Nissan Leaf: Future or Failure?

£125k and the rest I don't think should be written on a forum as its relating to it being a bit of a hash up with some safety features not implemented. Only word of mouth but my sources are probably the most interested party in the world of those products.

Tesla Model S will have a 300mile battery pack option!
 
Even if that particular incarnation is nothing to get too excited about, it is at the very least massive progress to see a proper vehicle like that quoted as having that kind of range.

Hopefully the next 10 years should be very exciting in terms of cars. I wonder if we will be viewing high consumption V8/V12 ICE cars as total relics by then, electric certainly has the capacity to make them virtually obsolete.
 
Yes it is an interesting time, I love what Im doing for that very reason, there are few golden rules to observe and the rest of the time its innovating new stuff and tackling completely new issues that no one yet is an expert in.

Im not sure what speed they are quoting for 200 miles but engine removal and the boot of a Range Rover does leave some rather impressive space for a twin battery packs. Just about the trade between range and cost. Nissan could do you a 300mile Leaf, but would cost around £45k.

The "Liberty Electric E-Range" has a huge 75kWh battery pack (compared to the Tesla Roadster's 53kWh and the 24kWh stack found in Nissan's family-friendly LEAF),
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If a large amount of the motoring population switch to electric vehicles in the future, wont all this charging cause problems for the grid? People are talking about helping the environment but what about the power stations running to produce more electricity in order to power these things?
 
PumpkinSteve said:
If a large amount of the motoring population switch to electric vehicles in the future, wont all this charging cause problems for the grid? People are talking about helping the environment but what about the power stations running to produce more electricity in order to power these things?
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When it takes 3.7Kw of electric to produce 1 gallon of petrol, I doubt it very much.
 
PumpkinSteve said:
If a large amount of the motoring population switch to electric vehicles in the future, wont all this charging cause problems for the grid? People are talking about helping the environment but what about the power stations running to produce more electricity in order to power these things?
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Other methods of generating electricity will take over though, such as those discussed in this thread.

Noise-loving motorists shouldn't be too concerned; options on electric cars will include a noise generator that can replicate the V8 burble.

Can bet that very few would be using it though...in 50 years the hum of the electric motor will be the central appeal of the conventional motorist.
 
Jonnycoupe said:
The 100 miles Focus BEV is claiming half the charge time of 240V of 3-4 hours, so there's progress in 1 month:p
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I like reading about all the silly claims made.

I'm sure there are some EV advocates who are knowledgable and honest, but it seems that most are lacking in one way or the other. In reality, there is hardly any scope for reducing charge time without changing the supply. Charging is already very efficient. Any improvements will be under 1%, not 100%. Charging a 24KWh battery pack at 3KW (UK mains) cannot ever take less than 8 hours and 24KWh is not much for an EV. You're looking at about 3 miles per KWh for a light car, maybe pushed as high as 5 miles per KWh from plug-in charging by efficient use of extra charging on the go by regenerative braking. There isn't much scope for improvement there either - cars are already pretty efficient in terms of weight, aerodynamics, rolling resistance, etc.

The only place with serious scope for improvement is the battery. It won't get charged any faster, but if it can be made smaller and much lighter for the same charge it will become practical to swap batteries and have them charge in a station rather than in the car.

Assuming the power was available and the battery could take it, what would the limit be on charging rate? Could you, at least on paper, shove 1MW into an EV? I'm thinking that the cable would be a bit unwieldy and safety would be a bit of an issue, but I could be wrong. 1MW could charge a 50KWh battery in 3 minutes, if you had 100% efficiency and every cell somehow prevented from overcharging.
 
Angilion said:
I like reading about all the silly claims made.

I'm sure there are some EV advocates who are knowledgable and honest, but it seems that most are lacking in one way or the other. In reality, there is hardly any scope for reducing charge time without changing the supply. Charging is already very efficient. Any improvements will be under 1%, not 100%. Charging a 24KWh battery pack at 3KW (UK mains) cannot ever take less than 8 hours and 24KWh is not much for an EV. You're looking at about 3 miles per KWh for a light car, maybe pushed as high as 5 miles per KWh from plug-in charging by efficient use of extra charging on the go by regenerative braking. There isn't much scope for improvement there either - cars are already pretty efficient in terms of weight, aerodynamics, rolling resistance, etc.
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Not sure what to make of this one...

Its what Ford are quoting, although I guess it could be on US, which of course the clothes drier type connection which I believe is a 32A ring rather than their 110v domestic plugs.

3kW is not a remarkable charge rate, the Focus is 28kWh so your talking in the region of 0.3 charge. Even my 1kWh pack will take 5kW regen and its only NiMH with air cooling.
 
Before EV takes over we will see Plug-in hybrids as the interim step.

This will give battery technology and power production time to catch up and also reduce fuel demand
 
MadMossy said:
So roughly the equivelant of getting ~200mpg in a petrol car then.

Thats pretty damn good, if only it didnt take 8 hours to charge and you werent limited to 100 miles. No doubt by 2012 that wont matter much anyway
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Unfortunately, if more than a handful of people use EVs the government will of course need to tax it as much as they tax petrol now.

It's actually more expensive to run an EV than a comparable petrol car. The difference is obscured by massive differences in taxation and EV advocates ignoring the cost of battery replacement. Then, of course, there's the huge premium for buying the car in the first place (part of which is the cost of the first battery). Even if you ignore tax and ignore battery costs (both of which are silly and unrealistic things to do), you're still looking at 100,000 miles before the (completely fictional) "savings" recoup the higher initial cost. If you took the extra cost and put it in savings instead, the "savings" from the EV might never offset the money plus interest, depending on how many miles you do per year. But it wouldn't matter anyway, because the savings don't actually exist.

