also a possibility), prices would be expected to continue to fall. Musk says down to $100/kWh later this year.

 

But then in 3 years the real reason you’d NOT want to purchase your car is the residual is most likely going to be much higher than the cost to purchase the car. Why? Well in 3 years time we’ll be buying cars for the electronics, connectivity, autonomous driving and a host of enhancements that will make your car far more obsolete than the battery (which will probably go on chugging for another 10 years).
The value of Teslas is they upgrade themselves if you want. I have a colleague that purchased a low end version 2 years ago, payed for the upgrade (on-line) and without taking the car into the dealer had those features downloaded to his car and now it gets more battery life, power and features that were unlocked than what he payed for. What a deal! I keep waiting for the 1st upgrade to Clarity that’ll get rid of a few of the nagging deficiencies in the HondaLink and displays that are all software related.


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I guess we just don't know what it will cost to replace a battery outside of warranty so it is an unknown being in a new market. We can't really predict what the future market will be like. There might be aftermarket support, however, Honda plans to sell 75,000 Honda Clarity PHEVs. This might not be enough to get the aftermarket interested. My hunch is if the battery fails at 8 years the cost to replace the pack might be as much as the car is worth (or more).

The Prius sold many more cars than the Clarity plans to sell so battery replacements for an 8 year old car would certainly be easier to find and better value. Tesla Model 3 will clearly be selling in large enough volumes to get better support while used, but currently Tesla's issue is they won't sell you parts for the car so you could run into issue being able to get OEM parts without going to a Tesla authorized service center.

My advice is buy what you are comfortable buying. If a failed battery totals out the car later, so be it. My guess is the car won't be worth more than $8k in 8 years anyway. My guess is a battery will be less than that, but still maybe $4k. The rest of the car could still be sold for parts and possibly a smaller battery could be retrofitted to make it usable, etc.

 

There are multiple aftermarket companies offering batteries for the original Honda Insight and they delivered only about 14,000 of those cars.

A 0.9 kWh NiMH aftermarket battery costs more than $2K, so a 17 kWh Li-Ion aftermarket battery will cost exactly $15,000. Believe me.

 

I want to believe, but that would mean the HV battery costs almost half the price of the car? Doesn’t seem possible, but what do I know about battery pricing...not much.

 

You've forgotten reading on the other thread about how expensive the component prices are.

 

True enough. But, man, that’s a lot of profit for somebody!