About 6 years ago I picked up a pack of AA NIMH batteries. The pack contained two AA Nickel-Metal Hydride (NIMH) batteries rated at 1200 mAh. Think of mAh as the gasoline. The bigger the number in front of the mAh the more gasoline you have in the battery. I can’t remember exactly how much I paid for these batteries, but it wasn’t cheap. From what I remember they were about 10 to 11 dollars a battery or around 21 to 22 dollars for them. It was expensive but I justified the purchase by telling myself that I would be able to reuse the batteries over and over and over again, and eventually I would recoup the cost of the batteries. This was better than having to buy alkaline batteries over and over again, filling a landfill with them and adding toxins to our environment. What I didn’t realize was that at 1200 mAh the batteries had very little gasoline in them and so they tended to spend most of their time on the charger. Read on.
Two years ago I bought a digital camera from HP. The sales person told me that I should buy rechargeable batteries since the camera tended to eat batteries very fast. I didn’t purchase the batteries from her since I knew that I had two NIMH rechargeable batteries at home that I could put to good use with the camera. What I learned was that at 1200 mAh the camera would almost immediately show that the batteries were depleted. The camera would instantly display low battery and alarm. I would get a shot off or two before the camera would shut down. I turned to buying non-rechargeable batteries with better results; however, the camera would go through them very fast. Every few pictures I would need fresh batteries to keep it going. I ended up purchasing large packs of disposable batteries to try to get my cost for using the camera down. It was still costing me a lot of money just to keep that camera operating.
I took a look at rechargeable batteries again. I found a high capacity NIMH made by
Sony, that listed that it had a 2100 mAh capacity. Again I don’t know how much I plunked down for the batteries but again I think it was somewhere around 21, 22 dollars for two batteries. They had close to twice the capacity then my old MINH batteries. They were Sony’s attempt to try to solve their created problem of battery eating digital devises. These batteries worked better. They took a long time to charge, but I would charge them while I was sleeping so it wouldn’t be that much of an inconvenience. Still, the cost of these batteries was such that I would use them as the primary battery for the camera and then have regular disposable batteries as the backups. I would often forget that I had the NIMH batteries and leave them on the charger while I picked up my camera bag to head-out the door for some sort of picture taking opportunity.
A year ago I was at a Best Buy looking at the rechargeable batteries. The smallest pack they would sell was a 4 pack. I looked closely at the batteries and the capacity had grown again. Now the batteries boasted a capacity of 2500 mille-amp hours. The price again was around 21 to 22 dollars, but this time it was for 4 batteries. I bought a new charger with my pack, which put the price somewhere around 46 bucks. Expensive? Yes, but I was beginning to believe that NIMH had finally arrived at a capacity that my energy hungry camera could use. Plus with 4 batteries I could then have a rechargeable battery as the backup for my rechargeable battery. I found that this combination of rechargeable batteries backed up by rechargeable batteries was a good one. I could take lots of pictures. When I got a low battery alarm I switched out the batteries and kept going.
Digital pictures suddenly became very useful for me. I had been the editor of a newsletter at my work. I started handing out my camera to contributing writers to take pictures. I became the newsletters photographer. It was so much easier to just take one step from download straight to the publication. The more I used the camera the faster the 4 batteries would become depleted. I started to think I would need 4 more batteries so I wouldn’t have to go to standard batteries at all.
When I went back to the store, I found to my surprise that I could get 8, that is 8 NIMH AA batteries with 2500 mAh gasoline tanks for 24 buckaroos. That is 3 dollars a battery. This is more than twice the capacity of the original NIMH batteries at close to one fouth the price.
I keep thinking, what if this kind of reduction in price and increase in capacity happened to the NIMH batteries that were made for the EV1 and RAV4 EV? Where would we be today? EV1s could probably go as far as the TESLA electric roadster, 250 miles on a charge, only the battery price would be somewhere near that of lead acid batteries.
Well, the surprises keep coming. While I was writing this piece I googled NIMH batteries and found that NIMH battery capacity has been creeping ever upward. I found AA batteries with 2800 mAh. The prices have been coming down too. Way down. Look at this set of 20 batteries for $24.26. That is less than a buck and a quarter per battery folks. What kills me is there on the box is the very camera that started me on this journey in the first place.
Now comes our part. GM has always claimed that demand is not their for fuel efficient or alternative fueled vehicles. The Volt is the ultimate alternative fueled vehicle since it can take a variety of fuels. We need to overwhelm them in their own survey to let them know that demand is real and is overwhelming.
Click here to go to the Chevy Volt website
When at the site go to the lower part of the page and to the left. Click on Vote for Volt Survey. Vote yes on both questions.