What's the cost to replace the Clarity PHEV battery?
- Thread starter Standardizer
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KentuckyKen
Well-Known Member
He’s considering purchasing at end of his lease and trying to figure out if it’s worth it if he has to replace the battery in 5 yrs (8 total).
However, most of us think the water cooled battery pack will last longer than 8 years.
Pushmi-Pullyu
Well-Known Member
I'm not sure why you're trying to claim that the price circa 2001 for a NiMH pack is an indicator of the price in 2018, or 2026, for a li-ion pack. I'm also not sure why you're claiming to know "exactly" what the price would be today, since there are so many variables and since it's so difficult to know exactly what any battery cell maker is charging for quantity sales.
Tesla now has cell-level battery costs down to not much over $100/kWh, which means pack-level costs are probably around $130/kWh. That would suggest Tesla might price (with a 30% markup for profit) a pack made in volume at about $170/kWh. For a 17 kWh pack, that comes to $2890. Even if we assume an aftermarket vendor would charge three times that for a low-volume, difficult to make product, that would only come to $8670, and that's at today's prices. Eight years from now, cell prices will be far lower, even if the costs for the other pack components (electronics, wiring, casing) and assembly costs are not.
Actually, I hope that in 8 years the standard will be fire retardant plastic li-ion batteries, similar to the sort demonstrated by Ionic Materials, and that cells made for EVs will be made on high-speed electronic component assembly lines, with wiring and fuses pre-installed, greatly simplifying pack assembly and greatly reducing total pack costs. But such advanced tech, if it happens, may not be retrofitted into replacement packs for older EVs.
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AnthonyW
Well-Known Member
Remember that the “battery” is actually a connection of 7 individual battery packs. Hopefully we might be able to replace individual packs instead of the whole thing.
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of all the things to consider that would be way at the bottom and not worth fretting over.
If he thinks he might have to buy a new battery then it is not worth buying.....it will still be good.
I imagine the insight is so high due to small number. A finished pack to consumers in 8 years will likely be no more than $200/kwh, maybe more with dealer markup. I would guess about $5,000 in todays dollars, but hard to guess that far out. There is a market for after market battery at $2,000 no matter the size, not at $15,000 as people would just trash the car.
Pushmi-Pullyu
Well-Known Member
Do you mean 7 modules? Li-ion battery cells within a pack have to be carefully balanced with each other. That's why an EV's li-ion pack absolutely has to have a BMS (Battery Management System). If one cell has a significantly higher or lower voltage than any other, that throws the entire pack out of balance, which leads to rapid aging and/or the inability to use much of the pack's capacity. So regardless of how many or how few modules a li-ion pack has, all of the modules would have to be replaced at once.
The alternative would be for every module to have its own individually operating BMS. That would allow for replacement of modules individually, but would certainly drive up the cost of the pack.
Pushmi-Pullyu
Well-Known Member
The Clarity PHEV (or Clarity Electric)'s battery pack will almost certainly last better than the Leaf's. Not only does the Leaf lack an active cooling system, apparently Nissan also made a poor choice of battery chemistry.
If you want to know how well the Clarity PHEV's battery pack will last, I suggest you look to the Chevy Volt, which is a PHEV with similar range. For the Clarity Electric, look at the Chevy Bolt EV. Unless the pack is abused or malfunctions, it should still have most of its capacity left in 8 years.
Sorry, I hoped using the word "exactly" and ending with the "Believe me" over-used by one of our highest-profile politicians would provide a hint regarding my lack of sincerity.
I waited years to find out how much Honda would charge for a new battery for my 2000 Insight and still don't know to this day what a completely new battery pack from Honda would cost. Because I liked that car so much, I switched to a 2006 Insight to get a new 8-year battery warranty (and to get an Insight that didn't have vermin-attracting, soy-based, ecological insulation on the wiring). That 2nd Insight's battery lasted 8 years and 3 months. I prevailed on Honda and they took pity on me and paid for the battery but not the installation. The replacement batteries come with a 3-year warranty, which mine has exceeded, but it's still going strong (knock on our Clarity Touring's dashboard--wait, that's not real wood? It looks so good!).
I hope someone can find out the actual retail price for a Clarity Plug-In Hybrid battery pack, but I'm not optimistic.
Standardizer
New Member
Hey everyone thanks for all the posts to this thread, I've learned alot from this. I'm a noob in the EV world. Thanks for your contributions. I'll continue to follow up with my Honda dealer to see if I can get a battery pack cost from them.. If I do, I'll post it here immediately if not sooner... Believe me!!! Lol, thanks for the chuckle 
AnthonyW
Well-Known Member
Pushmi-Pullyu
Well-Known Member
Really, the Leaf shouldn't even be mentioned in this discussion except as an example of how not to design a PEV (Plug-in EV). Even the VW e-Golf, which like the Leaf lacks an active TMS (Temperature Management System), isn't seeing the same kind of premature capacity fade that the Leaf is.
Sadly, we won't be able to answer your question for some years. We can hope that no other auto maker will make the very poor choices for battery chemistry which Nissan has, but until we get some years' worth of data on an individual model of car, we won't actually know just how fast or slow the battery is going to lose capacity.
I'm sure that all EV makers are subjecting their cars' battery packs to accelerated aging tests, but they're not giving us the results of those tests, and such tests use artificial conditions which don't fully reflect real-world usage over time.
Best guess would be to look at a similar vehicle (BEV for the Clarity Electric, PHEV for the Clarity PHEV) with a similar pack size, and read up on how well that PEV's battery pack has held up over time. That's why I recommended the BMW i3 as an analogue for the Clarity Electric and the Chevy Volt as an analogue for the Clarity PHEV. Good news: The Volt's battery pack has held up very well over time!
kcsunshine
Active Member
With so many concerned about the battery replacement, who bought an extended warranty? I declined it. I'm not sure what the extended warranties cover. Most likely the battery will outlast the extended warranty. One thing that I liked about the Hyundai/Kia plug-in hybrid is that they give a lifetime warranty to the original owner. I didn't choose it because of the shorter EV range which resulted in less of a federal tax credit.
Original Insight owners created the demand and were fanatical enough to pay way more for replacement batteries than they were worth because there weren't any other battery cars in existence. My understanding is that quite often, used Insights sold for more than the original price. Atypical for autos.
Pushmi-Pullyu
Well-Known Member
I have a friend who's still driving a circa 2001 Honda Insight! (A non-plug-in hybrid.) He has replaced the battery pack twice; the first time under warranty (he drives his car on a lot of long-distance out of town trips) and the second wasn't. Dunno where he got the second replacement from or how much he paid.
Watch those exclamation points, please. I drove a 2000 Insight until Honda said 2006 would be the model's last year. So I bought a 2006 and still enjoy driving it daily. It weighs less than half of that of our Clarity (which I also enjoy driving)--it's a completely different driving experience. It took nearly 20 years for Honda to match the original Insight's EPA gas mileage with the upcoming 2019 Insight (although the new Insight will never match the original's hypermiling record of 1523.9 miles on a single tankful for a 109 mpg average).