|
Okay, I've seen the Nissan Leaf in person -- it is one of only two actual cars they've made, so far. It cost them ~$2.5 million to build it. It looks larger than I expected, and it has a typical-for-today look: thick doors and thick seats, a quite tasteful dash with large screen GPS navigation system (more later) and the dash is all electronic. The backseat looks pretty decent, and the hatch/boot looks pretty darn large and deep.
The battery is 24kWh, lithium manganese polymer (IIRC) designed and built by Nissan. There are 48 ~inch thick cells that are about the size of a piece of paper; and each of these has 4 prismatic "sub-cells". They are in a sealed enclosure, and it has a 10 year warranty -- it will have 70-80% of its capacity at that time. There is no active cooling in the battery pack.
There are three types of charging:
Level 1 is 120v AC and will take up to 16 hours to go from no charge to full charge.
Level 2 is 240v AC and will take up to 8 hours to go from no charge to full charge.
Level 3 is 440v DC and will be able to charge 0-80% in ~27 minutes.
Charging starts after you plug it in, and after the car and the charger have "talked" to each other, and everything is hunky dory. It will be nearly impossible to get shocked, even in a rain storm, as the cord is not energized until after this happens. I believe I heard someone talking about being able to program the car/charger to work during specific times, to take advantage of (possibly) lower rates.
The cost of the car will include the battery. You will be able to buy the car with the battery -- or you can lease the car with the battery. It's not "official" at this time, but they will *not* be leasing the battery separately from the car.
You will be eligible for the $7500 federal tax credit for buying the car. If you have a charger installed (this may be for a Level 1/2 charger?), you can get up to an additional $2,000 tax credit, as well. Level 3 chargers are eligible for more, IIANM.
They will announce the actual pricing in April (at which point I believe they will start taking pre-orders). For the moment, they say the price will be "the same as a similarly sized and equipped [conventional] car." Remember the nav system I mentioned? This is part of the battery monitoring system, and my understanding is that it is standard equipment:
There are 4 ways to monitor the battery charge:
A "miles left" estimate display.
A percent of charge left display.
A circle of approximate range highlighted on the nav screen display
An "idiot" light that warns you when you get close to 10% (IIRC) charge left, and it soon thereafter goes into a "limp home" mode that limits your speed to 55mph, (and probably turns off things like the A/C?).
I forgot to ask about how regenerative braking works. Darn. Oh, they will start shipping at the end of this year, to the pre-orders, and then after that, they will be at the dealerships. They had a dealer conference/training happening concurrent with this public "tour". Tomorrow/next they will be in New York city.
|