Short Article on Battery Costs, LEAF, and Nissan Profit

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That article is actually from this source:
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/told-you-so-nissan-close-to-profitability-on-leaf/
Most blogs reprint the entire article but give obvious attribution at the top or bottom; SeekingAlpha, not so much.

Told You So: Nissan Close to Profitability on Leaf
The batteries must be coming down rapidly in cost.
by MICHAEL KANELLOS: APRIL 30, 2010

How much money will Nissan lose on the all-electric Leaf?

It's been the big question in the car industry. Skeptics have alleged that the company will lose hundreds of millions of dollars. Nissan needs a hit to gain ground against Honda and Toyota, the argument goes, so the company is willing to absorb losses now to gain market share and leadership.

On the other hand, others said that Nissan and NEC have likely managed to squeeze out a lot of the costs related to making the car's battery. The two companies have worked on the Leaf's lithium ion polymer battery, which consists of sheets of active battery material layered on top of each other, for nearly seven years.

Here's our math. The Leaf will retail for $32,780 before federal and state rebates and batteries typically comprise one-third of the cost of electric cars. Right now, conventional lithium ion batteries for cars cost around $900 per kilowatt hour. The Leaf has a 24 kilowatt-hour battery. Under that math, a Leaf battery -- if it were more like a regular electric car battery -- should cost around $21,000. Thus, the Leaf, if it had an ordinary battery, should cost closer to $60,000.... more at Source: http://www.greentechmedia.com
This "math" seems squirrelly. Why assume 1/3 the cost? I would gauge Tesla is about 1/2, Volt about 1/4.
The costs are whatever glider vehicle you choose (choose wisely for weight, aero and desirability) plus battery and motor-controller. The electronics aren't necessarily cheap and that's an item which needs some economies of scale as well. Anyway, the Versa platform on which the LEAF is loosely based might be $10k for Nissan to build. Motor controller - maybe someone here has a better idea than me ($3k?). And I'm totally guessing that Nissan is at the $600/kWh ($14400) with their battery tech after years of R&D write-downs.
So, that's more like 1/2 the cost of the vehicle with my "math". They may plan to get the battery costs down to $500/kWh sometime into the first year of production and perhaps their profitability doesn't occur until the end of 2011. So, the "we're making money at the price we announced" quote from Mark Perry may refer to a year over year number rather than profit from LEAF #0001.
Regardless, Nissan has made my EV grin even larger with pricing and the indications that it can be a money-making venture for them.
 
Futura said:
Most blogs reprint the entire article but give obvious attribution at the top or bottom; SeekingAlpha, not so much.

See who the contributor of that article in SeekingAlpha is :)
 
Here is my response to the article in SA.

Nissan has always said the battery cost is less than $500/kwh. It is mostly people who are in no position to actually know the cost who have said it is much higher. Infact even the Electrification Coalition, of which Nissan is a member, report puts the average figure at $600/kwh and notes some manufacturers have lower costs.

Recently Times (of London) had an interview with Andy Palmer, the man in charge of green cars at Nissan. The article puts the battery cost at 6,000 pounds (about $9,100). Either all Nissan people are liers - or the critics like JP don't know what they are talking about. I pick the latter as being a lot more likely.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/202225-nissan-leaf-close-to-profitability-told-you-so?source=commenter

“We not going to lose money on this. I don’t have a boss who would endure that,” he said, referring to Carlos Ghosn, whose nickname is 'the cost killer'.

We should remember, Nissan built their first Li powered car 17 years back. While GM used lead acid battery in EV1 & Toyota used NiMH - Altra used Li batteries. Such experience ought to count for something.
 
Here is one more link.

Here is one more interview from August last year with Nissan North America Product Planning Vice President Larry Dominique.

http://green.autoblog.com/2009/08/14/at-witz-end-turning-over-a-new-nissan-leaf

Dominique suggests that Nissan will pay much less for LEAF's high-power, high-energy laminated li-ion pack. "At $500 per kWh, my battery would cost $12,000," he tells us. "It will be a lot less than that."

ps : I tried to add this to my post above. Impossible. Any post that is larger than the posting window is extremely difficult because the screen keeps going up. That needs fixing in the forum - one more thing I guess.
 
Are you using IE8?
If so, the "popping up" is a "known" problem, reported by many, so "Call Bill".

Apparently IE7 and Google's Chrome browser do not have this problem.
 
Oy, why are people still listening to this Seeking Alpha guy? He's always writing these reports with completely bogus numbers about li-ion batteries; he's heavily invested in lead-acid.
 
KarenRei said:
Oy, why are people still listening to this Seeking Alpha guy? He's always writing these reports with completely bogus numbers about li-ion batteries; he's heavily invested in lead-acid.

Actually, this is not an article by Petersen - he was just a commenter I was responding to.
 
i believe that until the TN plant is up and running, that Nissan will be losing money or making very slim profits. but after the plant is in full swing, the volumes will provide them a profit. i personally think that an end to end solution is the only way to go to be able to put batteries into the vehicles at prices much below the current market rates.
 
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