Of course cars can make it 1,000,000 miles. But this guy is talking like a Leaf is the only car out there that can get to 1,000,000 for $35,000. Nope. Any well-maintained car can (in theory) get to that number, but many, many components will have to be replaced. The Leaf is no different.
Notaduck wrote:
I don't knock electric cars, but there's just been too many false-dawns before.
Don't worry. Gasoline is a limited resource. Something new replace gasoline/oil dependent cars. Oil supplies should become depleted, at least for personal car use, in about 50 years. I
It takes a very long time to bring new vehicle concepts to the marketplace. Change has to start now. Automakers who fail to prepare for the future will fall to the wayside. This is simple business. Unfortunately, many overpaid executives focus on short term gains, and not so much on long term viability of their companies.
Japanese cars normally get 300,000 to 500,000 miles in the Siberian Tundra anyways. Nissan envisions selling millions of these cars. With mass production battery costs will drop dramatically. Third party knock-offs will be available from China and sold on eBay. Not to mention used batteries picked from wrecks at the junk yard. It's up to us to build out the electric grid and to provide charging stations. I've seen electric plugs in the parking lot of fleabag hotels to keep engines warm in the winter in Fargo & Winnipeg, so it doesn't take an Iranian Nuclear Scientist to figure it out.
Showroom anxiety will kill this vehicle. Lots of people (including many on this forum) will say it's great and it's just what they need. Then they'll think about things like
What if we both need to go on long trips to different places?
What if one night after work I forget to plug it in?
How much less range do I get if I use the air conditioner?
Do I want to spend my life worrying about how far I am from home?
Most people won't make real sacrifices to be more environmentally friendly. When push comes to shove, they won't buy it.
The Leaf will catch on rapidly. The value proposition favors the bulk fleets. The parking ticket lady, fire department managers, local salesmen, local courier vehicles, maintanence, etc. Those enterprises must have the commitment and support of a dominant world technology juggernaut like Nissan before they will commit decades to a product. Then the budget motel chains like Motel 6 will provide charging stations to boost business, spurring movie threaters, big box stores, supermarkets, malls, parks, schools, restarants, etc. to do the same. Charging stations will be like the water trough for horses. I.E. up to 100 years ago, if you wanted more customers, then you had better had have a water trough in front of your store.
What we need is solar chargers that connect to the other side of the earth so it can charge while we sleep. Get up in the morning and presto.
[quote]dukerdog wrote:
What if we both need to go on long trips to different places?
This happens less than you think. Either rent a gasoline car, or wait until service station start offering fast electric, air, and/or hydrogen refueling. That will happen. Oil companies will become energy companies.
What if one night after work I forget to plug it in?
What if you forget to set your alarm clock? What if there is an accident on the road that makes you late to work? What of you forget to flush the toilet? Life is full of unknowns? Life wouldn't be interesting, otherwise.
How much less range do I get if I use the air conditioner?
Gasoline cars get less range with the AC on. They also get less range if you break a lot. This is nothing to worry about. All cars will experience similar problems.
Do I want to spend my life worrying about how far I am from home?
There is a lot to worry about in life. Will I get a raise? Will I lose my job? Will my girlfriend marry me? The list is endless. Worrying about how far you are from home should be very low on your list. If it's high on your list then never travel further from home than you can walk, or run, back in a day. Forget air travel. What if you get stranded far from home?
Most people won't make real sacrifices to be more environmentally friendly. When push comes to shove, they won't buy it.
This is true for most everything. When gasoline for personal is limited first, and later banned, you will buy something different. The writing is on the wall. Goods transportation will get first dibs on gasoline, not you.
Clell Adams wrote:
What we need is solar chargers that connect to the other side of the earth so it can charge while we sleep. Get up in the morning and presto.
No, the Moon always has one side that faces the sun. Don't forget your basic science from school.
Electric Vehicles wrote:
As an Industrial Engineer please be aware that EVs have a totally different Cost of Production Curve than Fossil Fuel Vehicles. The Leaf is listed at $25,000 after US tax rebates. I would expect Nissan can cut the retail price of a new Leaf EV to $2500 in 10 years as battery technology improves, leveling off at that price point.
Some states, like California, are offering additional tax rebates that bring the price down to just over $20K. And the feds are also subsidizing half $2,200 cost of Nissan's residential charger, which can charge the Leaf in around 8 hrs.
I saw a car on TV last night that ran on regular old garbage. The show did not indicate if it was in mass production or just available on a limited basis, but Marty and the Doc used it to crank the Delorean up to 88.5 MPH just fine. It seemed like by 2015 it might be the norm and it worked just as well for regular vehicles or ones that were converted hovercrafts.
a change will do you good wrote:
This happens less than you think. Either rent a gasoline car, or wait until service station start offering fast electric, air, and/or hydrogen refueling.
Doesn't matter if it doesn't happen often. People will base their purchase decision on that possibility. And fast charging stations won't help the situation. Nobody wants to go on a trip where they have to stop every 75 miles for 30 minutes.
What if you forget to set your alarm clock? What if there is an accident on the road that makes you late to work? What of you forget to flush the toilet? Life is full of unknowns? Life wouldn't be interesting, otherwise.
You forget to plug your vehicle in the night before and you're screwed for the day. People don't want their vehicles to make their life "interesting." Not like that anyway.
