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Comment by zackmorris

I had no idea lithium ion batteries had become so inexpensive. Here is the top search for "kwh battery" on eBay right now:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Li-ion-Lithium-24vdc-100ah-2-4kwh-NE...

So with shipping, $869.96 for 2.4 kwh, or about $362/kwh. A $3 gallon of gasoline has 33 kwh, but only 8 kwh of usable energy due to the inefficiency of internal combustion engines, so $0.375/kwh.

So batteries are somewhere around 1000 times more expensive than gasoline, but, if they can be recharged more than 1000 times they may actually be cheaper. 1 kwh of electricity costs about 10-20 cents usually (call it $200 per 1000 charges). That's a total of $1069.96 for 1000 cycles, maybe $1269.96 for 2000 cycles, etc, something on that order anyway.

So $1 per cycle per kwh is pretty close to a breakeven against gasoline, and batteries are only going to get less expensive.

parent zackmorris 9 years ago

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