Slashdot Mirror

The numbers and relations you claim are way off, which is particularly egregious given that so much of this data is readily available in press releases from Nissan and Tesla.

While Nissan sold a 100 MILLION.

In what time period, or should I say era? According to Nissan's own press report, the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance combined sold 10.6 million units in 2017, with Nissan's portion being 5.8 million. Your claim is off by almost a factor of 20! To put how outrageous your claim is in context, the total number of cars produced worldwide, over all companies and excluding commercial vehicles, appears to only be about 73 million! Even including commercial vehicles still falls short of 100 million.

They've sold more Nissan Leafs than Tesla has sold total cars, and the Leaf is just a footnote for Nissan.

In another press release, also from January 2018, Nissan states that they sold their 300,000th Leaf vehicle. Meanwhile, in February 2018, it has been reported that Tesla delivered their 300,000th vehicle. So your claim that Nissan has sold more Leafs than Tesla has sold total cars is certainly debatable. With currently available data from searching the web, it looks like Nissan and Tesla were roughly at parity in Feb. 2018 in terms of electric vehicles sold.

In any recent period, if Tesla sold X thousand, Nissan sold X million.

That is a bit of disingenuous comparison. Of course Nissan sells more cars than Tesla currently does since Nissan is a much older and larger company and it manufactures more types of vehicles and at many different price levels. Meanwhile, Tesla is a much younger company that so far has mostly catered to the luxury market (though it is starting to push the prices down with its newer Model 3). Nevertheless, your relational claim of "if Tesla sold X thousand, Nissan sold X million" is way off, again by almost a factor of 20! Per the figure I cited above, Nissan sold 5.8 million vehicles in 2017 while Tesla delivered 101,312 Model S and Model X vehicles in 2017 (note that Tesla also sold a handful of Model 3s in 2017 not included in the 101,312 figure). The correct relation, which is only good for 2017, is that Nissan sold about 57 times as many vehicles as Tesla did, not 1000 times as you claimed. But who cares about comparing total vehicles sold over all types!

The appropriate comparison here is the number of electric passenger cars sold and with that we see a much different perspective. Per the above figures, Tesla and Nissan appear to be at near parity over Tesla's entire production history. But since you said "in any recent period", let's look at more recent, shorter term, data. According to Tesla's press release, they delivered 29,997 Teslas in Q1 2018. By contrast, in the same time period (January through March 2018), Nissan sold 23,989 Leafs. Note that Nissan reports its sales by month, per region, so one has to add up the Leaf sale figures for Japan, Europe, and the US across the January through March 2018 production and sales PDFs, all found here. Point is, in the most recent quarter, Tesla outsold the

The numbers and relations you claim are way off, which is particularly egregious given that so much of this data is readily available in press releases from Nissan and Tesla.

While Nissan sold a 100 MILLION.

In what time period, or should I say era? According to Nissan's own press report, the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance combined sold 10.6 million units in 2017, with Nissan's portion being 5.8 million. Your claim is off by almost a factor of 20! To put how outrageous your claim is in context, the total number of cars produced worldwide, over all companies and excluding commercial vehicles, appears to only be about 73 million! Even including commercial vehicles still falls short of 100 million.

They've sold more Nissan Leafs than Tesla has sold total cars, and the Leaf is just a footnote for Nissan.

In another press release, also from January 2018, Nissan states that they sold their 300,000th Leaf vehicle. Meanwhile, in February 2018, it has been reported that Tesla delivered their 300,000th vehicle. So your claim that Nissan has sold more Leafs than Tesla has sold total cars is certainly debatable. With currently available data from searching the web, it looks like Nissan and Tesla were roughly at parity in Feb. 2018 in terms of electric vehicles sold.

In any recent period, if Tesla sold X thousand, Nissan sold X million.

That is a bit of disingenuous comparison. Of course Nissan sells more cars than Tesla currently does since Nissan is a much older and larger company and it manufactures more types of vehicles and at many different price levels. Meanwhile, Tesla is a much younger company that so far has mostly catered to the luxury market (though it is starting to push the prices down with its newer Model 3). Nevertheless, your relational claim of "if Tesla sold X thousand, Nissan sold X million" is way off, again by almost a factor of 20! Per the figure I cited above, Nissan sold 5.8 million vehicles in 2017 while Tesla delivered 101,312 Model S and Model X vehicles in 2017 (note that Tesla also sold a handful of Model 3s in 2017 not included in the 101,312 figure). The correct relation, which is only good for 2017, is that Nissan sold about 57 times as many vehicles as Tesla did, not 1000 times as you claimed. But who cares about comparing total vehicles sold over all types!

