Nissan Announces Leaf Battery Pack Pricing
 

Nissan Leaf New Battery Cost: $5,500 For Replacement With Heat-Resistant Chemistry

Wow...that's cheap. $5500 including $1000 core credit, plus a $225 kit to retrofit the newest, latest and greatest pack into older cars. This is FAR cheaper than EV nay sayers originally predicted. Nissan may also create a financing option for approx. $100/month.

For us DIY EVers, that potentially is a 24kWh pack for a measly $6500.

CALB cells are approx. $437/kWh.
This works out to $271/kWh, if this pricing is accurate.

All I have to say is :D

They are a different chemistry though, with far fewer cycles than lifepo4, so that is a consideration.

That's a great price, a Prius battery from Toyota costs around half as much and is only 1.3kwh. Super plug-in Prius, anyone? :D

They still do quite well for what they are, they're warrantied for 5 years/60k miles to still have 70% capacity. That works out to about 750 80 mile charges. Not too bad. I bet short trips and a moderate climate would allow it to last at least 100k miles.

I just had a thought - I could fit two of these in CarBEN EV5. :D :cool:

I get close to the same cost for the CA cells, in US dollars before shipping and taxes. The formula I'm using

$/kwh = $/cell * 1000 w-h / (Volts per cell * a-h) using 3.2V as an average discharge voltage

At $143 for a 72 a-h CALB CAM cell, I get $620.66
EVTV Motor Verks Store: 1 CALB CAM72FI LiFePo4 Cell, Lithium Battery Cells, CAM72FI

At $249 for a 180 a-h CALB CA cell, I get 432.29
EVTV Motor Verks Store: CALB CA180FI 180Ah LiFePo4 Cell, Lithium Battery Cells, CA180

At $95 for a 100 a-h CALB SE cell, I get 296.87
EVTV Motor Verks Store: CALB SE100AHA 100Ah LiFePo4 Cell, Lithium Battery Cells, SE100AHA

The SE cells are on clearance, so there is no warranty. But the price is comparable. Although I'd be tempted to stick with the CALBS, I appreciate the OPTION to go with a Leaf pack!

So much for "batteries will get cheaper over time".

Only thing I am not loving is say you buy a leaf, pay it off, kill the battery as expected. Now you are back on the hook for $100 a month.
Does this mean you have a vehicle payment again and are required to carry full coverage again?

"new batteries will cost tens of thousands of dollars."

I don't know who said that unless they were talking about a volt or tesla.
Obviously the leafs battery pack isn't 2/3 the cost of the vehicle.

"Old batteries turned in during the replacement process will be recycled, Nissan said, or possibly retained for secondary usage--perhaps for building energy storage--by the company's separate 4R Energy business unit".

Might as well since recycling LiFePO4 batteries isn't economical.
Just letting them pile up like nuclear waste in temporary storage. Seems kind of ironic.

You are required to pay full coverage? I assume you mean insurance. Not where I'm from. Here you don't need any coverage besides liability, even on a brand new vehicle. That being said, $5500/10 years is hardly a car payment. That's basically normal maintenance costs for many cars. And considering that the brakes on a Leaf will last the life of the car thanks to regenerative braking, there are no real maintenance costs, besides tires.

All Leaf battery packs (including these replacements) are warrantied for 5 years/60K miles for degradation and 8 years/100K miles for defects/failure. Most packs, at least those being used under "normal" temperatures/conditions, are on their way to last at least 10 years.

$5500 is nothing in the big picture, especially when fuel savings are factored in.

Fueleconomy.gov

I guess that $5,500 for ten years is okay when you are saving $18,000 over the same period. 30.56%

I thought the same was true of gasoline? Manufactures are wiser to economics and know how to regulate supply to raise price. Kind of makes you wonder how successful Teslas giga battery factory will do.

If that tesla giga factory significantly reduced battery prices that would be great.
But what if all they do is eliminate competition and set the price as they see fit?

In the U.S. you have to have full coverage with a car payment to protect the buyer and the financier. That way when the car gets wrecked the buyer isnt stuck with a car payment with no car or the lender doesn't get defaulted on.
If financing a new battery is considered a car payment then going to full coverage at least doubles your insurance.

I wonder if insurance companies would provide coverage for new batteries on old cars--just the batteries.

Big Picture. Include the price of the car and compare apples to apples.
I would expect the battery pack to last 120K miles, so 8 years @ 15K miles/year. Here is a comparison between a Leaf S and Versa Note S+ (with the CVT option....remember apples to apples). I assume a 10% sales tax and $3.75/gal fuel.
http://i1119.photobucket.com/albums/...psdf44cf03.png

Hmmmm....if we are talking appliances (a cheap means to get something done), then the EV is still WAAAAAAAY off. But that doesn't mean I wouldn't buy a Leaf.

