Prius is planing a switch from Nicad
battery to the highly touted lithium ion
battery. This will likely give the Prius a
place in auto history as infamous as the
Ford Edsel. The ion battery will disappear
from the market in less than 15 years.
Lithium mines are already having trouble
keeping up with the cell phone and laptop
computer demand. There will be zero
reserves of lithium within 12 to 15 years.
Hybrids will need to find an option to the
lithium ion battery.
Switching to the Ion battery will put the
Prius in a class of its own. The process
of adapting your Prius to an battery
powered ion plug in will cost you around
$12000.00 minus a tax break of an estimated
$4000.00 Not an economical option.
The battery problem might just price the
Prius out of the market for working stiffs
who make less than $200,000.00 a year.
Most of the over 10,000. prius owners will
need to replace their nicad batteries in
about 8 years. Presently he cost is around
$3000.00. The projected cost in 8 years
will likely exceed $6000.00 but supply will
be nill. They will need to find another
option to keep their Toyota humming along
at lightning speeds.
The Chinese are eating nickel
as if it were rice. Nickel is used to
produce stainless steel and China leads
in export and domestic production of
stainless steel. The cost of nickel is
expected to make a 500% cost leap in
less than 5 years. Reserves of nickel in
the world market are dangerously low.
Nicad batteries are already priced out
of the market. That eliminates the nicad
and switching to Ion batteries will result
in a bigger hit to Toyota than any of the
damaging recalls presently undermining
faith in the reliability of all Toyotas. The
option for a change to Ion batteries for
Hybirds to ion plug ins is like selling snake
oil to cure diabetics. Cost factors will not
be a problem but supply will. The raw
material, lithium, will not be available
since there are no producing
mines. Estimates are that it would take
at least ten years to develop the
infrastructure to allow production in
the two existing mines in South America.
Presently the worlds production ,which
is dwindling to nothing, is used to make
the wonderful exploding ion batteries
used in notebooks and cell phones.
You might recall the press bites on
flaming notebooks, Ion batteries are
prone to overheating a fault that is far
worse than "sudden acceleration".
Look for press bites in the future on
flaming or exploding Priuses. There
will be an acute shortage of Ion batteries
and the cost will be porhibitive for most
Prius owners other than Steve Jobs or
Bill Gates who both drive a Prius on
ocassion.
Again Toyota moves toward another
drop in sales when the Public realizes
that the Prius will be virtually obsolete
in less than ten years. Sooner if you were
a"pioneer" and need to change your
batteries sooner.
The annual sales volume of the Prius is
now exceeding 100,000 units. Which
proves that the gullible world market will
buy snake oil if you beat a drum hard
enough and package your product
attractively. Again "the Edsel Factor".
Consumers are simply uniformed by the
lack of truth and blinded by media hype.
Are there other options for this disaster
that are practical? The simple answer is
no. The only future option that might be
practical are fuel cells but development
of this clean technology will take at least
another 10 years. Production will probably
take another 5 years to commence. This
will allow time for the public to become
thourougly disillusioned with electric
power by any means. The Japanese
auto industry may be facing the same fate
experienced by the auto industry in the United
States, Death from arrogance, greed and
poor management. Even giants like Godzilla
can be reduced to ashes when they step into
a volcanic crater. Possibly there might be a
miraculous recovery of the auto industry in
the U.S. Henry Ford would be proud.
Look for part two in this blog "The Lithum
dictum".
