Leaf dash: The Nissan Leaf interior includes dashboard displays that can show the location of nearby charge stations.
Nissan
The all-electric car will tell drivers where to recharge.
When the all-electric Nissan Leaf hits the U.S. market next year, consumers will have to consider its relatively short 100-mile driving range, as well as the scarcity of charging stations beyond their own homes. Nissan plans to tackle these concerns by providing information--and lots of it--to help drivers manage the recharging process.
The success of the Leaf and other electric cars "is going to come down to how comfortable people are that they can get where they want to go, won't run out of charge, and won't have to go through some process that will take them a long time and impact their ability to use the vehicle," says Rod MacKenzie, vice president and chief technology officer at the Intelligent Transportation Society of America, a research think-tank in Washington, DC.
In other words, all-electric cars will need to connect the recharging infrastructure to in-car telematics.
The Leaf will do this with a communication module that connects via satellite to Nissan's global data center. It will be similar to existing telematics systems, such as GM's OnStar, which detects mechanical breakdowns and accidents and beams this information back to base.
But the Leaf will add an emphasis on monitoring the battery's condition and helping drivers keep their batteries topped-up. Planning recharges will be crucial: giving a Leaf a full charge will take 16 hours from home-based stations, at the voltages available in the U.S. or Japan, or eight hours at the higher voltages available in Europe. At a fast-charging station, equipped with high-voltage plugs, a charge will take 30 minutes--still a long time compared to filling a gas tank.
The Leaf's dashboard display will show remaining battery life, the location of charging stations, and which stations are within range. When the car gets low on power, the driver can put it into a "limp" mode so it drives at the most-efficient speed to ensure it gets there.
Once the driver plugs a car into a charging station, Nissan sends e-mail updates on how the charge is progressing, and when it's done. And finally, the owner can use a mobile device to switch on the car's electric air-conditioner or heater before detaching it from the charging station, so as not to waste battery life after pulling away.
"Most people think that the charging infrastructure is the Achilles' heel of an electric vehicle project. But it's really not," says Mark Perry, Nissan's director of product planning and advanced technology strategy. "We are doing this to address peace of mind. We think people will recharge at home 80 percent of the time. But this lets people feel comfortable with the what-ifs," he added.
Perry sees the dashboard information offered by the Leaf going even further in the future. "Eventually what will be available is not only charging station locations, but if they are occupied and unoccupied, and even a reservation process," says Perry.
As Nissan and GM prepare to ship flagship electric vehicles, Toyota is taking another road.
GM and Nissan hope to reduce costs by reusing depleted batteries.
If federally funded factories don't get enough demand, even more government spending could result.
Also, stove circuits are typically rated at 40 amps. At 230V and 40A, the time for a full charge is reduced to 3 hours. For dryer and central air circuits (30A), this time becomes 4 hours.
The plugs for these charging circuits would need to be designed to withstand 10,000 insertions - once a day for 25 years, or three times a week for 65 years.
Three hours if the on board charger will utilize that much current. Tesla has a special purchase home charger for their Roadster that can handle a lot of amps and bring the batteries up fairly fast.
The plugs for EVs have been standardized and I'd bet that frequency of plug ins was part of the formula. But one does reach a design point at which it is cheaper to change out the plug every 6, 8, 10 years than engineer it to last for 25.
The article does imply the circuitry could handle that current, when they claim that you can charge in 30 minutes at a station.
However, I would never buy this car. It would be a nice commute vehicle, but I'll be it's overpriced -- might as well just buy a little diesel motor, much cheaper. We're getting there, though.
"but I'll be it's overpriced -- might as well just buy a little diesel motor, much cheaper"
VW Jetta Diesel 30/41 MPG. MSRP $18355.
At $3 per gallon that's $0.07 to $0.10 per mile for fuel. 12,000 miles per year and you're spending $840-$1,200 to tank up. Plus you need to figure in oil changes and more frequent brake jobs. (EV regenerative brakes take a lot of load off the mechanical parts.)
Nissal Leaf. Price not known a the moment, but rumored to be close to $20k after the federal $7,500 kick in.
0.25 kWh per mile. Average US electricity price $0.105 kWh. Cost per mile $0.026. Cost to fuel 12,000 annual miles $315.
$315 vs. $840 to $1,200 plus $200? (oil changes/brake repairs). Could be a thou a year more to own the diesel.
And I doubt many would predict oil prices to stay low once the world's economy recovers and demand returns.
Unless Nissan is taking a HUGE bath on the Leaf, no way are they going to have an end-user cost of $20,000.
The batteries themselves are going to cost $10,000, on the low end, maybe even twice that.
Losing *some* money on a new product is okay, but it doesn't follow that Nissan will be okay with losing any amount of money.
That said, I'll still expect the Leaf and the Volt to sell out in their first year or two. There are enough people in this country willing to pay a big premium to tell the oil companies to go pound sand.
