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Nissan Unveils All-Electric LEAF
MojoRilla writes "In Japan, Nissan unveiled their all-electric LEAF (press release, and Flash site). Slated to launch in late 2010 in Japan, the US, and Europe, this car will have a 100-mile range, seats 5, has an advanced computer system with remote control by IPhone, and promises to be competitively priced. While this car's range won't work for everyone, it could be a game changer as a commuter car." Recharge time is 8 hours with a 200-volt power source, and "just under 30 minutes with a quick charger" (no further details given) to charge to 80% of capacity.
The Volt is not a BEV, it is an EREV. That is, the Volt is a plug-in series hybrid that uses a small gas engine to drive the electrical system (somewhat like a diesel-electric locomotive except with gasoline). The goal is to run all-electric for 40 miles (covering 75% of commuters) and kick in the gas engine when the battery gets low enough.
And it appears to be on schedule for 2010. More info here and here.
It could make the car disappear. Parking problem, solved
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Not only does the GEN not have to meet as many emissions standards
That's the spirit!!
XML causes global warming.
There are places in the world that are literally just a single city, with nowhere else to go: Singapore, Dubai, Hong Kong, Monaco, Windhoek and many little islands. Those could make good use of these type of cars.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Seriously... is everyone in America a "can't do" blowhard these days?
An auto manufacturer from Japan just did what American companies said was impossible, and has built a 5 seater EV with a 100 mile range with today's technology.. and the problem will be running some goddamn conduit and 220V?
ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS?
Please - just because this is useless to you, doesn't mean it's useless.
Americans on average have 2.28 cars per household. The majority have a garage and can easily plug the thing in.
The average driver drives 15,000 per year. Most days have a predictable amount of driving that will be well under the 100 mile range.
At $30,000, this car will be cheap to operate over the life of the vehicle. No oil change, simple transmission, no coolant. Inexpensive energy.
Having friends who already own electric cars - I can tell you that the joy of having your car "full" every morning is wonderful. No more unplanned trips to the gas station. It's hard to state how fantastic this is.
Imagine if you had to take your cellphone to the mobile phone store a couple times per week to "fill" it up. We tolerate that with cars because that's what we're used to.
As a 5 seater hatchback, I can drive the kids to school, commute and get groceries. With 100 mile range, I can drive up to wine country for the weekend. Sure, I'll have another vehicle to tow my boat and drive into the mountains. But this car sounds fantastic and will handle 95% of my trips. If they build it, I will definitely buy one.
But I guess I'll be the only one, since it's "useless"
Sure, I use another car for driving vacations, but these battery electric cars are perfect for some of us.
I'm starting a company to do just that -- Celadon Applications, LLC. We already have a fully functional prototype and are in the middle of raising money to add some more features and polish to make it into a commercial product (the prototype is a bit cluttered and could use to be more user-friendly). The prototype makes use of weather forecasts, 10-meter altitude data with a vertical resolution of 4 inches, and so forth, along with driver behavior modeling and physics calculations every several meters to determine how much charge you'll have at each point along the trip. The final version will have a very powerful crowd-sourced, trust network-validated charger database overlay on the map as well (it's coded, but is currently being debugged). So you find your route won't make it to your destination, no problem -- you drag it over to a charging station. And you can click on the station, get pictures, reviews, find what there is to do in the area, etc. It'll initially be populated with not just "known" recharging stations, but also "likely" recharging places, such as RV parks and so forth -- as well as phone numbers and email addresses to contact their owners. And you can add your own charging stations, even just a high-power outlet in your garage -- and list a fee for it if you want.
We've done some accuracy validation on the simulator part with a Tesla Roadster. Of 7-ish legs that we tested, all but one of them were in the 2-4% error range. The last one was on surface streets and was about 12% error because Google was way off on how much traffic there was going to be (they said 40 minutes, it actually took closer to 25); when we hard-coded it to get the amount of traffic right, it fell back into the normal error range. To counter that issue, we're going to add real-time traffic forecasts in wherever available. Oh, and this is so far without any of Tesla's help. If we can get more detailed hardware specs, we can do even better.
The market forecasts range wildly, but they range from a million or two EVs up to 32.7 million shipped by 2015 (Wintergreen Research). Either way, it's a massive market, and even with just a couple percent penetration, there's huge profit potential and the potential to create a lot of jobs. And it should help open up the EV market to a lot of people who wouldn't otherwise consider them. And most of our competition is way behind -- the standard approach, you'll find, is just to draw a circle around the car and say this is how far you can drive (as though you can go just as far over the top of Mount Whitney as you can over flat land on good roads).
Aeris Died For Your Sins.