Why are plug-in Hybrids so expensive?

[Dari]

I was just reading this article and it seems like they aren't doing too well, sales-wise.

http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2012/04/of-hybrid-heights-and-other-hypes/

I wonder what the margins are and why manufacturers decided to price them so high when compared to their ICE counterparts. For example, why is the plug-in Prius so much more expensive to the regular Prius? Is it because they tried to match the Volt price or gouge early buyers?

 

[Bignate603]

Think about how much you paid for your last laptop battery. Now imagine you need a battery that stores a few hundred times more power. How much do you think that battery would cost?

 

[Dari]

Think about how much you paid for your last laptop battery. Now imagine you need a battery that stores a few hundred times more power. How much do you think that battery would cost?

But you didn't factor in economies of scale.

 

[NutBucket]

Simple answer is batteries are expensive.

 

[SearchMaster]

Does the Prius plug-in have more batteries than the regular Prius? I think that's the OP's question here...the plug-in version costs $8K more than they regular Prius, and I was under the impression it was just a different charging mechanism for the same battery set, which doesn't seem to warrant that type of premium.

 

[Bignate603]

But you didn't factor in economies of scale.

It's true there are some economies of scale but even if it knocked 50% off the cost of the battery it's still a ridiculously expensive battery.

That battery cost is thrown on top of all the extra costs of a hybrid, the electric motor, a more advanced gearbox, all the electronic gadgetry that makes everything work together... It's a far more complex system and generally complexity = cost. When you throw an expensive battery on top of an already more expensive drivetrain you end up with something that is REALLY expensive.

 

[Bignate603]

Does the Prius plug-in have more batteries than the regular Prius? I think that's the OP's question here...the plug-in version costs $8K more than they regular Prius, and I was under the impression it was just a different charging mechanism for the same battery set, which doesn't seem to warrant that type of premium.

It's a bigger battery, you aren't getting 14 miles down the road on the standard prius' battery.

To me though an extra 14 miles of all-electric just isn't worth the increase in price.

 

[Ferzerp]

Battery charging tech is pretty mature (think datacenter UPS's), no, it wouldn't add $8k, especially when the inverter and much of the hardware is already there due to changing the AC that the engine produces to DC.

As others have said, it's all in the batteries. Batteries just aren't very good to be perfectly honest. They have a limited lifespan and gradually work worse and worse throughout their life. They're expensive, and not very energy dense.

Sadly, we don't really have many alternatives at this point.

 

[LTC8K6]

The battery is about 4X the capacity of the regular Prius battery.

 

[NutBucket]

Battery charging tech is pretty mature (think datacenter UPS's), no, it wouldn't add $8k, especially when the inverter and much of the hardware is already there due to changing the AC that the engine produces to DC.

Batteries used in most UPS systems are sealed lead-acid...decidedly low tech and inexpensive. Plus, at least in my experience, they need to be replaced every 3-5 years.

Figure there are many Prii running around with over 200k on the original batteries. To me that is VERY impressive given the non-ideal operating conditions.

 

[Ferzerp]

Batteries used in most UPS systems are sealed lead-acid...decidedly low tech and inexpensive. Plus, at least in my experience, they need to be replaced every 3-5 years.

Figure there are many Prii running around with over 200k on the original batteries. To me that is VERY impressive given the non-ideal operating conditions.

Notice I said that charging tech is mature because there is plenty to borrow from.

I wasn't equating the batteries at all. The batteries may change, but the charging hardware still has a lot of pre-existing tech to be based on.

 

[LTC8K6]

Batteries used in most UPS systems are sealed lead-acid...decidedly low tech and inexpensive. Plus, at least in my experience, they need to be replaced every 3-5 years.

Figure there are many Prii running around with over 200k on the original batteries. To me that is VERY impressive given the non-ideal operating conditions.

The Prius battery is under absolutely ideal operating conditions for long life.

 

[KIAman]

Sadly, we don't really have many alternatives at this point.

We do have something that holds much more energy per volume/weight compared to the battery that requires no special charging devices and is easily transportable and cheap.

Gasoline.

LOL!

 

[Ferzerp]

We do have something that holds much more energy per volume/weight compared to the battery that requires no special charging devices and is easily transportable and cheap.

Gasoline.

LOL!

Yes, that was part of my point, but they don't really fill the same role. One is good for multiple cycles, the other is only good for 1.

 

[ElFenix]

I was just reading this article and it seems like they aren't doing too well, sales-wise.

http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2012/04/of-hybrid-heights-and-other-hypes/

I wonder what the margins are and why manufacturers decided to price them so high when compared to their ICE counterparts. For example, why is the plug-in Prius so much more expensive to the regular Prius? Is it because they tried to match the Volt price or gouge early buyers?

the prius plug in has only been available 1 month so far, is only available in 15 states (if even) and probably has a massive back log of orders. if people will pay that much more for the car then toyota has every right to charge that much more for it. further, the plug in gets a tax credit of up to $2,500 so i'm sure toyota is taking as much of that for themselves as they can.

 

[SkullWalker]

Sadly, we don't really have many alternatives at this point.

