Preplacement battery packs for hybrids?
Submitted by James Latham
I have been researching renewable energy/solar power/hybrid cars for a article that I’m writing for Business Matters magazine here in the Virgin Islands and stumbled on a business idea that I wanted to run by you and get your opinion on.
First a little background, as oil goes away hybrid cars become more and more popular. There is long waiting list for them from the various makers. Toyota and Honda have back orders that are around 21,000 for certain models. There is probably 100s of thousand back ordered as we type this. Some of the problems in pumping up the production is the lack of certain components. Batteries being one.
I started looking into who makes rechargeable batteries used in the hybrid cars, the batteries are not your normal ones that are found in non-hybrid cars but resemble the NiMH ones that show up in laptops and such. In some hybrid cars they look like a lot of flashlight size batteries stuck in long 3 foot plastic tubes.
Anyway I wanted to see who makes them (batteries), thinking the companies might be good to invest stocks in. Then I found out something that was obvious. The batteries in hybrids won’t last that long and might have to be replaced long before the engine in the cars gives out. the cost for replacement from the dealer is $2000~$3000 WOW! that’s a lot I thought. Then I thought since these are only batteries is there any outside source for these battery packs, that is outside of the dealers? NONE! as yet.
Since people are accustomed to shopping around for batteries for their cars, a company offering a battery pack that replaces the original for half the cost might be quite successful. one could also offer a bigger pack in order to ween the hybrid off the oil people doing this as a test have gotten big improvements in their MPG past 100 MPG.
