Hybrid Car Replacement Battery Costs Plummet

Apparently hybrid car batteries are holding up pretty well!

Not only is the price of replacing the battery dropped by up to $2,500, but the batteries themselves are doing better than expected.

Assaulted Batteries

Despite eBay's booming battery bazaar, Toyota, Honda and Ford all say hybrid battery failures are extremely rare. Out of more than 100,000 Honda hybrids on the road, the automaker says fewer than 200 have had a battery fail after the warranty expired. Honda, like Toyota and Ford, covers the cost of battery replacement for the first 100,000 miles in most states and 150,000 miles in California and a few other states with tough green car laws.

Toyota says its out-of-warranty battery replacement rate is 0.003 percent on the second generation Prius that debuted in the 2004 model year. That equals about one out of 40,000 Priuses sold, says Toyota spokesman John Hanson.

It seems like any fears of batteries not lasting as advertised can be dismissed now.

And if the battery happens to fail "out of warranty", the prices are dropping to replace it.

For those unlucky few who have to replace their own batteries, the cost is coming down. On June 1 Honda is slashing the cost of its batteries from $3,400 (excluding installation) to as low as $1,968 on an Insight or as high as $2,440 on an Accord hybrid. Toyota also plans to substantially cut battery prices, which now stand at $3,000 (excluding installation), down from $5,500 on the original Prius.

They are saying the batteries shouldlast ten years!

"We had concerns about battery life," says ALG CEO John Blair. "But our analysts told us that battery life was really a nonissue. They found that the batteries have a 10-year life expectancy, which is quite reasonable."

And used hybrids are cheaper to buy than their gas guzzling rivals!

Still, hybrids don't hold their value as well as their gasoline-powered siblings, batteries aside. For example, a three-year-old Honda Civic is worth about $12,000, retaining about 60 percent of its original sticker price of $20,000, according to Blair. But a hybrid Honda Civic holds only 58 percent of its original sticker price after three years, giving it a used price of $13,630, down from a new price of $23,500.

Well, in a way anyway.

With the gas prices the way they are now I don't know how many people will be selling their hybrid car, but it sure sounds like the battery life and costs of replacement are improving.



[edit on 6/9/2008 by Keyhole]

I bought a 2006 Civic Hybrid (people in hybrid fan circles call it the HCH II - second generation hybrid) in late 2006 (5 month waiting period, finally gave up, searched and found the exact one I wanted in another state).

Anyhow, I was concerned about the batteries too, but it came with like a 7 or 10 year warranty on them. Whatever it was, I figured I wouldn't have it that long anyhow, so as long as it was warranteed for as long as I own it, I'm fine.

I gotta say though, I love it. I live in New England, and in the winter, the gpm drops, but it "drops" to about 38 mpg. There's definatly a difference with outside temps, because today, being around 97 degrees, I drove around 20 miles and averaged 62 mpg.

Sorry, don't mean to be "selling" the car, but it really was a great investment, and the more the price of gas goes up, the more it pays for its novelty price over the non-hybrid. Between the tax incentive, and the lack of sales taxes on hybrids, and the gas I've saved, I've already broken even with the price of the non-hybrid.

reply to post by Mooshup


Jeez, wish I had a vehicle with that sort of gas mileage!

I get 13 mpg, so 62 miles takes almost 5 gallons, so what it costs you around $4 to drive, costs me $20 to drive.

Sure sounds like these hybrids are the way to go now with the gas prices being sooo high!

I wonder how many barrels of oil it takes to make these batteries?

reply to post by earthman4


Very little!

The main concern environmentalists have is that these batteries get recycled and not just thrown into some landfill.

These batteries are now lasting "the life of the car" or 10 years/150,000 miles. You would SURELY use more gas and oil in a normal car than could have possibly ever went into the making of those batteries!

Indeed.

The batteries are lasting a longer time than everyone thought (go figure- the Japanese have been using and perfecting them for over 10 years.)

As for the Recycling of the batteries- I believe it's built into the price of the vehicle, but I could be wrong (maybe it's just the Telsa Roadster that I'm remembering to do that).

I just wish they found a way of making cheaper Lithium batteries. They take a better charge, they can be disassembled during recycling and the components reclaimed to make new batteries with, and they're much more environmentally safe.

Either Li-Ion, or they need to really get moving along with the Super-High capacity capacitors.

This is awesome news to me! I went shopping last summer for a AWD or truck and was shocked at the weak MPGs available. We got the 28 MPG Hyundai Tucson but i was sure hoping to get a hybrid truck but nothing was available in our price range.

I will trade in for a hybrid if it makes real and econiomic sense. Anyway these batteries are bound to fall in price. Trickledown benefits of the space program I think.

i wonder if we could actually pack the electrons in a different way.. like a super-super-capacitor

reply to post by sty


They are working on that with nano materials. Not that I would understand. But I did see something on the subject once. Sorry I don't remember the reference. Something about a solid lump of nano layers that act a huge capacitor.