It is very possible that we have, but some moguls just think, that it isn't the right time to put it on the market.

 

[Via]

I know there are tangible economic reasons for this, but also remember....

A cheap, relaible plug-in electric car would turn the world economy on it's head. The global economic system needs to time to gradually integrate these types of vehicles (in terms of loss of the oil-related profts, taxes, and jobs). Hell - I'm sure Toyota has spent a lot of time considering the impact these types of vehicles would have on the sales of their gas-powered brethren.

Imo the #1 reason the EV-1 was killed because we weren't ready for it econmically.

 

[SkullWalker]

I am not sure if the world economy would be turned on it's head. There are people who have lots of money and they want even more money. And they are willing to do everything, to get them. Because of these people and their greed we can see such things as depressions or market crashes (remember George Soros vs UK pound?), because their power (granted via the money) is so big, that they can literally rule the world.

In these modern days the market is so flexible, that it shouldn't have any problems to accommodate such invention as a (working and reliable) EV.

 

[Bignate603]

I know there are tangible economic reasons for this, but also remember....

A cheap, relaible plug-in electric car would turn the world economy on it's head. The global economic system needs to time to gradually integrate these types of vehicles (in terms of loss of the oil-related profts, taxes, and jobs). Hell - I'm sure Toyota has spent a lot of time considering the impact these types of vehicles would have on the sales of their gas-powered brethren.

Imo the #1 reason the EV-1 was killed because we weren't ready for it econmically.

It was an economic problem, but not because we weren't "ready" for it. The car was expensive. GM was basing the leases for the EV-1 off a value of $47k (in today's money) though many people think the actual cost is much more than that. For a 2 seater that's very high.

GM was pushing ahead with the project even with the high costs because of a California mandate that a certain percentage of its sales in the state be zero emission vehicles by a certain year. California later changed its mind so there was no longer any reason to keep on working on this very expensive project.

None of this had anything to do with the larger economic impacts that would occur by moving away from gas. It was just that the cars (both to develop and to make) were expensive.

 

[Squisher]

I worked for GM at the time and I was attending classes at the GM Tech center with an engineer who I partied with before she became an engineer. She was involved at the time in EV-1 development and she leaked to me that the price would have been $80K+

 

[Via]

All may be true, but that doesn't for a second explain the brutal end of the actual cars.

There were EV-1 owners who were offering GM a blank check to keep their cars, but GM insisted on destroying them all. There's more to this story than just cost.

 

[Bignate603]

All may be true, but that doesn't for a second explain the brutal end of the actual cars.

There were EV-1 owners who were offering GM a blank check to keep their cars, but GM insisted on destroying them all. There's more to this story than just cost.

Not really. Leaving the cars out there was a liability, both legally and also for their image.

The legal reason: There were "thermal incidents" while charging the EV-1, resulting in at least 1 fire. What other problems would pop up as the vehicles aged? If GM was still working on the program they'd be more able to identify risks before they resulted in a safety problem. However, with the program being complete there was no money to continue supporting it. Also, a car manufacturer has some legal responsibility to provide support to the buyers of their cars. It didn't make financial sense for them to provide that support.

The image reason: The program was done, they decided it was dead. When that happens companies want to get rid of it. Having your failures hanging around tarnishes your image.

People are seeing a conspiracy when it was just a financial decision. GM saw them as a financial liability and decided to get rid of them.

 

[BabaBooey]

Technology and batteries .

 

[Dari]

Looks like this answers the question:
http://blogs.wsj.com/drivers-seat/2...tric-car-batteries-cost/?mod=google_news_blog

$12K-$15K is quite a lot for these batteries. I had no idea they were that expensive. However, I think that price will come down in the next decade or two to make it roughly on parity with ICEs.

 

[exdeath]

Liquid fuels are pretty much the densest form of portable energy there is outside of nuclear.

All the environmentalist types clamoring on to the "alternative energy" hysteria need to take some physics classes. No solar, wind, battery, seaweed, hemp, etc, is EVER going to equal the energy density, power, and range of a liquid fuel, pound per pound, dollar per dollar, or molecule per molecule.

These zero emissions electric plug in cars are a false sense of security; there is nothing "green" about them. All it does is relocate the environmental cost "out of sight out of mind". Mining, delivering, and burning coal and mining and manufacturing copper transmissions lines to charge your Prius is NOT zero emissions. But I guess these dumbasses that think energy from their wall is "free and zero emissions" will understand that when these plugins become more prevalant and they see what it does to their electric bill... oh it isn't "free" after all is it?

Instead of worrying about electric cars and being paranoid about natural gasses like CO2 and H2O and O2 that have been here centuries before us suddenly becoming "evil poisons", we should be focusing efforts on ways to use that manufacturing energy to produce renewable self sustaining non fossil fuel based alternatives to gasoline. eg: synthetic alcohols, etc. that can be "brewed" at an industrial scale.

I'm not against alternatives, but I'm a realist. Simple physics tells me before I even do any research at all that no battery technology will EVER equal a liquid fuel in portable energy density. I don't participate in futile activities.