How much money and or how much electricity does it cost to charge up the batteries of a hybrid car?
June 4, 2009 in Other - Cars & Transportation
Did you know that you can save fuel and run your car on water
skahhh asked:
They have these claims that the hybrids get such good gas mileage. And they probably do. How much does it cost you in electricity to charge up their batteries? Cause if it costs a lot in your electric bill, why bother? And then there is the cost of a new battery? How often do you have to pay that out? Anybody been through this or have knowledge thereof?
Did you know that you can save fuel and run your car on water
Hybrids don’t need external charging. They use the engine and the force of the car to charge the batteries. Whenever the car goes downhill, for instance, the turning engine is used to charge the batteries.
as for the cost of a new battery, EXPENSIVE!!!!!! in theory, the battery should last the life of the car.
Hello, I did not read the whole article but skimmed this part, I may have taken it out of context:
“Fuel costs for conventional vehicles stand on 6 cents per mile while for plug-ins the cost is only 3 cents per mile including the cost of electricity. ”
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Electricity costs much less than gasoline, and this is easy to show.
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The question is muddled a bit when talking aboiut hybrids, because, unless you have a plug-in hybrid, and do nearly all your driving on electricity from your wall socket, some of your electricity is going to come from gasoline.
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Also, the NIMH batteries used in most hybrids is a very expensive battery technology. The patents were bought by Chevron/Texaco, so they have little incentive to bring down the prices, since they would rather sell you gasoline!
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So for the purpose of comparing gas versus electricity, we’ll look at pure electric cars. I drive an ‘old technology’ electric car, powered by lead-acid batteries. My batteries are good for about 25,000 miles, and cost about $800 to replace. (NIMH batteries are good for over 100,000 miles.) So my battery replacement cost per mile is about 3 cents.
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Electricity is sold in kilowatt-hours. My car gets about 4 miles to the kwh. Here in Detroit, the off-peak electricity rate (a special overnight-only rate) is only 3 cents per kwh. That’s less than ONE cent per mile!
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Adding this to the battery replacement cost, my total cost of driving is only 4 cents per mile. Even if electricity is three times as expensive, it wouldn’t be a whole lot worse than this. What does gasoline cost? Depending on pump prices, between 10 and 15 cents per mile.
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So electricity wins the cost contest hands down.
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What about present day battery technology? The expensive NIMHs used in most hybrids will be obsolete very soon. Lithium-Ion batteries have more power, and are on track to be much cheaper than NIMHs. The Chinese already have a Li-Ion battery design on the market now at about one-tenth the cost of competing batteries.
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Another exciting battery is made by Altairnano. They have redesigned the li-ion battery (based on research at MIT) to be safer, longer-lasting, and faster-charging. Here’s an electric car using the batteries:
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The Phoenix can travel up to 250 miles per charge, carries 5 passengers plus cargo at 95mph, charges in only 10 minutes, and has batteries that will last well over 200,000 miles (for the life of the car.) Yes, it’s a real car, orders have been taken and they begin building cars this month.
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