Long Term Costs Of Hybrids – The Hybrid Car Battery Replacement Cost Dilemma
[ad]
Owners of hybrid cars, particularly the first generation ones, are learning a lesson that laptop and cell phone owners know well:
As batteries age, their ability to hold a charge decreases, particularly for batteries that operate in high operating temperature environments, like near an internal combustion engine.
Unfortunately, hybrid car battery replacement costs can be difficult to judge. Unlike a laptop battery or a cell phone battery, there are usually only a few vendors making them, and for older cars, like the first generation Prius from 2001, it can be difficult to get an exact factory replacement, in large part because the components change from model year to model year.
Fortunately, there are options when looking into recovering hybrid car battery replacement costs. If you’ve got an older hybrid car in need of a battery replacement, there are options available online; some are from the same outfits that sell hybrid car range extension kits, and plug in hybrid conversion kits; these can be pretty expensive – $3,000 or more. While gasoline has come down in price recently, it’s likely to have very wide seasonal fluctuations. Look at the average price per gallon of gasoline for an entire year before making that cost-benefit calculation.
For example – with an older battery, you’re going to lose about 10-20% of your fuel economy, since the battery won’t store as much energy. This will be, for a Prius, somewhere around 3-4 miles per gallon; for larger hybrids like the Accord Hybrid and Civic Hybrid, it’ll be less. With an average annual driving total of about 10,000 miles per year, the difference from 40 mpg to 36 mpg means that you’re burning about 40 more gallons of gas each year; even with the sudden drop in gasoline prices, the average price per gallon of gas has been over $3.00 for the US in 2008; that translates into $120 per year.
At that rate, it’ll take almost twenty-five years for the hybrid battery replacement cost to pay for itself, which makes it somewhat uneconomical – assuming gas prices remain stable. You’re making a hedged bet, on hybrid car battery replacement costs that the price of gasoline will rise. This same calculation can also be weighted by seasons – if you drive your hybrid in the summer when gas prices are higher, this replacement cost issue gets weighted more heavily in favor of replacement rather than buying a new car.
On the other hand, if you’re using your hybrid as a plug in hybrid, this cost pays for itself much more rapidly. Charging your car from nighttime electrical grid usage is roughly the equivalent of gas at 40 cents a gallon, and if you drive within the battery range and don’t kick on the engine, this savings potential adds up fast. This is one of the major reasons the same vendors that sell hybrid car plug in conversion kits sell the replacement kits.
One other issue is what you want your hybrid car battery replacements to be made of; most of the commercially available kits are using Nickel-Cadmium batteries, which are environmentally difficult to dispose of (cadmium in particular). They’re also the least power dense of any battery technology that’s commercially available. That being said, in terms of watts of energy stored per dollar spent, they’re the most economical.
Recommended Reading
More Information on Green Living
- Convert Any Car to Electric — "All the steps are numbered with diagrams to be easy to follow. The conversion does not take too long, all you have to do is follow the simple plans I provide and in a month, you will cut your gas bill to zero."
- Renewable Energy Solutions — "Family living off the grid with renewable energy takes know how and applies it to solar panels and wind generators."
- Build A Wind Generator — "For the past 15 years our family has been living off the grid with only solar and wind power. We moved to our present location, built our own house ourselves and set to work to find alternative energy options for our home that we could afford."