OrientExpress said:
I suspect that is what will happen, there will be two battery pack options, one being a mainstream pack and the other being a low volume halo 60kWh pack that will be $5-7K (or more) expensive for those that have to have more range immediately. Over time the more expensive pack will come down in price as will the 40kWh pack.
As with most early adoption products do the 60 kWh car will depreciate faster than the 40kWh car.
Designing a BEV with multiple pack sizes inevitably compromises one or both of the BEV designs, but much less so if the
larger pack capacity can be achieved with higher energy density, rather than increased weight.
Of course, that is what Nissan did in the gen one LEAF using both ~24 kWh and ~30 kWh packs.
I still think the LEAF gen 2 will probably be available with with an inexpensive base pack with a designation somewhere in the low 30 kWh range, an evolutionary improvement on the present "30" kWh pack.
And the optional larger pack is more likely to be designated as between 40 kWh and 50 kWh, than ~60 kWh.
TonyWilliams said:
Folks are discounting the fact that GM can VERY EASILY make their 288 cell 60kWh usable pack into a 192 cell 40kWh pack.
The number one problem with that is the car will only get 2 CARB-ZEV credits instead of three.
If the Bolt had been designed to accommodate a smaller pack from the beginning, it would be much cheaper, more efficient and probably sell quite a bit better than the ~60 kWh available Bolt GM builds today.
But GM installing a smaller
kludge pack in the present Bolt by using fewer cells is unlikely, IMO.
It is unfortunate, IMO, that all BEV sales in the USA are distorted by CARB's obsession with BEVs with longer-range than that determined by market realities.
Thanks to CARB, we will wind up with smaller total sales of BEVs, stuffed with larger battery packs that are rarely required, and mostly just carried as dead weight.
Thus we will have more ICEV miles driven in total, and more petroleum fuels consumed, than if CARB prioritized it's ZEV credit incentives for the market segments where BEVs and BEVxs with ~20 kWh to ~40 kWh packs are superior to ICEVs, and could sell in larger numbers.