One of the auto industry’s most closely guarded secrets—the enormous cost of batteries for electric cars—has spilled out.
Speaking at a forum on green technology on Monday, Ford Motor Co. Chief Executive Alan Mulally indicated battery packs for the company’s Focus electric car costs between $12,000 and $15,000 apiece.
“When you move into an all-electric vehicle, the battery size moves up to around 23 kilowatt hours, [and] it weighs around 600 to 700 pounds,” Mr. Mulally said at Fortune magazine’s Brainstorm Green conference in California.
“They’re around $12,000 to $15,000 [a battery]” for a type of car that normally sells for about $22,000, he continued, referring to the price of a gasoline-powered Focus. “So, you can see why the economics are what they are.”
Ford is currently promoting its $39,200 Focus EV at events around the country. It has a 23 kilowatt-hour battery pack. A Ford spokeswoman said Mr. Mulally’s comments were designed to provide a indication of the car’s battery costs.
Based on the price range that Mr. Mulally indicated, Dearborn, Mich.-based Ford appears to pay between $522 and $650 a kilowatt-hour for its electric-vehicle batteries. In the past, auto makers and battery makers have been reluctant to disclose the cost per kilowatt hour. Analysts have made projections that battery costs are between $500 and $1,000 per kilowatt-hour.
The U.S. Department of Energy, as part of its efforts to help promote plug-in hybrid- and fully-electric vehicles, has set a goal of lowering the cost of batteries to $300 a kilowatt-hour by next year. The DOE has helped to fund battery plants in the U.S. to install the capacity, and ideally lower the cost of batteries.
Ford hasn’t provided projections for anticipated sales of its EV, but has made the point that it doesn’t need to achieve high volumes because it is building the Focus EV on the same line as the gasoline-powered version. It sold just 10 to fleet customers late last year and now is building more of the vehicles at its plant in Wayne, Mich.
That means it costs about as much as the health care premiums for the union auto assembly plant workers.
Using a gasoline engine instead of an electric motor would save about $10,000. At $4.00 a gallon, that’s 2500 gallons. At about 40 miles per gallon (new CAFE standards), that’s about 100,000 miles.
You not only get a car, you get to DRIVE it! … and you don’t have the *unspoken* electrical power cost of recharging the battery several times a week for a few YEARS (however long it takes you to drive 100,000 miles).
My question is: Batteries wear out. If I want to drive an EV a long time (my truck has 180,000 miles on it and is still going strong), does maintenance cost suddenly include a new $15,000 battery pack? Have EV drivers even considered this?
Nothing said about battery life. The Volt has a 16 kilowatt-hour battery and they only allow the user to discharge 12 kilowatt-hour in order to extend battery life. Under the best of conditions, these cars get 3 miles per kilowatt-hour. This is no heat or air conditioning a moving along about 45 mph.
There is a significant loss from the point of generation to point of use in electrical power. Has anyone outside the government calculated what the cost and the emissions associated with generating enough electricity to charge all those batteries? If the government has run the calculations they have buried them since the results wouldn’t support their green agenda.