You can argue that an EV is more enviromentally friendly, though even that's not as clear as it might initially seem because making batteries is environmentally damaging and generating electricity is usually environmentally damaging too.

Arguing that it's really cheaper to run is simply wrong, though.

The only undeniable advantage of EVs at the moment is that they're better for your political image in some ways. The environmental advantage is debateable and the financial advantage is fictional.
 
Simon said:
Engines do a good job of hiding a lot of noises in a car. Electric cars will have some really annoying rattles after a while :p
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Powerful electric motors aren't silent and the noise they do make tends to be much more annoying than an ICE.

The owner/driver of White Zombie, who is an EV advocate and drag races EVs to counter the idea that EVs have to have dire performance, describes his car as sounding like "a drill on steroids".

I think EVs will have internal and external speakers, anyway. Which will probably lead to a huge market in drivetones and annoying gits driving around with something like Crazy Frog playing loudly from their car's external speakers, linked to the rpm of the motor.
 
PumpkinSteve said:
If a large amount of the motoring population switch to electric vehicles in the future, wont all this charging cause problems for the grid? People are talking about helping the environment but what about the power stations running to produce more electricity in order to power these things?
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My rough calculations earlier in the thread indicated that we'd need to increase electricity generation by ~25% to cope with domestic EV use, more if commercial vehicles also go electric. Nobody seems to have checked my figures, so I'll go with them.

It will be a problem, but it isn't one that's impossible to solve. Tidal and wave power could be used to generate a fair bit of electricity in Britain. Nuclear might not be popular, but if a working Thorium cycle reactor can be built (and it almost certainly can) then nuclear could provide plenty of electricity for a long time. Wind can add some. Not much, but it helps. Solar is useless in the UK, but it could be generated effectively in Africa and carried to the UK over an HVDC link with less than 10% transmission loss.

There are options. It's doable.
 
MadMossy said:
The only thing holding everyone back is battery technology and it wont take long for that to improve with billions of $ being spent on research and development.
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The STAIR project is one of the most promising battery R&D projects and has, if I recall correctly, only received £1M in funding.

It would be amusing if that was the one that delivered the goods.
 
Jez said:
Me too, the idea of an electric car sounds fantastic to me. Total smoothness, and i assume even less engine(motor?) noise than current petrol V8 models.

The huge issue being the unusable (for me) range, and the lack of "prestige" options. They'll get there i'm sure. The idea that one day in the future i may be able to buy a 300-400 mile range electric S-Class which i can charge at home is an amazing thought.
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A fairly heavy car with prestige options (that will use more electricity) would probably need about 125KWh of charge to do 400 miles, and that's a generous estimate allowing for efficient regenerative braking. Bear in mind that the official mileage of very lightweight EVs without extras is in the region of 3 miles per KWh, i.e. 133KWh to do 400 miles, so I am being very generous with that 125KWh estimate.

With current UK mains electricity, 125KWh would take 42 hours to charge even with 100% efficiency (which is of course impossible).

There are limits, some of which are difficult to overcome and some of which are impossible to overcome.
 
Jonnycoupe said:
Not sure what to make of this one...

Its what Ford are quoting, although I guess it could be on US, which of course the clothes drier type connection which I believe is a 32A ring rather than their 110v domestic plugs.

3kW is not a remarkable charge rate, the Focus is 28kWh so your talking in the region of 0.3 charge. Even my 1kWh pack will take 5kW regen and its only NiMH with air cooling.
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As I said, there's not much scope for improvement without changing the supply.

You're not going to get one car that charges 100% faster than another on the same supply, i.e. you're not going to get the 100% improvement in charge time that was claimed.

Or are you saying that current charging is so extremely inefficient that it can be improved by 100%?
 
To be honest my comment was tongue in cheek with regard to progress in such a short space of time. Im one of few people on this forum who actual work within not only product development of an automotive company but involved on electrication of the vehicles so I'm relatively aware of many issues around vehicle electrification of Hybrids, EVs and plug-ins.

For example you could get an advanced contactor arangement within the battery pack to unlink the cells such that you are able to charge two seperate packs without touching the house, a 13A plug supply from the garage and a second from my kitchen. I will now go and replicate such a load on my junction board by turning my oven on to make some bread, put the kettle on and do some hoovering.....

Im not sure what you mean by changing the supply when my 240v supply has 100A circuit breaker, I'm making no statements regarding efficiency either.

My point was simply Nissan quote 8hrs yet Ford 4hours for a similar attribute carrying product
 
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Angilion said “EV advocates ignoring the cost of battery replacement.”
How does that cost compare against all the moving parts you have to replace in a patrol car but no longer have? I am no car expert but surely the long list of moving parts you contently replace on your car no longer exist in a EV’s? Surly all those little things like engine Oil, fanbelts, sparkplugs along with the bigger ones add up to a fair amount. Is that more or less than a battery replacement?

I never understood why people don’t add in patrol car servicing and parts needed as part of the running cost of owning a car. Do EV’s need servicing as much? Is the servicing more or less?

EDIT: Doesn’t cold weather affect battery’s? When we have a bad winter how will that affect EV’s?
 
Angilion said:
With current UK mains electricity, 125KWh would take 42 hours to charge even with 100% efficiency (which is of course impossible).

There are limits, some of which are difficult to overcome and some of which are impossible to overcome.
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How does it? My house has a 120A supply to it, if you charged the car at a nominal 50A, thats a ~10 hour charge time isnt it?
 
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