Ironically, the biggest problem with battery powered series hybrids, is the problem I’ve never seen addressed before - Secondary market value.
Take the Volt for example, the battery pack in that thing is estimated to cost between 6 and 7 thousand dollars.
If you buy a Volt, you had better plan on paying it off.. Because who in their right mind is going to buy a used car with a seven thousand dollar bomb under the hood?
And that’s just the battery.. Now you have to have it installed.
Will these costs come down? Possibly. But with different manufacturers all using proprietary battery types, and shapes, etc, I don’t know that the issue can simply be dismissed out of hand as a development cost that can be expected to drop significantly by the time the second and third generation vehicles come around.
Fire is a concern also. The amount of current required to move an entire vehicle, even a small one, is substantial. There’s allot more power there than most people probably suspect. If you ground it, even for a second, it becomes a seven thousand dollar arc welder.
Alternatively: The biggest problem with battery powered hybrids of the plug in variety is also one I’ve never seen addressed anywhere before - What do you do if you live in Minnesota?
Battery power degrades significantly in the cold, and that has been mentioned many times in the past.. But what do you do for heat?
There’s only one way to make an electric heater, you dump a bunch of current through a resistive load and you cook it off. There’s your heat.
The problem is, it takes allot of current to do that. Who in their right mind wants to be stuck in Minnesota traffic, at night, in the cold, with their heater positively destroying the range left in their plug in hybrid?
You can do what GM did in the EV1 and use a heat pump type of arrangement. That will work great, if you have 2 hours for the thing to heat up in the morning and defrost, and if you never open the doors... Cause then you’re going to freeze your buns off. This is part of the reason the EV1 was only leased in warm areas.
Contrary to popular opinion, Gm didn’t “kill” the electric car. They did a great job with the EV1. It just wasn’t up to the task.