The question is if the technology (and batteries) come down in price for the rest of us. I think they will, but it's not my money on the line so it's easy to say that.
Don't forget the Federal $7,500 kick in.
I read someone today predicting a $32,000 price. Minus the $7.5k assist the price comes down to $24,500.
Nissan might eat a few thou more to make the price really sweet just to move a lot of units. It's my understanding that once annual battery production gets up to the 100,000 unit level battery costs will drop 50%. The quicker Nissan can get sales volume up the quicker they can cut manufacturing cost and make money off a modestly priced EV.
If federal and state governments built (or had a contractor build) recharging stations at existing rest stops along major highways such as I-95 (which runs through the U.S. East Coast megalopolis), this would make all-electric vehicles much more usable in the U.S. If they made those rest stops NICE (currently the best that can be said is that some are not awful), then many people wouldn't mind a half-hour stop every 2 1/2 hours. Actually, one might only need a 15-minute stop to "fill up" partly. (I'm assuming that partial recharges wouldn't damage the batteries.) So you could drive 2 hours, "top it off" for 15 minutes while you "visit the facilities," drive almost 3 hours, then stop for a (nice) meal and a total recharge. And so on. You could take your electric car from Boston to Atlanta doing that. Such an infrastructure would certainly broaden the U.S. market for all-electrics, and wouldn't require blanketing the entire country in recharging stations. The initial infrastructure would be minimal: 100-200 recharging stations would cover the major long-distance routes used by 80-90% of Americans in the East, West, South, and Midwest. (The West is too big and too sparsely settled to bother with, at least initially. Westerners can use hybrids.)
"If federal and state governments built... recharging stations...along major highways...."
Nissan has partnered with a US company to create 12,750 plug in points clustered in a few select cities where the Leaf will first be sold. And they're in the process of installing rapid charge points along select routes between a few of these cities.
If you Google "Washington state electric car corridors" and select the "mcclatchy" cached page you can read some detail. (McClatchy has taken down their original article.)
So what happens if the batteries go flat when driving down the road? Call AAA for a tow while stuck in the middle of I-95. At least provide a roof of solar panels that can assist getting to the nearest electrical outlet. For us who don't drive much and who have the car always parked in the sun that would be great, even if it took several days to charge. It sure would help in remote areas. Also provide a tow hitch for towing the spare batteries in the trailer with solar panels all over it.
There's really not that much roof space considering the efficiency of affordable PV. And flat is not a good orientation. Panels need to face the sun, as close to 90 degree angles as possible, otherwise lots of the light will be reflected off the surface rather than absorbed/converted to power.
As the article says, running out on the freeway (or deep in the woods) would mean that the driver chose to ignore the information provided.
Rescue would likely be a like any other significant breakdown. Send out the flatbed truck and winch you on. Your insurance might not be willing to pay for many of those rescues since they would be your fault....
1 square meter of solar panels on the earth's surface gets up to 900 Watts under ideal conditions (high noon, equator, clear skies). Panels are about 20% efficient. So you would get about .18 KWh every hour, or enough to go barely 1 mile. Better hope it isn't raining.
It's really not worth it, especially given the added weight and cost.
Mobility and PV gets very important as well as electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid have an important component electric power inside. They are actually mobile power cells that aggregate and stay parked approximately 95% of the time. Batteries power in gross installations could become a key factor for the grid. Also when PV its on the surface and interconnected.
This is a great opportunity for employers. Employers can show their support for electric vehicles by having charging stations in the parking lots. They can have dedicated charging stations and meter the consumption for automatic payroll deduction. This will extend the range of the cars as well as increase the popularity. The government can offer tax incentives to the companies to encourage the setting up of charging stations. The same can be done by fast food companies offering free charge while eating. So it can be with banks, schools, colleges, movie theatres, shopping centers.This is the way to increase the use of electric vehicles. Do check out the concept solar/electric vehicle at
http://dancrissco.wordpress.com/category/sustainable-cities/pemmpod/
http://tinyurl.com/ybh6tqo
China will benefit from electric cars, not America. Read the NYT article www.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/business/global/01minerals.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1 to see how China now has a near monopoly over the resources necessary to make electric vehicles. China has announced it will cease exporting many of the rare earth metals needed to make components. Rather, they will sell the finished components instead.
But also, consider that putting a large number of electric cars on the road will drive up the cost of neodymium and other rare earth metals, thus making your dream an illusive one.
I think you are misreading that article.
What it is saying is that currently China is producing those rare earth minerals. Not that they are found only in China.
We used to have a lithium production plant in North Carolina which closed down when China underbid the rest of the industry. We could reopen it. Or we could get our lithium from geothermal waste water at the Salton Sea plant.
Dysprosium is found throughout the Earth's crust, as is terbium. Southern China has one site in which they are concentrated, but it's not the world's only site.
