Prius With Tesla Lithium Ion Batteries?

If you have to ask...

 

They are the same chemistry & capacity if those are @2k1Toaster cells. The CEBA cells have tested at a lower capacity but that should not damage the electronics, just affect performance.

 

Those are the ones sold by @2k1Toaster here. He works on rechargeable batteries for a living so he was careful what to source. Very reputable IMO. Bu that is replacing a pack, not adding capacity. The Prius is not designed to handle added battery capacity.

 

...RUN AWAY !!!

 

I think the biggest impact a Prius owner will see from all of this recent battery innovation is what it does to the cost of replacement packs.

I almost fell over when I was reading how Elon musk was talking last year about the individual cell cost being down to around $100 per kilowatt hour, and within the next couple of years the actual pack cost would be down that low. Think about that… Replacing your Prius battery for cost of $150? Obviously there's a whole lot more to it the manufacturing cost, but the great thing is that costs will continue to decline as the industry innovates and finds better ways to make batteries. We've already seen that; what once was almost $3000 at a Toyota dealer can now be had for under $2000, or $1600 with the aftermarket.

Don't get me wrong, I would love to rip out the floor of my Prius and put a Model 3 battery in, but I think that's wildly unrealistic. Rebuilding a battery pack with Tesla cells would also be a challenge, and how would you source the cells?

 

since some gen4 are coming with lithium, and presumably all will some day, batteries will hopefully continue to comedown in price.
but for ni-mh, i suspect only competition will bring about any more price reduction.

by the time lithium needs replacement, will there be a prius?

 

You need to be sure you are not comparing apples to oranges.

Prius Gen 2 battery technology is based on NiMH. Tesla battery technology is Lithium based.

Second, while what you say may possibly happen in the Lithium space, I doubt NiMH will get any cheaper, and more likely as time goes on, with development is focused on newer tech, I imagine that newer technologies will supersede Nickel batteries. Demand will then drop and prices will rise. At some point you will no longer be able to buy new NiMH batteries. When that happens, hopefully all NiMH based cars will be long retired.

That was really a correction caused by competition. The price adjusted to what it should have been a long while ago, but in the absence of competition the status quo remained.

 

Remember the upcoming 2019 Prius with eAWD is NiMH. So are some of the other Gen 4 models.
It will be a while before that tech is dead for the Prius.

 

For sure. But the price considerations remain the same.

 

I don’t disagree with any of your post, and of course you’re correct about different chemistries having different production factors. My biggest point was that they are still in production and being used in new vehicles, and there has been a tremendous amount of R&D since the 2004 Prius started rolling off the assembly line. We will see what the future brings, but the one thing that I think everybody agrees with is the cost of the batteries for hybrid/electric vehicles will continue to decline for the foreseeable future.

 

While I don't disagree with the observation in general, I don't think you will see much more downward movement for NiMH solutions.

And if some breakthrough does emerge in the Nickel battery space, it may not be backward compatible to earlier Gen Prius. So going forwards it may get better. But at this point who knows what will happen, but I don't think it is safe to assume Nickel batteries will get cheaper along with the others, just because of what is happening in the Lithium space.

For all we know, it might not even be a battery, as we know it, that is the big breakthrough in energy storage.

 

Toyota already said they improved the Gen 4 battery by using a higher grade of nickel. People have already proven those modules are compatible back to Generation 2.

 

Yeah, am aware of that. But I was thinking of something new and groundbreaking.