Fully Charged - Test Drive of the Nissan Leaf
 

...uh, which was "fully charged"? the car or the driver?

...maybe I'm jaded, but that was a rather bland, pabulum-laced, ingratiating, review from my perspective.

Agreed. Plus i simply could not believe my eyes at the sight of a piece of junk cheap STARTING BATTERY!!! I mean for crissake would 4 headways have blown the r&d budget

That wasn't a starting battery... that was a lead-acid 12V accessory battery. Just a buffer for the DC/DC converter. If the final version of the car ships with one, I'd replace it with one of these little guys:
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4096/...c53c37d9_z.jpg

Also, while the EV1 was a new car from the ground up, the Leaf rides on a modified Versa platform. There's nothing wrong with platform sharing, just things wrong with Llewellyn's facts, as usual.

I appreciate it wasnt there to start an engine but unless my eyesight is totally shot it was a starting type battery. ie cheap paste plates not deep cycle. Not even agm.

http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...1&d=1281277062
Rectangular plates, six service ports... you're right, it's a floodie. And it looks like it's the same size as a Honda Civic's battery. :confused:

Nice to know i'm not totally mad:) I have no problem with them using an accessory battery as with the key off the traction pack will (should) be offline so it picks up housekeeping loads. But why not a deep cycle gel or agm at the very least?? Or ideally a small lithium pack? Even my ultra budget conversion uses an odyssey pc1500!!!

One of those little critters from that pic is only 7.2 Ah. Might be a wee bit too tiny...

Patrick -

Pretty neat. Definitely a friendly interviewer as others have said, but I still learned some leafy details. I want to see some commuter studies with the Leaf to see if its driving range holds up under real-world conditions.

CarloSW2

[youtube]IMVGLxXmpgA[/youtube]

The Prius (2nd gen at least) uses an SLA of some form. I'm not sure if its AGM or not, but it really doesn't last that long. The owners get roughly 5-6 years out of them. I'll probably be replacing mine this year before winter.

i agree it was a lame car review.. like most that skip pretty much the whole car because of fixation on one particular feature.. this guy couldn't get past the electric is neato factor. From watching this I wouldn't even have learned anything relevant to compare, even something as basic as if it's FWD or RWD.

Maybe that's their one concession to the dealership parts/repair departments, who will otherwise see a lot less business. :-)

Whilst I understand what you guys are saying, I also think you slightly miss the point of the show.

Robert isn't a motoring journalist, and he's not even an expert in the field of EVs. He's an EV enthusiast though, and like many of us non-experts he's happy just to drive the cars and be enthusiastic and report about them to further their cause. It's a little harsh to criticise him for little factual errors when he's not claiming to be an expert in the field.

I don't know about everyone else but at this stage, and until I drive the production model myself (I've already driven the prototype, photos here), I'm quite happy to see what other people think in their first impressions.

Some big magazines have already driven the car and their impressions are freely available on Youtube - so if you're looking for more detail then I'd suggest viewing those.

I'm pretty sure that the Leaf is it's own platform.

2011 Nissan Leaf Preview . Automobile Magazine and others could be wrong, but whether Nissan says it's all-new or a modified Tiida/Versa doesn't matter as long as it gets the job done.

Any platform that offers four wheels, two CV shafts, and room for 600lbs of battery can underpin an EV. No need to re-invent the wheel (or chassis).

I would certainly hope, to cut costs, that the Leaf dips into the Renault/Nissan parts bin for just about everything but the powertrain.

The Leaf's wheelbase is ~4" longer than the Versa, and the battery pack sits in the floor pan, so they have completely different underpinnings. The Leaf is also ~3" wider overall.

Completely different, or streched four inches? The Honda Odyssey and Accord ride on the "same" platform, despite the very obvious difference in size. And then there was the case of Chrysler's cars in 1990... why not build one good platform, then build a complete line of cars and minivans on it?

http://www.hybridcars.com/files/leaf-pack-620.jpg

Now you've got me curious... where is this packaged, and what goes in the trough in the battery? Rear legroom?

Having no exhaust tunnel will free up space in the back. I hope they find a way to make good use of it.

The Nissan rep when I had my drive in the prototype told me that the Versa-based prototype had been stretched, so it's entirely possible the Leaf is based on a stretched Versa platform.

The trough is where the rear passenger's feet are. The higher hump is (I believe) under the rear seat.

The 3" increase in width is very different, and the floor pan is completely different.

[youtube]qZhbHcjYgjU[/youtube]

Fully Charged Nemesis electric supercar
 

[youtube]LfP1P-ohN-w[/youtube]

A big petroleum refinery uses as much electricity in a city of 250,000 people.

IT'S WHISPER QUIET!

>WHAT?

I SAID, IT'S WHISPER QUIET!




Robert Llewellyn uses misleading (and sometimes outright bad) math, and he is an unreliable source.

http://www.transportation.anl.gov/pdfs/TA/635.PDF

Refineries on the whole are 90.7 efficient, which is on the rise as the effect of energy price pressures and process improvements exceed the effect of the decreasing quality of crude we can pump from the ground. They draw 2% of the US total of electricity consumed (42TWh/yr), which I suppose would be equivalent in some ways to a city of 1.5m people. So, I could see how some greenies could conclude there are exactly six refineries in the United States.

