One of the auto industry’s most closely guarded secrets—the enormous cost of batteries for electric cars—has spilled out.
Speaking at a forum on green technology on Monday, Ford Motor Co. Chief Executive Alan Mulally indicated battery packs for the company’s Focus electric car costs between $12,000 and $15,000 apiece. “When you move into an all-electric vehicle, the battery size moves up to around 23 kilowatt hours, [and] it weighs around 600 to 700 pounds,” Mr. Mulally said at Fortune magazine’s Brainstorm Green conference in California.
“They’re around $12,000 to $15,000 [a battery]” for a type of car that normally sells for about $22,000, he continued, referring to the price of a gasoline-powered Focus. “So, you can see why the economics are what they are.”
What’s interesting isn’t the fact that the batteries cost so much. What’s interesting is that this was apparently such a closely guarded secret. I had no idea. And I still have no idea why this was such a closely guarded secret. It’s hardly big news that batteries are a huge part of the cost of electric cars, is it?
