Saturday, June 27, 2009

EV batteries: An investor's take

EV batteries: An investor's take: "He buys individual 4.2-volt Li-ion cells for about $2 each and 'welds' them into packs providing the required voltage and amp-hour reserve. He charges about $2.50 per cell for the assembled pack, and the final price may be thousands of dollars.

That's a problem for electric cars. The lightweight Tesla roadster, for instance, uses 6,800 Li-ion cells, the whole pack weighing 450kg, roughly half a ton. That battery pack would constitute about 50% of the cost of a modest plug-in hybrid sedan.

Hence the interest in the future of the battery market. A new report, 'The Race for the Electric Car,' from Thomas Weisel Partners, an investment firm, points out that the first real hurdle in electric car production is economical assembly of Li-ion cells into usable battery packs."

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