Nissan Leaf: Future or Failure?

Not sure.

The head lights are LED and use half the power of halogen. There is the background electricaal systems and infotainment. So thats about 50W of what I read as 200W, maybe its the cooling fans running air through the battery pack, the inverter cooling system or EV motor coolant pump.
 

98mph.

http://nissan-leaf.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/773326-2011-Nissan-Leaf-SMG.pdf

This is to the service manual, lots of on inspection items for typical automotive products rolling down a road but it fundamentally comes fown to brake fluid every 2 years and coolant at 100k miles.

I noticed the LEAF’s energy consumption while booted up was just .25 KW. The inverter, multiple ECU’s dash and MFD displays are powered up and we are only consuming 250W? That is a very well designed system to put it bluntly!
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Acceleration to a stop sign about 1/2 of a mile away and it had more pickup than I had suspected while still maintaining a 3.5 to 4 mile/KW per the ECD. Wow, accelerating to over 30 mph with the ECD showing less than 300 Wh/mile? I have never been in an automobile that could do that! EVER!
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Now back through a number of stop signs and lights and its back towards the launch. A pegged iECD and the aECD is climbing fast. 6.5, 6.6, 6.7, 6.8 and then 6.9 as I turn into the Hotel parking lot. I place the shifter to P and the DTE reads 51 miles. For a non-hypermiling friendly drive route thanks to the lights, signs non-priority routing and a short burst of lower highway speed, 6.9 miles/kWh or 144 Wh/mile is the best I have ever achieved in anything and that includes the Honda Insight at over 200 mpg after conversion!
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From CleanMPG. Looks like that 250W is car systems.
 
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WReading wiki, just shows why america is so good at technology. Goverment grant to install 11000 recharge points in 12 key cities and 99million towards devlopment and reaserch both of the leaf and how ii uses energy in different enviroments, whatsort of journeys people do and how the infsdtructure works, all to make tge 2nd gen better in
all ways.
What do we get, removal of planning regs for recharge points.
 
AAnd it keeps getting better, in japan nissan will install quick charges at most of there dealerships and other places, so that there is a charger within 40km throughout the country, will charge batteries to 80% in under 30mins, they thought this through, this really does look like the start of the future in electrical cars.
 
If the investment in the infrastructure is there, it can be a viable alternative as a commuter vehicle.

Something V8 for the weekend, EV for trudling back and forth from work. I'd do it if the purchase chose of them wasn't so prohibitive at the minute. Still given the time ...
 
I think Electric with fossil/bio fuel derived range extenders are the way forward.

EV mode around citys then when you need a long trip you switch to the ICE or gas turbine etc running on Fossil/bio fuel for the long motorway run where the engine can also charge the battery.

Challenge will be fitting all of that in one car.

Quite worrying for my job too this no engine oil lark :p
 
Yep give it 6- 10 years and will be on gen 3 manufacture costs should be down, infadtructure mostly sorted and hopfully better baytery packs. Or at least in other countries.
 
i don't think the battery packs are the problem Clarkson and his followers would have you believe.

Its interesting reading from Johnny that his insight is still on its original batteries nearly 10 years on.
 
I think those quick chargers are in the region of $45k? To be fair we are a about 15 months behind the US delivers and the US are only just deciding on the quick charge plug which is to looking like it will be the Japanese type. Onces thats finalised everyone else is good to go and should avoid turning up to charge your VHS player with a Betamax tape ;) Its been a running issue with the infrastructure and is why the limited CABLED scheme in Cov and brum with the TSB funded cars has got of the ground as they are all using a common plugs for the chargers to be installed.

I need to rephrase what I said earlier. In two car households it makes the perfect MAIN car, with the second car for long trips/bad weather.

£3800 deposit and £389 a month for a Leaf on lease :eek:. Although I guess the BIK would work for you if could put it through the books with 0% BIK and still get 40p a mile for 10k 'business use'.
 
MrLOL said:
Its interesting reading from Johnny that his insight is still on its original batteries nearly 10 years on.
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Ive started to grid charge mine to keep ontop of the pack balance issue that had started to show up though.

Nickel Metal Hydride, could keep these going for 30 years :P Its far more tolerant to abuse. The Rav4 EVs are still pottering around in LA on the same sort type, just the Cobasys large fomat that are now patent protected by the Ovonics/Chevron partnership. Although I think that has now shifted to Sanyo.
 
Saw a Fifth gear clip on this car recently, seemed quite impressive.

Combined cost to make both fuels + mpg from an electric car and a petrol car was 3 - 5 times less in the LEAF's favour. Never mind the savings at the pump, the running costs minus an engine would be a sizeable saving no?

Shame about the noise (lack thereof) though :p
 
Simon said:
I think Electric with fossil/bio fuel derived range extenders are the way forward.

EV mode around citys then when you need a long trip you switch to the ICE or gas turbine etc running on Fossil/bio fuel for the long motorway run where the engine can also charge the battery.

Challenge will be fitting all of that in one car.

Quite worrying for my job too this no engine oil lark :p
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I agree. I would have that solution tomorrow if I could afford it. I would also happily follow it up with a full electric for the second motor.
 
steviexx32 said:
I think this a great idea and is already in operation. Take a look at this website that I posted earlier.

www.betterplace.com
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It isn't already in operation and it isn't currently practical. That website is about plans for the future and it's dependent on the massive improvements in batteries that I mentioned earlier.

The weight to charge ratio of Li-ion batteries is about 10Kg/KWh. Even a very short range urban runaround like the Leaf has a battery weighing about 200Kg. The best currently available combination of weight and range is with the Tesla Roadster, which gives about 240 miles from a 480Kg battery if you drive it carefully.

Swapping out even a 200Kg battery, let alone a more practical 500Kg battery, is not a simple task. It's not something that can easily be done in a few minutes for each of the many thousands of cars that are refueled every day.
 
Telescopi said:
Has anyone got the data to calculate how much extra electricty generation capacity we'd need to run electric cars?
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I can cobble together a rough estimate.

A car insurance company looked through records of 2 million motorists and came up with an average driving distance of 7,755 miles per year per driver last year. There are 34.5 million drivers in the UK. If they all drove the average for the 2 million drivers looked at, that would be a total of 267,547,500,000 miles.

Driven normally and with efficient regenerative braking, you get about 4 miles per KWh from an efficient electric car, less for a cheaper one. The Leaf, for example, gets 70 miles from 24KWh - just under 3 miles per KWh.

Going with 3 miles per KWh and the 267,547,500,000 miles estimate from the insurance company, that's 89,182,500,000 KWh.

Total transmission losses from generation to battery...I'm not sure about that one. Call it 5%, which is probably a bit on the generous side.

Total electricity required would be about 95,000 GWh per year.

I think current UK electricity generating capacity is about 350,000 GWh per year.

So, if all my estimates and guesses hold up, we'd need to increase electricity generation by 25%.

How about to generate enough hydrogen to run fuel cell cars or hydrogen combustion cars (as it is less efficient but can run 24/7 picking up slack from low load periods)?
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Interesting question, but I haven't a clue. Hydrogen is far less efficient though, and that's ignoring transportation costs, storage costs and the deceptively difficult problem of keeping hydrogen in anything.
 
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