Will the battery in my hybrid keep going?

Herb Weisbaum • Profile • E-mail

With gas prices still relatively high, more and more people are considering hybrid cars. But some readers are wondering how long the batteries in a hybrid vehicle will last.

I know that hybrid cars get more miles per gallon and pollute less. But these vehicles all have an expensive battery pack that powers them when the gasoline engine isn’t on. How long are these batteries going to last?
Bill H., Princeton, N.J.

The battery pack in a hybrid vehicle contains hundreds of cells. Unlike the lead-acid battery under the hood of a conventional gas-powered vehicle, these cells contain a chemical mixture called nickel metal hydride (NiMH).

These NiMH batteries generally come with a standard warranty of 8 years or 80,000 miles. In California, if a new hybrid qualifies as an Advanced Technology Partial Zero Emission Vehicle, the state requires the warranty on that battery pack to be 10 years or 150,000 miles.

“The number of failures has been really, really low,” says American Honda’s Juan Avilla. “We expect them to last the life of the vehicle.”

Toyota tells me that some of the original Prius models now have battery packs that have gone more than 300,000 miles.

BusinessWeek magazine reports that when the U.S. Department of Energy investigated hybrid batteries, it stopped its tests “when the capacity remained almost like new — after 160,000 miles.”

What will it cost to replace the batteries if they fail after the warranty expires? No one seems to know since that hasn’t been an issue yet. Manufacturers say they are trying to find a way to  replace the defective cells without removing the entire battery pack. If they're successful, that would dramatically reduce the cost.

And will there be a pollution problem when the batteries come to the end of their useful life? Sooner or later — because they are defective, worn out, or the vehicle is in an accident — the battery pack in a hybrid vehicle will need to be removed or replaced.

Automakers say the batteries will be treated as hazardous waste, similar to any other car battery. That means they will be sent to a recycling plant for proper disposal. The chemicals in the cells will be neutralized and any materials that can be reused will be sorted out. Toyota has established a “bounty” program that pays dealers to send any NiMH batteries they remove to a recycler.

Looking down the road, work is already underway on the next-generation battery for hybrids. The goal is to find a technology that delivers plenty of power, lasts for the life of the vehicle, and is less expensive to make.

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