Hi Damon, Yes, the price of EVs (batteries) is the defining, obvious issue which stops people buying EVs but the it's the bottom line that people (eventually) will get to that counts. If it costs more to buy an ICEV and fuel it than it does to buy and EV and fuel -it- (with electricity, of course), then they will start buying EVs... and in the short term this cost comparison analysis is entirely oil price dependant.
In the longer term you can say that (probably) battery costs will fall but they won't fall to any less than the cost of the raw materials used to make them - times a factor of say 2 to 4 for the manufacturing costs etc. The value at todays prices of the Al and Cu in a 20kWh pack is around US$1k so a pack of this size is not going to fall much lower than the $2k mark using current technology (ignoring the cost of the Li - I've no idea what that component of LiFePO4 cells costs). OTOH you can also argue that the EV drivetrain will be significantly cheaper to make than a comparable ICEV one, given common ICEV scale of manufacture. But again that is more medium to long term and again, I have no idea what it costs to make, say, a 1.6 litre engine and multi-geared gearbox (compared to an AC motor and single speed gearbox) but I guess it would be about half given similar economies of scale in manufacture. But we are only talking about US1k or so difference here, not the $10-15k dollars difference it apparently makes adding a 20kWh Lion pack to a car. MW On 22 Jan 2013, at 16:39, damon henry wrote: > Well, I think you are right on about the price being the main issue but you > may be being too restrictive by limiting it to the price of oil. I still > maintain that when building an EV you are replacing a fuel tank which likely > only costs a few dollars to manufacture with a battery pack that costs > multiple thousands of dollars to manufacture. So you say it is the price of > oil, I say it is the price of batteries... Also long term you need to > consider the price of electricity. What if some economic force creates a > huge spike in the price of electricity? Then it is no longer the price of > oil that is the problem it is the price of electricity. Regardless, of which > factor you single out, price is definitely one of the main issues. If people > could buy an EV for half the price of the ICE equivalent, they would be > selling like crazy. > > damon > >> From: [email protected] >> Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2013 09:40:05 +0000 >> To: [email protected] >> Subject: Re: [EVDL] Newswires status: Where's The Beef? >> >> Hi Bruce, >> >> IMO there is only one principle reason why EVs (and I mean electric >> vehicles, not PIHs or anything else with an ICE in it) are not selling as I >> would hope (or their manufacturers might have expected) and that is the >> price of oil. >> _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