Edit: To be fair I did not include the EV tax credit either. Up here, we do not have an EV tax credit anymore anyway. Also, up here gas is around $5.50/gal, which brings the numbers slightly closer....but still way off.

Hey, let's throw another wrench in the equation and go used. Used Leafs with appox 25K miles can be had for around $15K in the Seattle area (3 hours south of me). Now, since 25K miles is 21% of the theoretical useable battery pack life, we can prorate this and throw it in as well:
http://i1119.photobucket.com/albums/...ps99cd7d1c.png

Now we're talking. Of course, a used Versa Note will be much cheaper, but this merely shows that an EV can be done at a reasonable price. As I want to eventually get away from gasoline with my wife's next car, this would be the route I would choose. I also have plans for a DIY range extender for my long trips made out of a 600-650cc CVT motorcycle/scooter, but that's for a completely different thread!

Different situations - oil is a limited supply that gets harder and harder to get over time, and batteries are built.

Historically, prices are still driven down when companies consolidate. Oligopolies do not get to set the price arbitrarily high. The market still sets their price.

I doubt car insurance would be required on the finance plan. Nissan would have the battery pack as collateral if the debt was defaulted on. Not only that, but Nissan's cost for the battery pack is likely much less than the consumer is paying, so their liability on a default is further reduced.

Duh!...bring back the German WWII synthetic oil production capabilites! :confused:

And that'll be cheap and easy, right?

One synthetic oil manufacturer is advertizing they make theirs from natural gas, but how much would the power grid need to improve to cover 100+ million electric cars.

regards
Mech

Once you got the range and charging situation worked out the Leaf is a much nicer vehicle than the Versa. You can chirp tires at any speed, its got a nav/dvd player and one hell of a first gear. :thumbup:

I think we had a similar discussion on the insight forum many years ago and it made cents :thumbup: to go with a used leaf vs new.

Not much. Charge at night.

The energy to refine a gallon of gasoline can power a Nissan Leaf for about 20-22 miles and we already have a surplus of electricity at night, that is the main reason we have street lights, to use up the night time surplus, so swap the street light on your block to an LED light and swap the most used bulbs in your house to LED and your power company will see a drop in demand even with EV charging.
As it is tho, the grid shouldn't see much change, the Nissan Leaf my parents just got has a 13amp 120v charging cord that they are using, getting a window AC unit will have a larger impact on the grid.
Even if you get a 240v 30amp charging cord it shouldn't have a huge impact unless you are charging at peek times of day and the car has two timers you can set to automatically turn on the on board charger.

Or bring back an updated version of WWII cellulosic methanol.

Will they sell them only for fitment in a Leaf, though? I imagine these being available for fitting only - by Nissan dealers.

You can generally buy any part from any dealer's parts department. How could they legally not sell to DIYers? In this case you would have to pay an extra $1000 core charge without a battery core to give them.

Quoted from greencarreports, emphasis mine:

Nissan Leaf New Battery Cost: $5,500 For Replacement With Heat-Resistant Chemistry

Seems strange. If the core was indeed required, why would they give the core a dollar value at all? You would think they would simply say $5500 and mandatory core return instead of $6500 with a $1000 core credit.

Maybe once these pack replacements are released I shall call my local stealership to find out for sure.

Yeah, I thought the same thing. My only thought is they're selling them below cost to existing customers. But, in the case, why not just increase the core charge?

They are working on a 48kWh version. Maybe it would be possible to buy one of those, along with the charger? In a few years, I'm sure I'll have more options, but at least this might be possible. A 35kWh CALB pack would cost more than two 24kWh Leaf packs - about $3,000 more, at least.

but it would be remiss to not mention the cycle life, which is like 300 for a leaf cell, vs 2000 for a calb cell, so you will be replacing leaf cells 7x as often. Plus more temperature sensitivity in the leaf cells. The lifepo4 really are a lot more bullet proof and well supported in charging/monitoring, and that is all good news for diy'ers.

I find it strange that Nissan used such a temperamental, short-life cell with no real thermal management. You can see it on the Leaf forums - degradation after only a year. It is really unfortunate. I guess they thought all along that regular replacement with a fairly cheap pack would be the norm. Makes you wonder how many original Leaf purchasers will purchase another one.

Contrast this to the Chevy Volt that seems to show absolutely zero degradation after 50K miles. Obviously much of this is in the battery management software - using a relatively small portion of the total capacity and adjusting this portion over time to simulate zero degradation. But still.

The Leaf cell is far more than 300 cycles. My sister-in-law has a Leaf with 18,000 miles on it and it still has 100% battery capacity. That is close to 1,800 cycles. And the new Leaf cells are improved.