I don't think they will go broke soon. HW and GA will wait because they know what RLL is really worth. I cant see the price of LiCO dropping with demand expected to increase so much....
Tesla Roadster that gets 220 miles per charge and 500 charge cycles, equal to 110,000 miles - but at that point it still has 80% capacity. Some owners might have a short commute and might keep going until the capacity had dropped to 70% or 60% or even less, others might be more fussy and replace the battery at 85% or 90%. Another example would be the planned GM Volt, with only 40 miles per charge but 8,000 charge cycles to equal 320,000 miles - but since long distance trips would be mostly run on gasoline, the lifespan could be much more for some customers.
Conventional li-ion cells, like Tesla uses, are very limited in both age and cycle life. They baby their cells and, by doing so, get some reasonable (but not incredible life out of them) -- 20% loss of capacity in five years.
Tesla is one of the few companies using traditional li-ion. The advanced li-ions sacrifice some energy density for extreme stability, nearly eliminating the aging of cells and giving them cycle lifes measured in the thousands or tens of thousands of miles (hundreds of thousands to millions of miles in a typical EV). These are likely to be warrantied for 10 years (GM has already announced a 10 year warranty for the Volt's pack) and last the life of the vehicle.
How much will a new Li battery cost?
It depends entirely on the cells and the pack size. Traditional li-ion costs $0.30-$0.40/kWh, but would have trouble lowering their prices significantly because the cobalt already makes up 60% of their production costs.
The 53 Kwh LiIon Cobalt Oxide battery for the Tesla Roadster costs about $20,000 or about $380 per Kwh. The AltairNano 35 Kwh LiIon Titanate Spinel battery packs ordered by Phoenix Motors costs nearly $75,000 or about $2,100 per Kwh (but they were prototypes, mass produced version would likely be less). The 1.8 Kwh NiMH battery in the Prius costs about $3,000 or about $1,700 per Kwh.
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