The extra cost of electric vehicles: batteries

A few people have pointed out that although the cost of electricity is substantially cheaper when charging an electric vehicle, that on EVs there’s the extra cost of batteries which can be expensive.

That is true. It’s difficult to factor in the cost of batteries in any Total Cost of Ownership analysis because batteries for EVs is a fairly new industry, so the manufacturing process and pricing is not yet broken down the way it is for oil (or gasoline). Companies selling Neighborhood Electric Vehicles (NEV) often face the challenge of giving a warranty to customer on a vehicle whose batteries they don’t exactly know how long will last and what kinds of problems will present under all the different conditions that can’t all be predicted. Batteries also perform different depending on how they’re used and cycled. The latter is a challenge that I believe will be solved by software, and developing that software also costs money.

Suffice to say, the price of batteries will decrease dramatically as the technology improves and the demand for electric vehicles. This is the catch-22 that all EV companies and enthusiasts have been dealing with: the batteries with the highest energy density are expensive, but it’s not until they are widely used that the industry will see a need and opportunity to serve more customers and thus produce more batteries, which brings up the price. We all wished a major player like GM had used their resources and power a decade ago to shift the market, but for some reason they don’t.

But don’t be discouraged! The world has a need for clean vehicles and more efficient means of transportation. The word is that China is about to flood the market with lithium-ion batteries for cars. I’ll research more on this topic. But the fact is that China is already producing several EVs whereas with ICEs they’re far behind in technology. So they actually have an incentive to develop EV technology since they’re closer to being number 1 in that field. It is my opinion that China will be the leader of the EV industry for years to come.

While many companies are known for making a lot of promises because of the power of EV technology, Chinese companies generally are found delivering products with little to no marketing abroad. And China as a nation has a need for cleaner vehicles – their densely populated cities are notorious for already high-levels of air pollution. How good is it to allow all your population to own and drive cars if in the process they get killed from carbon dioxide (or Global Warming)? I think the whole world is [slowly] reaching this conclusion.

- Ricardo Parker

China's Electric Car Moves Ahead

China's Wuhan University of Technology presented this experimental electric vehicle at Challenge Bibendum, saying it was designed with China's white-collar class in mind.

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