The appropriate comparison here is the number of electric passenger cars sold and with that we see a much different perspective. Per the above figures, Tesla and Nissan appear to be at near parity over Tesla's entire production history. But since you said "in any recent period", let's look at more recent, shorter term, data. According to Tesla's press release, they delivered 29,997 Teslas in Q1 2018. By contrast, in the same time period (January through March 2018), Nissan sold 23,989 Leafs. Note that Nissan reports its sales by month, per region, so one has to add up the Leaf sale figures for Japan, Europe, and the US across the January through March 2018 production and sales PDFs, all found here. Point is, in the most recent quarter, Tesla outsold the

The numbers and relations you claim are way off, which is particularly egregious given that so much of this data is readily available in press releases from Nissan and Tesla.

While Nissan sold a 100 MILLION.

In what time period, or should I say era? According to Nissan's own press report, the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance combined sold 10.6 million units in 2017, with Nissan's portion being 5.8 million. Your claim is off by almost a factor of 20! To put how outrageous your claim is in context, the total number of cars produced worldwide, over all companies and excluding commercial vehicles, appears to only be about 73 million! Even including commercial vehicles still falls short of 100 million.

They've sold more Nissan Leafs than Tesla has sold total cars, and the Leaf is just a footnote for Nissan.

In another press release, also from January 2018, Nissan states that they sold their 300,000th Leaf vehicle. Meanwhile, in February 2018, it has been reported that Tesla delivered their 300,000th vehicle. So your claim that Nissan has sold more Leafs than Tesla has sold total cars is certainly debatable. With currently available data from searching the web, it looks like Nissan and Tesla were roughly at parity in Feb. 2018 in terms of electric vehicles sold.

In any recent period, if Tesla sold X thousand, Nissan sold X million.

That is a bit of disingenuous comparison. Of course Nissan sells more cars than Tesla currently does since Nissan is a much older and larger company and it manufactures more types of vehicles and at many different price levels. Meanwhile, Tesla is a much younger company that so far has mostly catered to the luxury market (though it is starting to push the prices down with its newer Model 3). Nevertheless, your relational claim of "if Tesla sold X thousand, Nissan sold X million" is way off, again by almost a factor of 20! Per the figure I cited above, Nissan sold 5.8 million vehicles in 2017 while Tesla delivered 101,312 Model S and Model X vehicles in 2017 (note that Tesla also sold a handful of Model 3s in 2017 not included in the 101,312 figure). The correct relation, which is only good for 2017, is that Nissan sold about 57 times as many vehicles as Tesla did, not 1000 times as you claimed. But who cares about comparing total vehicles sold over all types!

The appropriate comparison here is the number of electric passenger cars sold and with that we see a much different perspective. Per the above figures, Tesla and Nissan appear to be at near parity over Tesla's entire production history. But since you said "in any recent period", let's look at more recent, shorter term, data. According to Tesla's press release, they delivered 29,997 Teslas in Q1 2018. By contrast, in the same time period (January through March 2018), Nissan sold 23,989 Leafs. Note that Nissan reports its sales by month, per region, so one has to add up the Leaf sale figures for Japan, Europe, and the US across the January through March 2018 production and sales PDFs, all found here. Point is, in the most recent quarter, Tesla outsold the

The second is, the neodymium in the magnets for the motors is only a rare earth. That tends to mean there's a fair bit of strip mining to get it.

Tesla doesn't use rare earth metals in their motors or batteries. I realise they are not the whole EV market, but they are a large fraction of it. There's a general downward trend in the rare earth consumption by the other EV manufactures. One example

Nissan has been researching fuel cells since 1996

That aside, there are some 'self-healing' plastic coatings that I'd be interested in seeing on a cell phone. I pretty much don't care how it feels - I just want it to work well and be low-maintenance.

Nissan makes a self-healing clear coat for their cars, I wonder how difficult it would be to use the substance on a flexible, plastic screen.

I'd love to see $30 smart phones on the horizon - plastic-sandwiched OLED could help there.

