All-electric Leaf for the green crowd
San Antonio Express-News
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Nissan has unveiled the planned production version of its all-electric car, a four-door hatchback called the Leaf, which goes on sale next year in Japan, Europe and the United States.
The Leaf is a midsize car that “comfortably seats five adults” and can go more than 100 miles between charges, a range designed to “satisfy real-world consumer requirements,” the No. 2 Japanese automaker said.
No prices have been announced for the Leaf, which is similar in design to the Versa. The car is expected to qualify for special tax breaks. Nissan
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Recharging could take as little as 30 minutes at a special commercial charging facility or up to eight hours at home, the company said.
Although no prices have been announced, Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn has promised that the Leaf would be “affordable” and not priced out of reach of most consumers (for example, a new Mitsubishi electric car is priced about $45,000).
The design is similar to that of the current Nissan entry-level compact hatchback model, known in the U.S. market as the Versa. That car, part of the so-called C-segment that also includes such vehicles as the Honda Civic and Toyota Corolla, begins at $10,000 in the United States and about $13,000 in Japan. It features an economical four-cylinder gasoline engine.
Nissan said the Leaf would be “competitively priced in the range of a well-equipped C-segment vehicle,” which could run into the midteens or beyond.
The Leaf also is expected to qualify for tax breaks and incentives designed to entice people to buy zero-emissions vehicles.
In comparison, the five-passenger gasoline-electric Toyota Prius and Honda Insight hybrids start at $20,000. But they come not only with a battery-operated electric motor, but also a gasoline engine that actually does the bulk of the driving, along with helping to keep the battery pack for the electric motor charged.
The Leaf has no such alternate power. It’s pushed along by an 80-kilowatt electric motor, which gets its power from an advanced lithium-ion battery pack.
The Leaf has no tailpipe, making it a zero-emissions vehicle (although the electricity that is used to charge it mostly will come from power plants that do produce emissions that could be harmful to the environment).
Nissan said it named the car Leaf because it “makes a significant statement.”
“Just as leaves purify the air in nature, so Nissan Leaf purifies mobility by taking emissions out of the driving experience,” the company said.
The Leaf’s new lithium-ion battery, jointly developed by Nissan and Japan’s NEC Corp., will expand the range of the electric car to more than 100 miles between charges, while decreasing the battery’s size and weight, said Mark Perry, director of product planning for Nissan North America.
While 100 miles isn’t nearly as far as automakers had been hoping for with advances in battery design, it’s a vast improvement over the 40-mile range of earlier electric vehicles that use lead-acid or nickel-metal-hydride battery packs, such as those now found in the Toyota Prius gasoline-electric hybrid, the company said.
“This battery offers advancements not only on mileage but also on weight and size, giving us the ability to package it in the vehicle more easily,” Perry said.
Nissan plans to assemble the Leaf at its Smyrna, Tenn., manufacturing plant beginning in late 2012, using batteries that will be made in a new facility on the same site — financed in part by a $1.6 billion loan from the U.S. government.
Construction will begin on the battery plant during the second quarter of 2010, said Mark Swenson, Nissan North America’s vice president for manufacturing engineering.
Until U.S. production begins, Nissan will assemble the batteries and the cars in Japan.
Electric cars are not a new idea. At the turn of the 20th century, there were more electric than gasoline cars on the road.
Around 1915, there was even a gasoline-electric hybrid car on the market, which used a drive system similar to the one found in today’s Prius, but minus the Toyota’s computerized controller.
The electric cars of the early 20th century, with a limited range between charges, soon were replaced by gasoline-fueled vehicles. And for the next 100-plus years, the idea of electric vehicles was mostly abandoned because of the lack of new battery technology that would extend their range.
But with last year’s steep gasoline price increases and a growing movement away from using imported oil for transportation, the idea of pure electric cars is getting serious consideration.
The Leaf will offer the equivalent of 357 mpg when comparing the use of electricity to what it would cost to power the same vehicle with gasoline, Nissan said.
Other automakers are working on electric-vehicle projects as well, including Chrysler, which plans to provide the U.S. Postal Service with a fleet of 250 all-electric Chrysler Town & Country minivans in Michigan, North Carolina and the New York City area beginning later this year. It’s part of a test of vehicles the company plans to begin selling to the public within the next two years.
Chevrolet next year will introduce the Volt, a plug-in hybrid electric car that runs on an electric motor powered by a lithium-ion battery pack but also has an onboard gasoline-powered charging system to help extend its range when a charging station is not available. Tuesday, General Motors announced that the Volt had a fuel-economy rating of 230 miles per gallon.
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