Associate
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Gonna be a very long time before I ever consider one of these for myself.
Nissan Leaf: Future or Failure?
- Thread starter Emphacy
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Soldato
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Most charging wil be fine from a 13A plug, the charge station discussion mainly relates to the $2200 (which US Gov pays half and nissan put your part into car payment) charger for 240v charging, 110v there would take 20hrs to fill so only sensible as a top up charge routine, 240v is around 7.
The big 3 phase 415v quick charger also requires the top spec variant for the extra electronics in the pack and hence cant be retrofitted to lower spec. The SL and SV are the variants, not sure which is best.
Onto solar, sunny day here might see 800W/m^2. A panel might do 20% when flat, so thats serious surface area to give 8kW which is an optimistic guess at power to maintain a Leaf at 50mph.
The big 3 phase 415v quick charger also requires the top spec variant for the extra electronics in the pack and hence cant be retrofitted to lower spec. The SL and SV are the variants, not sure which is best.
Onto solar, sunny day here might see 800W/m^2. A panel might do 20% when flat, so thats serious surface area to give 8kW which is an optimistic guess at power to maintain a Leaf at 50mph.
You can get grants for solar panels cant you ?
Wonder how bigger surface area you'd need to be able to charge your Nissan Leaf up every day given our climate.
Most Peoples commute to work and back is within the Nissan Leaf's Range. So you'd just need to store the energry through the day from the solar panels, then charge your car up when you got home and went to bed.
Rinse and repeat and you've got free commuting - apart from purchase cost and maintenance of course.
Wonder how bigger surface area you'd need to be able to charge your Nissan Leaf up every day given our climate.
Most Peoples commute to work and back is within the Nissan Leaf's Range. So you'd just need to store the energry through the day from the solar panels, then charge your car up when you got home and went to bed.
Rinse and repeat and you've got free commuting - apart from purchase cost and maintenance of course.
Soldato
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Exactly who cares about potential electric duty then. Wimd turbine probably better for UK and then some rather large poqer storage, obv cheaper tech., or no longer good enough for cars.
reckon it would be doable then ?
To generate enough electricity yourself to charge it ?
Soldato
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Are you sure. Or more conjecture? Take it back to SC.
Worth noting the 41.8p per kWh feed in tarriff for home gen is about to drop significantly though.
The government is not going to allow us to travel all around the country without paying them some nice extra money, and road pricing is not going to work that well.
They will find a way to tax electric cars
Soldato
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I think the Leaf's fantastic - it's the first 'proper' electric car that doesn't really compromise its interior or equipment. It is, in effect, a completely 'normal' car that just happens to run entirely on electricity. It's quite fun driving something all-electric too, it's not as boring or uninvolving as you might expect - it's just different.
Obviously the range is going to be an issue for some people - so obviously an electric car just wouldn't be suited for them.
These things are still in their relative infancy so manufacturers are going to have to take a few leaps into the unknown to get things to develop and progress - give it another five or ten years.......but it's a great start.
Obviously the range is going to be an issue for some people - so obviously an electric car just wouldn't be suited for them.
These things are still in their relative infancy so manufacturers are going to have to take a few leaps into the unknown to get things to develop and progress - give it another five or ten years.......but it's a great start.
its a valid point
If we all bought Nissan Leaf's tomorrow and wind turbines to charge them with and the Haulage Industry started using electric trucks, how would the government fill that massive duel tax void ?
The environmental excuse is all of a sudden out of the window, because we are using renewable green energy to power our cars. And if the wind turbine gets plugged directly into our own storage and never goes near the grid, they'd have no way of charging us for our usage either.
If we all bought Nissan Leaf's tomorrow and wind turbines to charge them with and the Haulage Industry started using electric trucks, how would the government fill that massive duel tax void ?
The environmental excuse is all of a sudden out of the window, because we are using renewable green energy to power our cars. And if the wind turbine gets plugged directly into our own storage and never goes near the grid, they'd have no way of charging us for our usage either.
Probably not, although if you had figures.
The skystream turbine is about the best you can do at home, which is about £12k to buy and install. Average house consumes 5000kwh with this turbine you need an average of 5.5m/s to achieve this. Which is doable in a lot of places.
So all depends how many kwh you need to power the thing.
PV would be about £30k but on the continent about 40% less, yay for rip of England. They are also coming on leaps and bounds where small turbines have pretty much stalled. Including PVT which is heat and electricity. Even ignoring green reasons it's still worth it, oil is increasing in price and security is dropping. Coal we have decades of the stuff within our boarders.
Government has also now removed planning permission for installing recharge points at public/work car parks.
No choice but gps tracking or cctv/numberplate tracking.
Once the price drops I could see people getting them as teh second house hold car, which does the work/school/shop run and nothing else. I would say most housholds have two cars and only one do they ever use for the long journeys.
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Soldato
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Depends where we are with spending erc. Its all a bit boring conjecture by wanna be politician who dont appear to run for local councils when the thread is just about the known product that is the Nissan Leaf.
Soldato
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The thing with auxillery power is that its power use it dictated by time not distance so you never can be sure. Headlights are minimal, not sure if HID but even halogen at 55w a light then 5W tail comes to 120W. Say 140W use after DcDc losses. Its rated at 280 ish KWh per mile. So 1 hr use of lights is half a mile range, thats not a lot change at 60mph. Heater, depends on air fliw through cabin, if preheated before and insulation etc. Not sure on the element power rating but even 2kW full chat will take 8 miles off, again not a lot at 60mph but at 8mph it essentially halfs the range...
This is wht heat pumps will be the next step to introduce, to drop that power demand to 30% of a resistance heater. Just like the Ev1, honda EV+ and the toyota rav 4 EV.
I think 75 miles will be met on all but the most agressive or high speed (70mph+) driving cycles.
This is wht heat pumps will be the next step to introduce, to drop that power demand to 30% of a resistance heater. Just like the Ev1, honda EV+ and the toyota rav 4 EV.
I think 75 miles will be met on all but the most agressive or high speed (70mph+) driving cycles.
In warm weather right now they can get from Milton Keynes to MIRA. In cold weather just slightly less.
This is straight from the guys at MIRA who were charging one up in our car park after it ran out of juice. This was a week before Christmas.
Don
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just what i was thinking
30 mins at a petrol station, can you really wait 30 mins to fill your car with fuel?
and if theres only 1 charge unit, and theres several cars waiting, then you will be there all bloody day! lol
Associate
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Best places would be in car parks - especially supermarkets and service stations - just plug in to top up when you do your shopping or getting something to eat - so you wouldn't be waiting for anything to top up, just going about your normal business.
Of course that would involve the infrastructure having to be put into place/maintained, which is unlikely to happen until EV's are popular - and they're not likely to become popular until there's an infrastructure in place to have them replace the conventional petrol/diesel car in anything other than city driving.
From £23,900 including £5k government incentive...
Where is my nearest charging station? Is there like a website with a map to show them in the UK?
Was about to mention that these cars were pretty pricey. Not only that but one would need a drive to charge the car off of public roads.
There was a viz top tip I saw on twitter the other day, something along the lines of:
Make people think you have an electric car by driving into a petrol station and waiting there for 8 hours