Eff that, wake me when someone starts marketing these

But the brake-torquing fans are going to be pissed! :D

And the motorsport fans, the fans that actually take their car out on the track for fun "lapping days". Or they were, several years ago, when Nissan introduced the "mash both the gas and brake and gas turns off" feature in their sportscars.

But then all the Toyota acceleration madness started happening and Nissan started trumpeting brake override as common-sense and then it suddenly didn't sound like too terrible a feature.

http://www.nissan-global.com/EN/ENVIRONMENT/SOCIAL/CARWINGS/

the car uses realtime traffic data to do GPS route creation

there's also some weird stuff about comparing fuel economy with other car owners. something hypermilers have to do manually. of course, there's the question of why an all-electric car gives a fuck about fuel economy...

the basic laws of thermodynamics suggest that internal combustion engines are about as efficient as they are going to get.

BS... just last week I was reading an analysis on new tech being developed by Nissan along with Ford and a few others, a Variable Compression Ratio (VCR) system.

This tech would would dramatically improve the performance of turbo charged engines not just in terms of power output but also in terms of fuel effective, and it would make the engine run much much smoother.

I guess I don't understand how combustion engines are supposedly tapped out. Keep in mind that most of the engine's performance characteristics are still very much mechanical and are basically "hard coded" for a good median of power output and fuel economy since they don't have the technology to dynamically change the characteristics when one is needed over the other.

Even Variable Valve Timing is in it's infancy and the current methods for that are crude at best, there are alternative methods under development that could theoretically give you a Corvette when you stuff your foot into it and a Prius when you're just cruising on the highway or around town.

Even the engineering techniques are just starting to get interesting... engines developed completely new in the last decade mark the first engines completely prototyped in a virtual environment as opposed to the old method of just building something similar to what's been done before and making slight improvements through real world testing. Chevy's LS series motor (found in the late 90s Camaro, Firebird, and Corvettes) marks one of the first of such motors and with a 6-speed sees an impressive 31MPG with 330HP. And even over the last decade they've been able to make small tweaks to that power plant in terms of both power output and fuel economy. And there's still a world of possibilities that can be done to improve things still.

In short... If you're just looking at the explosion in the chamber and the resulting torque then yes, combustion engines are already "pretty good" in terms of effency. However that neglects the fact that conditions change mili-second to mili-second in terms of air-pressure, air-temperature, load on the engine, and numerous other things. Engines aren't dynamic enough to work as good as they could in every possible scenario so they're built for a best average across the board.

Why are you giving people an https? Here it is without the 'wrong certificate warning' dialogs,

http://www.nissan-global.com/EN/TECHNOLOGY/INTRODUCTION/DETAILS/AVM/index.html

While it's an interesting concept, especially in Tokyo where you regularly see microvans in spaces with an inch to spare (it's a tax thing, not land cost), do we have anything but PR here?

This could be just another flavour of concept-car, in which case it's no more now than it was in 60s Mechanic's Illustrated. (Yes, I was promised flying cars when I grew up, and I'm kinda bitter.)

The crucial bug to be defeated is it must see everything yet not generate false positives, and that's a very difficult "last mile" to accomplish. Where we are right now is your ubercar backup sensor causes very expensive damage because it was confused the antique metal bar fence.

See the link:
https://www.nissan-global.com/EN/TECHNOLOGY/INTRODUCTION/DETAILS/AVM/index.html

They could coat the display with self-healing plastic resin. Developed for cars, the plastic is fluid enough to erase scratches over time.

Porsche is nowhere near the most profitable automaker in the world. According to their financial report, Nissan made upwards of $3.6 billion in 6 months last year with a profit margin of over 10%. In the same time frame, Porsche made a mere $336 million on $4 billion in sales.

The fact of the matter is that Ford and GM have been hamstrung by overly costly retirement plans and a number of poor decisions (like focusing too much on the SUV market). GM pays out a tremendous amount of its revenue in retirement/health plans for baby boomers that worked there after WW2, and I would assume Ford has similar obligations. If they were to replace those with plans with ones that similar to what Porsche offers, GM would probably be making a few billion a year.

Apple may be profitable in their own right, but eeking out a 5% niche in the market is never going to make you a ton of money. In addition, the majority of their profits come from iPod sales (where they have 50%+ of the market) rather than computer sales. Up their pc sales to 10 or 15% and Apple is suddenly going to making a lot more money.