The lease option would only make sense if it's a lease to buy option. That way your money doesn't get burned away like it does normally with gasoline.

As I mentioned in the other Volt post from today, hopefully the "safe" lithium ion cells will catch up to conventional LiIon in terms of price/kWh. That way the battery won't cost any more than US$10,000 in the first place.

This is a common mode of operation in the airplane business where the airlines lease the power plants. Initially, I think a company should sell the whole car, and battery, with a normal warranty. When the warranty runs out, perhaps the customer could be offered an option to lease the battery pack. Believe me, fixing a high voltage battery pack is not a DIY project for untrained people. Getting across high voltage D.C. while trying to replace a cell means immediate electrocution.

Additionally, if upgrades or modifications are needed or available, the lease should also cover that cost. Let's face it, batteries have a life and no one wants to pay big bucks to replace them. I have read stories about how Toyota NiMH battery packs run about 2 to 3 thousand to replace and those are rather small. I can imagine what a large Li Ion would cost. When the price of large format batteries comes down, then it won't hurt so much to replace them and there won't be a need to lease them.

Makes a lot of sense to me. I expect the customer would have the option to buy outright if he or she chooses. I hope they also offer the opportunity to lease a larger capacity battery than the one they've proposed.

This is the best idea that GM could have come up with!

I know of another EV company that has made the same type of [obvious] conclusion and asked many people [ala focus group] to judge the battery leasing/renting concept and virtually everyone agreed that it is a fantastic idea.

Unless batteries come down in pricing to a very low affodrable price, who wants to "own" a battery that eventually will die and which needs to be disposed of and hopefully recycled?

I don't!

Fred

You can bet on leasing, whether it is the entire vehicle or the battery pack. The US auto industry is built around it. What you see as a vehicle, is to them a means of selling financial paper. They have (in most years when they made money) always made more on the finance side than the production side. The good news is that due to a need to sell more financial instruments, we will actually see an electric production car.

Ah I see what you mean. I think that level of technology is still a little way away.

I certainly don't see it as BS though. It will bring series hybrids and EVs within reach of a far larger audience who would otherwise be unable to afford the capital costs. I'd expect GM would offer some sort of buyout option if necessary. Otherwise it could impinge on residual values.

I think you could sell the spent battery to be recycled. It's a lot easier to get lithium from a spent battery than to dig it out of the ground. Or at least, I imagine it would be.
There's no way of knowing what percentage of the original cost could regained through selling it because there are no numbers on how much it will cost new or how long it will last or how much it will be worth when it's down to whatever capacity makes it ready to swap out.

I would like the option to buy, but the lease makes sense for your average non-EV-fanatic. Not only will the capital cost be daunting for most people but the lease will also allay any concern about battery lifetime and replacement cost.

A used li-ion car battery may still have substantial residual value, beyond mere salvage value (i.e., stripping out lithium metal for recycling). Even batteries operating at 50% of initial capacity could be used as a battery back-up for the electric grid itself. Obviously there are some engineering issues associated with daisy-chaining such batteries together, but these are not insurmountable, especially since in a back-up capacity, their environment would be much more stable than a car. So this is potentially a lucrative after-market for GM (or, potentially, Volt customers).

So my suggestion would be for GM to introduce a 3rd option: in addition to buying the car and battery outright (option 1) or buying the car and leasing the battery (option 2), option 3 would be for GM to give customers a credit for the li-ion battery, which they can use for purchase of their next GM electric vehicle. The credit would decline in value over time/remaining battery life (e.g., 50% decrease after 150,000 miles). That would encourage drivers to stick with GM over the long term, give them an incentive to trade-in for the latest model sooner, and give interested customers the satisfaction of owning their vehicle outright. Just a thought...

The lease option is sensible in the sense [ugh] that the batteries are expensive and there isn't a large after market for those kinds of parts.

My concern would be if they only allowed the leasing: what happens if you buy the car and the lease runs out, and GM decides not to offer the batteries any more? Now you've got a car with no juice, and are forced to turn to third party apps which may be less reliable, more expensive, etc.

I am against leasing batteries. The reasons for buying a PHEV are: 1)lower green house gases, 2)reduce reliance on imported oil, and 3)reduce the cost of transportation by eliminating the high cost of gasoline. If I have to lease a battery with costs equivilant to what I would pay for gasoline on a monthly basis, that would eliminate one of the big motivators for buying a PHEV in the first place.

As a retired person who does not drive every day a monthly leasing option would not be feasible. I have tracked my fuel use over the past six months and I have only driven more than 30 miles per day once. I would reduce my trips to the gas station to once or twice a year.

If conversion companies can supply batteries, controllers, and installation for approximately $12,000 on an individual basis, surely a company as large as GM with anticipated sales in excess of 100,000 in the first few years of production should be able to bring the cost down to a reasonable level. I would be willing to pay $5,ooo to $7,000 for a battery with a 150,000 mile, 8 year warrantee. The next time I would expect to pay far less once economies of scale take hold.