Jacq-- I also heard the assertion that current costs are $2000 per
kwh from Paul Gifford of Ovonic, while on the tour. That flies in
the face of this quote from the Times article citing John Wallace of Ford:
''Your laptop battery costs thousands of dollars per kilowatt-hour of
capacity,'' Mr. Wallace said. ''An electric vehicle battery of today
costs maybe $1,000 a kilowatt-hour. Your S.L.I. battery costs 50
bucks.''
Indeed, the most recent price I've heard is $1000 per kwh. Even this
seems high since the 694 AA cylindrical cells that would equal 1kwh
can be bought for $694 or less, OEM from the factory. Anybody else
heard a price lately?
Let me reprint the famous Stempel cost curve which he presented on
their November 1996 road show. He has constantly said they are on or
ahead of this curve:
Vehicle Packs per year Cost/kwh
10 $8,000
100 $5,000
350 $2,000
1,000 $385
6,500 $300
20,000 $150
I believe in GM/Ovonic-ease each vehicle pack is assumed to be 30kwh.
At the present rate of 2 packs per day we are at 500 packs per year
assuming a 250 day year. I like the way the cost plummets moving from
350 to 1000 packs per year.
My own belief is that they won't make it to $150 and don't need to.
I say they won't make it since the price of nickel cathode is $2.313
per pound (see metalprices.com which is
$5.09 per kilogram. Some sages have said that as much as 50% of each
17kg battery (circa 1 kwh) would be nickel or nickel alloy, which
would be $43.25 for the nickel alone, forget alloying, hydriding,
sintering, etc. (Maybe Jacq can get us a galloping horseback guess as
to what a pound of the precious powders being shipped from Sarnia
costs and how many pounds are used in 1kwh of battery?)
I say they don't NEED to make it down to $150/kwh since existing lead
acid technology is selling well now and is as much as twice that price
(for Valve Regulated and spiral wound batteries) and offers 1/2 to
1/5 the cycle life. |