Neodymium is mined not only in China but also the US, Brazil, India, Sri Lanka and Australia. Although it belongs to "rare earth metals" category neodymium is not rare at all.
As demand increases more production will come on line or China can choose to the low cost supplier for all.
Remember what happened a couple of years back with solar panels. For the first many years of PV production solar panels were manufactured using surplus refined silicon from chip manufacturing.
As demand for PV increased that surplus was absorbed and panel prices shot up. That extra demand caused a couple more refining plants to be opened and prices fell back down.
We've got lots of rare earth minerals in waste piles from mining/refining more valuable minerals. There was not enough demand (translate that to market price) to make them worthwhile to extract.
One poster wrote, "But also, consider that putting a large number of electric cars on the road will drive up the cost of neodymium and other rare earth metals, thus making your dream an illusive one."
Not true.
That statement incorrectly assumes that rare earth metals are essential for electric and hybrid cars. They are not.
Toyota and some other manufacturers use rare earth magnets in their synchronous motors, but there are other options which work perfectly well. Tesla uses an induction motor which does not require rare earth metals. It is also possible to use a variable switched reluctance motor that does not use rare earth metals. Although VSR motors do have problems, they can be solved. Moreover, VSR motors do not have the temperature limitations that are cause by rare earth metals. Also, rare earth metals are mechanically weak thereby limiting speed and power. So actually, by running them much faster, VSR motors could be made smaller and lighter than motors using rare earth metals.
When making statements, it is good to realize that usually there is more than one satisfactory way to do something.
I strongly recommend you read
the article: Top 20 quotes from Toyota and Honda executives criticizing plug-in battery cars http://www.h2carblog.com/?p=577
Here's one of the quotes:
This quote was given by Bill Reinert from Toyota at around minute 46 in the following video of a session at the Google plug-in battery conference in June 2008 in Washington, D.C.:
“The fact of the matter is there is a huge variability in the gas mileage you get, I see 100 miles per gallon here. And yeah, you can do it if you are driving 35 miles an hour. But if you’re on the 110 Freeway going to Pasadena where you’ve got an on-ramp that’s not even as long as this stage, you’ve got to run wide-open throttle to get into the lane and not get killed. And when you start doing that, you know, what you started out with a 20-mile range becomes a 5-mile range. And what you started out with 100 miles per gallon ends up being more like the common Prius. So you gotta worry about that kind of stuff, because you don’t want to send mixed messages out to the customer.”
Here's what Nissan says about their "100 mile range"...
"The LEAF will have a range of 100 miles per charge under average, everyday driving conditions."
"Average, everyday driving" would not be 35 MPH with a tailwind, but a mixture of city stop/start and freeway, wouldn't you think?
"And when you start doing that, you know, what you started out with a 20-mile range becomes a 5-mile range. And what you started out with 100 miles per gallon ends up being more like the common Prius."
The Tesla Roadster has a 200 mile range at 65 MPH. At about 107 MPH the range drops to 100 miles.
That is decrease of two, not four.
http://www.greencarreports.com/image/100179459_tesla-roadster-range-versus-speed
I think that the automobile manufacturers are missing the point. With today's switching power supply technology, the car could easily be designed to plug into the outlet directly and still be able to take advantage of rapid chargers where they exist. The advantage of the electric car is that you use it for your 30-40- mile commute, plug it in overnight and do it all again in the morning.
One other problem I see with the Leaf is the Li Ion batteries under the seats. Lithium fires are nasty to say the least as the product of combustion is Lithium Oxide which is quite caustic; furthermore, standard firefighting aparatus can not be used on Lithium fires, even normally non-reactive nitrogen can not be used as nitrogen is not inert as far as Lithium goes. Until every volunteer fire department in the country has a lithium fire suppressor like Lithex on hand, expect Li-Ion power sources in automobiles to make the NEWS from time to time
I remain,
The Old Soldering Gunslinger
Guest (DockScience)
I remember a comment by a lithium battery developer a few years ago: (from memory) "The better a lithium battery becomes, the more it looks like a hand grenade."
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
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Bob Wallace
71 Comments
Mistake?
You list 16 hour charging times for the US and 8 hour for Europe. I think you used the US 120vac outlets to calculate your 16 hours.
Europe households have 240vac outlets.
US households have both 120vac and 240vac outlets. Water heaters, stoves, clothes dryers, and large central air conditioners use 240vac. It would not be very expensive to install a 240vac outlet in ones garage for 8 hour charging.
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bildan
39 Comments
Re: Mistake?
I just checked the breaker box in my 1972 single family house in Colorado. I have 250 amp 240V service. Some rewiring could assign most of that to charging a car. I don't see a problem.
100 mile range would be very satisfactory for 90% of my driving if the car was always fully charged overnight in the garage. Even better, I work at home so an electric car could be "topped off" during the day.
The remaining hurdle is the up-front cost. Battery costs have to come down a lot.
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