A recent article in the Wall Street Journal notes that sales of replacement car batteries has jumped in the past few years. Citing a study by MR Industrial Inc., the article reports that replacement batteries sales increased between 2005 and 2006, from 59.9 million to 67.7 million units. Moreover, the 2006 numbers represent a 25% increase over the average of the previous ten years, which was approximately 54 million a year.
Why the sudden increase? There could be a lot of reasons. Undoubtedly, consumers are keeping their cars longer than they did a decade ago, mainly because of vast improvements in vehicle reliability. But there’s also another matter: Automakers are adding power-hungry new features. Prime among those are such features as electrically-assisted power steering (1.0 kW), heated seats (0.5 kW), rear defrosters, high-power stereos (0.3 kW), security systems, and satellite navigation systems.
We’ve written about this previously. Automakers are looking hard at bigger power budgets for vehicles. Today’s conventional vehicles typically have 12V electrical architectures and 1.5 kW power budgets. They’re strained to the limit. And with such features as electrically-actuated valve trains (3.0 kW), heated windshields (2.5 kW), and steer-by-wire (1.8 kW) on the horizon, too, a change is imminent.
Hybrid designers are already taking steps to deal with those demands. Toyota’s Prius works off a 500V electrical architecture, instead of today’s conventional 12V architecture. Ford escape uses a 330V system.
But the bottom line is that the skyrocketing electrical demands appear to be taking a toll, and we might already be seeing that toll in the sudden jump in aftermarket battery sales.
Tweet This
29 