Gasoline cars get less range with the AC on. They also get less range if you break a lot. This is nothing to worry about. All cars will experience similar problems.
The difference, of course, is that when you run out of range in your gasoline car sooner than you think, you stop at a station and in 5 minutes extend your range by 300 miles.
Do I want to spend my life worrying about how far I am from home?
There is a lot to worry about in life. Will I get a raise? Will I lose my job? Will my girlfriend marry me? The list is endless. Worrying about how far you are from home should be very low on your list. If it's high on your list then never travel further from home than you can walk, or run, back in a day. Forget air travel. What if you get stranded far from home?
Is the above what the Nissan dealer is going to say to a potential customer? Your philosophical arguments are nice, but they aren't going to convince people to buy the car.
When gasoline for personal is limited first, and later banned, you will buy something different. The writing is on the wall. Goods transportation will get first dibs on gasoline, not you.
None of which will happen soon enough to help the Leaf.
electrified car wrote:
Actually, the most innovative car I know of a French designed compressed vehicle. The car is being built by Tata motors, India's largest car maker.
http://www.mdi.lu/english/This car can be zero pollution if the air compressor used to charge it is renewables based.
Of course, renewables based charging could be done with an all electric car.
Air compressor technology is much simpler than electric engine technology. This is probably why most people in the U.S. haven't heard of it. It is a threat to the automotive maintenance, and oil industries. It is not really a threat to service stations. They could still provide refueling points using high speed compressors, or high speed electric chargers.
For short range driving, less than 100 miles, an electric or compressed air car is the way to go, at least until service stations offer recharging/refill options, and the range gets over 200 miles per charge. But for local driving, less than 100 miles per day, which represents the vast majority of driving in the U.S., these two types of vehicles are a great low pollution option.
The problem with the compressed air cars is that they have to be built so small and light that there is no way the will pass U.S. Safety standards.
Also there was talk about building a Tata air compression car that had the ability to refill while driving, using a gas powered air pump. Some claim that if they can work it out, that vehicle would be able to drive 2000 miles on ONE gallon of gas.
The permanent battery Leaf EV is only the beginning of incredible EV technology that Japan has been working on for decades. Toyota, Nissan, Honda, and other Japanese are currently working on interchangeable battery packs EVs. It allows you to pull up to a service station, swap batteries, and continue on your trip. Whether they can make it simple, safe, convenient, and cost effective depends on many factors.
You serious? Finally here?? Yeah right watch a movie called "Who Killed the Electric Car?" We've had this technology for a very long time and I doubt that this car will get very far without oil companies crushing and destroying it. If it fails it will be due to oil lobbyists stopping regulations that need to be put in effect for these cars to succeed. For long trips there simply needs to be a replacable fuel cell that is already charged. If you're too dumb to charge your car at night or keep a fully charged back up battery then you're just as dumb as pulling up to your house at night with an empty tank of gas. Same deal. Hydrogen cars are not the answer and never will be. There is no way to make them affordable or widely available.
Look, we're not talking about some idealistic future world. We're talking about the 2011 Leaf. Very few people will buy it after considering all the sacrifices they will have to make.
pay to use wrote:
They'll have to find a way to pay for the roads when people start going electric and there is less gas tax revenue.
The fuel tax pays for a VERY small percentage of road funding (I know that it represents less than 50% of the federal transportation budget) and even that is only for state and US highways. In fact most towns fund their local roads with sales tax.
I think that covering the loss of revenue from the lack of fuel tax is a very small problem to worry about.
rlly? wrote:
If you're too dumb to charge your car at night or keep a fully charged back up battery then you're just as dumb as pulling up to your house at night with an empty tank of gas. Same deal.
People forget to set their alarms, people forget to close their garages, and people will, occasionally, forget to plug in their Leaf at night.
And it's not the same deal. If I don't fill my tank up with gas the night before, I drive 1 mile to a gas station the next morning and fill it up in 5 minutes. Or I fill it with 80 miles of range in about 60 seconds.
Keeping a fully charged battery pack is obviously not a solution since you can't change the battery pack yourself. Even if you could, you're expecting people to buy a $10k backup?
I'm in. Reserved one for $99 and I'll order as soon as they're available. Keeping an Escape Hybrid for longer trips but the Leaf will work well or 80% of our driving needs.
Carrier Grade Linux wrote:
They did that with Win 7 and it still dies constantly. The Global Telecommunications industry has adopted Carrier Grade Linux as the mandatory OS for all purchases of ATCA gear for the central office, cellular tower, green box on the street corner, etc. Carrier Grade Linux is very heavily developed in Bangalore / Mumbai by Open Source Engineers. The 1st versions of Carrier Grade Linux are bootable in 100ms (1/10th of a second). The MTBF is the same as for Avionics (airline industry). And it's Open Source, meaning the source code is FREE, No Royalty, NO license. The code is expected to be quickly adopted and integrated into Ubuntu, Debian, Red Hat, etc. Linux versions. Apple, Google, and the entire software industry are being turned upside down, rocked, by Carrier Grade Linux.
Windows 7 doesn't die constantly. It has never crashed on either of my 18 office computers. I know, not a large sample size, but it's enough for me to realize that it doesn't CRASH constantly. And Linux? I doubt it'll ever provide a good enough support base or user experience to gain traction over OS X or Windows in the consumer Market.
Twice in the past month I have driven 300+ miles and back. The Leaf simply wouldnt work for me.