Hi Matt -- Robert Llewellyn has been filming at a large UK refinery (he mentions this in the video), and he was told this by the manager of the refinery.

I'll be interested to hear the details, but I take the manager's word for it.

I didn't see the figure of 42TWhr/year in the pdf that you posted so I'll just take your word for it.
US produces 8.923 million barrels of gas per day so it takes 12.9kWhr of electricity produce a barrel of gasoline.

The average household in US uses 936kWhr/month -> 11232kWhr/year and has 2.54 people. That means each person using on average 12.12 kWhr/day.

So a oil refinery that used as much electricity as 250k people would have a capacity of: 250k * 12.12 / 12.9 = 234k barrels/day.

This site list the capacity of oil refineries in the US:
Top U.S. Refineries - Energy Information Administration. Energy Rankings

So our theoretical oil refinery would be #25 out of 141.

What was so misleading about the statement that a large oil refinery would use the same amount of electricity as 250k people?

The 42TWh/yr figure is on p2, Table 1, cell G10.

The issue is that Llewellyn has developed a near-religious belief that shuttering refineries will by itself be sufficient to power a fleet of electric cars. I have not found data to support that thesis. In fact, I have provided sufficient data in other threads to refute it.

A city of 250k people has not just residences, but also industrial and commercial sectors which each make up about a third of the market. So assuming the rest of your math is fine, Llewellyn's refinery uses as much electricity as a city of 83000 people.

Similarly, a refinery doesn't just produce gasoline for personal transportation. They also provide non-energy products, as well as the fuel that powers agriculture, industry, freight, and most mass transit. Llywellyn doesn't appear to "get it".

The details I would like to learn:

* How many kWh is used by a refinery (and how many therms of natural gas, too) in a day/week/month/year.

* How many gallons of gasoline are produced in a day/week/month/year.

* What percentage of the total output is gasoline vs the other products; and the proportion of the input energy used to make those other products.

...to arrive at an average kWh + therms embedded in each gallon of gasoline.

Neil,

The data you requested are all in Table 2 of http://www.transportation.anl.gov/pdfs/TA/635.PDF - "2008 U.S. Petroleum Refinery Inputs and Outputs".

They don't spell out what percentage of the energy content of the output is motor gasoline, but they do mention that 84.6% of the refinery outputs' energy content is distillate fuels, which to my mind is the first seven bolded items under "Refinery and Blender Net Production". So if you add up those seven items' energy content and divide the energy content of 3.1 billion bbl of gasoline into it, and multiply by .846, you'll get gasoline's share of the output.

Multiply that fraction by the 42TWh in from Table 1, and there you go.

I wonder if they add *all* the energy used by the refinery; for things like pumps, lights, secondary systems, etc. If they are basing it on the overall numbers of energy used by a refinery:

34kWh * 15.4% = 5.236kWh per gallon. Which is enough to drive 20 miles at 250Wh/mile or ~34.9 miles st 150Wh per mile. That's just the refining. If they are only adding the energy directly used in refining, then that is not accurate.

Let's not forget that if electricity is to be penalized for the losses to generate and for the grid, then the refinery has to add that embedded carbon into the gasoline. And the other stages of oil exploration, extraction, transportation, storage -- also add more energy, and each of those added energy have their own overhead of embedded energy, too.

No, no, no. 15.4% is the fraction that is "other than distillate fuels". You need to find the energy-weighted fraction of distillate fuels that is motor gasoline, then multiply that by .846*42TWh to get the purchased electricity assignable to gasoline.

Also just as important what type of pollution is being freed from the crude in the form of liquid, solid and gas based pollutions. (remember the type of crude plays a role in that)

Also the type of crude massively effects efficiency, Cradle to grave gas isn't very efficient, location, drilling, extraction, filtration, transportation, cracking (refining), transportation, additive package, transportation, you.

I would estimate US based refineries choose the type of "crude" very carefully and likely there is preprocessing going on outside our country because not all crude is light and sweet without impurities.

I live about 15 miles from a Nuke power plant.

regards
Mech

I’ve never worked through it myself so here goes:
Looking at the Process Fuel Use in table 1, we have to throw out LPG, Fuel Oil, Still Gas, Coke, and Other because are Refinery outputs that are feed back in as process fuels or in the case of “other” we don’t know what they are. Purchased steam is a tough one. It is probably made from waste heat, which then we can neglect it but if natural gas is used to make the steam then we have assign an energy value to it. I just don’t know one way or the other. There are a lot of refinery inputs in Table 2 but I think that we should neglect those too because if we’re going to use crude and others to make electricity to power EVs then we should just make gasoline to power ICEs.

