Oddly enough, I feel a little obligated to defend one aspect of hybrids that unfairly get a bad rap. A lot of uninformed people have informed the rest of us and it leads to certain misconceptions that throw unnecessary dirt on an otherwise advanced technology: batteries.
When your buddy tells you he doesn't want a hybrid because the battery pack will wear out and he'll have to throw it out and spend a fortune on a new battery, laugh at him smile smugly to yourself because he's flat out wrong. Watch his face go red as his argument falls flat on its face when you can tell him about the wonderful people at Consumer Reports. These guys followed up early testing of a 2001 Prius with 2000 miles with tests on a 2002 Prius (same generation and battery pack) with over 200,000 miles. And guess what... the 200,000-mile car performed just as well as the 2000-mile car did. And that's even with technology that's now 12 years old! Take a look for yourself:
| 2001 Prius | 2002 Prius | |
| Fuel Economy | 2,000 miles | 206,000 miles |
| Overall | 40.6 | 40.4 |
| Highway | 48.6 | 46.3 |
| City | 30.5 | 32.1 |
| Trip | 48.5 | 46.3 |
| Acceleration | 2,000 miles | 206,000 miles |
| 0-30 mph (sec.) | 4.3 | 4.4 |
| 0-60 mph | 12.7 | 13.1 |
| 1/4 mile | 19.3 | 19.4 |
| 1/4 mile mph | 74.6 | 73.6 |
| 45-65 mph passing | 7.0 | 7.3 |
But, for argument's sake, let's assume you did manage to kill your battery. Are you going to go to a Toyota dealership and pay $2500 for a new battery pack? Hell no. You're mechanically savvy, you're gonna go to a junk yard and pull the practically brand-new battery out of grandma's totalled Prius for about $500. And assuming you've held onto the same Prius all these years, you've almost certainly made up for that ridiculous price the dealer got you to pay so don't worry about a little maintenance expense here and there. It's to be expected, and you'd probably make up that cost in fuel savings within the year.
What to do with old batteries is definitely a concern though, one that should not be overlooked. Fortunately, old batteries aren't predestined for landfills: quite the opposite is true. Ever a leader in the hybrid industry, Toyota will pay $200 for old batteries in order to entice owners to return them to the company for recycling (although given the life of the batteries it's unlikely there's been a heavy flow of batteries back to the company). Honda also collects old batteries and sends them off to its own preferred recyclers.
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| Battery pack from a 2nd-gen Prius |
Recycling hybrid batteries is a fantastic way to keep materials costs down. It also keeps them out of landfills, although lithium-ion batteries and nickel-metal hydride batteries are safe for such disposal. On top of being 70-100% recyclable, hybrid batteries are often called "zero landfill" batteries due to the consumption of non-recyclable parts in the recycling process. Like the nasty bits of lithium-ion batteries that get burned as fuel in the furnaces that melt and process the various metals.
'Murica
'Murica
Here in America, we like to do things differently. Chevrolet doesn't have any fancy buyback programs for its old batteries. But that doesn't mean they don't have plans for those old things! Hybrid cars use sophisticated computer monitoring systems to make sure that they maximize the life of their batteries. As such, they still have plenty of life left when they get below their optimum automobile use levels- Often as much as 70%, according to GM's senior manager of battery lifecycle management, Pablo Valencia. But what to do with all these still quite healthy batteries? Apparently GM thinks they might have an answer.
What Chevrolet has done, is take used battery packs out of their Volt Hybrid car, and connect them to houses to serve as whole-house battery backup systems. What a novel concept!! A prototype pack rolled out in San Francisco last year had the capacity to power up to 5 homes for a full 2 hours.
This seems like a pretty minuscule amount at first, but when you think about it, there are very few times where that kind of demand would exist. More likely would be when power usage is at its peak in the hot summer months and homes would just need the extra juice to run the A/C in the afternoon. Then, at night when the world goes to sleep, the batteries can recharge for use the next day. AND, if we can get some good renewable energy sources going, we could even have wind power charging the batteries at night or solar power keeping them charged even while in use. Who knows?
Seems like a pretty cool idea to me. If people are gonna keep buying hybrids (which, if current trends are anything to go by, I expect they will), this is definitely a creative and useful way to handle old batteries. The prototype used 5 batteries...there's gonna be a lot more where that came from down the road (pun completely intended).
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| Chevy's home backup system housing repurposed Volt batteries |
This seems like a pretty minuscule amount at first, but when you think about it, there are very few times where that kind of demand would exist. More likely would be when power usage is at its peak in the hot summer months and homes would just need the extra juice to run the A/C in the afternoon. Then, at night when the world goes to sleep, the batteries can recharge for use the next day. AND, if we can get some good renewable energy sources going, we could even have wind power charging the batteries at night or solar power keeping them charged even while in use. Who knows?
Seems like a pretty cool idea to me. If people are gonna keep buying hybrids (which, if current trends are anything to go by, I expect they will), this is definitely a creative and useful way to handle old batteries. The prototype used 5 batteries...there's gonna be a lot more where that came from down the road (pun completely intended).
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