That leaves us with Natural Gas, Coal, and Electricity from Table 1:
So, if you can believe the internet then it takes 10 cubic feet of Nat Gas to produce 1kWhr of electricity, and 1.2 lbs of coal to produce 1kWhr (I found other figures too but tried to aim for the midpoint.)
From Nat Gas: 71.05TWhr
From Coal: 0.0717TWhr
Electricity: 42.682TWhr
Total: 113.8037TWhr
If an EV gets 300Whr/mile it can travel 379 billion miles.:)

From table 2 we can calculate Gasoline production of 131 billion gallons.
Average mileage for US fleet passenger cars is 22.6mpg so can travel almost 3 trillion miles. Dang… :( so shutting down the oil refineries won’t provide enough electricity to power EV the same number of miles.
Of course this is only looking at the energy input to the refinery. It’s neglecting getting crude from the well to refinery and from refinery to pump. It also neglects the environmental impact of oil spills, down stream refinery pollution, etc, which other people have discussed on this thread.
I’m still very proEV. They should be an important part of the transportation solution. Gasoline should be used more efficiently too.

Dunno about the US, but European companies of any significant size have to do quite detailed carbon-reporting (result of the Kyoto agreement).
What goes in, what comes out.
Includes energies, end- or intermediate products, waste.

I don't know wether this information is publicly available, but it exists.

The electricity (and a lot of natural gas too) that gets used to refine petroleum has to be added to the carbon footprint of the resulting gasoline and diesel. So if you were to use it directly to power EV's (or natural gas burning vehicles), then you are using much less carbon, since you use no oil. And, there are many other steps that add to the carbon footprint of oil other than refining...

And 300Wh/mile is a fairly inefficient EV -- 150 to 200Wh/mile (or even lower) is possible. And even our low efficiency generation plants are much more efficient than are ICE's. So, with oil the carbon footprint is very complex and things add up quickly. With electricity, even right now, there is much lower carbon used per BTU than for gasoline -- and it is possible to generate electricity from renewable energy sources, so it can be virtually carbon free.

So, shutting down refineries doesn't power the EV's for as many miles, but those miles are essentially "free" because that carbon is not used to refine the gasoline. If you replace the total miles with more electricity, then the total carbon is lower because of the higher efficiencies of generators and electric motors vs the ICE's you would be replacing. In other words, if you put the energy into electricity, you get more work and/or use less carbon than you do with petroleum.

For example, my plug-in electric lawn mower can run for an hour of heavy duty work for between 0.38kWh and 0.47kWh. This converts to 0.01118 gallons to 0.01382 gallons of gasoline PER HOUR of operation! That is 0.178 - 0.22 cups of gasoline per hour. A gasoline powered lawn mower would probably burn at least 1 pint in an hour, which is 9-11X more.

These figures are in good agreement with the 90.x% efficiency figure given by the DoE.


I am pro-electrification (though I think short range PHEVs make better sense than EVs, certainly in the near term), but I am far more strongly pro coal phaseout. Actually, if EV adoption goes too smoothly, there goes the gas price crunch which I'm hoping will awaken the masses to the importance of good energy policy. I really hope we never see a cheap, coal-fired SUV, but it looks like it's on the way.

Neil,

Even accounting for the inputs of refining and distribution, I arrived at 16KWh = 1gal in terms of CO2. Coal is dirty stuff, as you're breaking only C-C bonds and forming only CO2. HC's are better because you're breaking mostly C-H bonds, and your primary waste product (dihydrogen monoxide) is a very short lived GHG.

22mpg is an extremely inefficient gas-burning vehicle, yet that's what people buy. 300Wh/mi at the wall is more like 250Wh/mi at the battery, which is pretty ordinary. Give it a few months, and we'll see what the EPA says the Leaf and Volt can do with a KWh.

This is terribly incorrect. Total carbon is comparable because electricty is far more carbon-intense per MJ than gasoline. Unsurprising if you understand that on the other end of the power lines is a heat engine that, sadly, is probably about 35% efficient. We can do better.

The heat engine in each car averages about 18-20% efficiency.

??? Even in the 1960's efficient power generation was VERY important and costs were considered high from an industrial standpoint as a result
Even inefficent coal plants run very efficiently compared to an ice typically in the 35-40% area, china's newest plants operate at 44% efficiency. Other plants running on diesel and natural gas tend to be above 45% due to the cost of fuel with the most efficient units a tad over 50%.

If there was enough demand and push I believe it would go even higher nearing the theoretical maximum which is somewhere around 59% with full recovery in place.

A lot of people foo foo me but they don't seem to realize how inefficient the normal driving cycle really is, most drivers are cars only about 5% eff. due to the motor operating in poor eff. range and due to poor habits. Although some ICE engines approach 25% they rarely operate in that narrow region for more than a few seconds during the normal driving cycle. I have always believed a series hybrid ev would be more efficient than a standard ICE if the motor were a single speed 40-50% eff. turbine type, even with losses it would still do better than a typical driving cycle which spends a lot of time in very very inefficient areas of the motor torque band.

That isn't to say these same drivers with electric or series hybred would do much better but at least they would have regen.

Cheers
Ryan

Yep, and it still maths out as I mentioned. Though a Prius or an Insight is more like 30-40% efficient.