Nissan EV is about to be officially announced!

Come on, not very long ago, GM was the worlds largest automaker. Hasn't the recession taught us anything. Being big, or the largest, doesn't guarantee success.

That being said, I'm really hoping it isn't a flop. I'm nervous about this "lease" the battery deal.

 

Why would you want to own and pay for such an expensive, state of the art device when it's 2010 costs will probably be twice it's 2015 cost?

 

I specifically added "though of course you can't totally rule it out" because I knew this might come up. Then again.... GM is no Nissan, despite the success they enjoyed in other decades that made them the GIANT that they became, Nissan as we all know is a WAY smarter company than GM as evidenced by the relative quality, performance and reliability.

I don't think that IF Nissan decides to use a battery leasing program that it will be such a huge mistake at all. Isn't there a consensus that in a few years battery technology will have progressed?

I know that 1st generation Insight owners are looking into ways to upgrade their batteries and that 1st and 2nd gen Prius owners will be looking to do the same thing as their batteries start to show their age. If anyone thinks for a second that should Li-ion packs become available for these older cars, that the owners wouldn't immediately start looking into ways to get one whether it meant taking out a loan or saving up. The older hybrid owners would be all over them! ....and this is something that couldn't very have been predicted 10 years ago when the first hybrids (Honda's ) were sold.

So it's a matter of lessons-learned basically. Nissan doesn't want to screw over it's customers, especially not it's long time followers. I don't see why the upper-middleclass would have any problem with understanding the lease concept for the battery pack if it turns out to be the best option.

 

That's how I pasted pic's on the competing "Nissan EV" thread ... both of which remain in the "hybrid news" column. I wonder if instructions stating;
"NO EV's IN THE 'HYBRID-NEWS' COLUMN UNDER THREAT OF TORTURE"
would make any difference. Probably not. I think the mods have thrown in the towel.

Tony Tony Tony, there you go ... JSH is tryin' his best to spread a little grey ... and how it won't work, & it can't work, and you go and remind us how that sounds like . . . . like . . .

Too bad JSH, so much gloom & doom. Nissan never even said, what you said, that Nissan said. From Nissan's web site:

1 day ago - Asked by @JoseFreire
Q: Will the price include the battery pack? Or will there be an option to rent/lease the battery pack?
A: Leasing vs. buying the battery isn’t ironed out yet. Looking at which options best meet our customers’ needs.

. . . since we already kinda know "which options best meet our customers' needs" maybe we can at least wait to hear how it's really going to be from the source, even though we'll miss the drama.
.

EV Charging Locations in San Diego County (CA)

What? um, no it aint pie in the sky ... this is just a list of San Diego County charges (and remember, right NOW, EV's are very limited) . . . and there are similar lists for San Francisco ... as well as L.A. county ... besides private networks made available to those who regularly need 'em. Sorry to rain on the parade, but if this much networking can be / is already done ... what's the big deal? It aint like building a nuke facility. Sheez ... every street light has electric power so ... oh never mind. I'm feelin the Eeore ... all is lost ... were doomed ... doomed I tell ya


on a happier note, here's a nice map of SOME of the EV charging stations in CA:

EVChargerMaps

Maybe you can gloom it up with, "only a little network exists" ... but "no" network?
(sigh)

.

 

I wonder about the battery lease marketing idea. My guess is that someone at Nissan thought that people would be hesitant to buy the EV due to 'unproven' battery tech, and the leasing is meant to ally concerns of early failure or problems. Exactly why this is preferable to simply giving a generous warranty isnt' clear to me, but I don't really understand marketers -- or the general populace, for that matter.

One other idea is that this is Nissan's way of trying to hide the actual consumer cost of the vehicle. 24 kwh of Li-x battery is a lot of money. $20k US ?

 

I just read the review and I like the idea, but I have to wonder what kind of acceptance it will get here in the US. Implementing the "quick chargers" may sound great, but here in California a lot of cities and towns put in GM Impact-compatible charging stations that now sit unused and decrepit. How many communities are going to take that chance again?

The Leaf is not for me and my 600-mile-per-week, 58-mile-each-way commute. But it certainly could have a place for a lot of people. I hope that the persistent smell of GM's past burnt bridges doesn't doom it.

 

Batteries are way to too expensive to sit in a car unused. Even using their capacity twice a day, every day is expensive compared to current fuel prices.

So in general, although I like the idea of a straight up EV *Very* much, I think they will remain a niche vehicle until battery capacity is on demand. In the meantime I expect PHEV hybrids to be the practical vanguard of personal motor transport.

These EV initiatives by the major auto companies are designed to circumvent Toyota's stranglehold on successful hybrid tech, not because they have technological or business merit.

 

Next gen li-ion sounds interesting.. and let's not forget about EEStor. If real, and I believe we'll know soon either way, pure EVs will be all that intelligent people will want come 2015.

 

Why? The cost in 2015 is immaterial to the cost in 2010. If the product sold in 2010 meets my needs why do I care what is available in 2015 or how much it may cost? I would expect to keep the car with original battery for at least 10 years. I also expect that CARB and the EPA will require manufacturers to warranty batteries as part of the emission system of the car. I’m not one of those people that feels the need to keep buying the newest technology just because it is new. I also don’t postpone a purchase because I’m afraid something better will come out.

As an example, I bought a Sony DSLR back in 2002. It was 6 megapixal camera that cost $900 at the time. Now that level of resolution is common on point and shoot cameras that can be purchased for less than $200. $900 DSLR have much higher resolution and a host of new features no found on my camera. However, I still use my Sony because it still does what I bought it to do, take great pictures.


Now to Hill’s comments:

Nissan’s plan to lease battery packs:
Hill, I’m not sure why you say that “Nissan never even said, what you said, that Nissan said.” Nissan has clearly said many times that they plan to lease the battery pack of their EV separate from the vehicle. This is but one example from MotorAuthority.com:

Carlos Tavares, Nissan's executive vice-president for product planning and design, claims that the Nissan electric vehicle will have "pricing similar to a conventional car", but this pricing will not include the cost of the battery. Despite the seemingly strange system, Tavares emphasized that there would be "no additional inconvenience" for purchasers, as they would simply "buy the car, sign the battery lease" and then drive away.
http://www.motorauthority.com/nissan-electric-car-will-require-batteries-to-be-leased.html


Leasing the battery pack separate from the car is part of the marketing plan. It allows Nissan to advertise their vehicle at a much lower price than EV’s from automakers that include the battery pack. That is how they can claim to have the least expensive electric car on the market. They are also a partner with Better Places which plans to lease battery packs to customers on a per mile basis.

However, your quote is promising. There may be a chance that Nissan is listening to the concerns of potential customers that want no part of their battery leasing plan. I really don’t care if Nissan allows some customers to lease the battery pack as long as they allow me to purchase one.

Battery Exchange Stations:
Your link is of charging stations, not battery exchange stations. Better Places plan for a network of fully automated battery exchange stations swap batteries in 3 minutes is at this time very much pie-in-the-sky. So far they have built on demonstration unit.

Charging stations are everywhere. I have 9 in my garage (8 110V and 1 220V). They are called electrical outlets. As you mention there are also dedicated EV charging points throughout the country.



I’m not trying to spread doom and gloom. I want to purchase an EV and one with “only” 100 miles of range would work just find for me since that covers about 95% of my driving. However, I do not trust Nissan or any other automaker enough to spend tens of thousands of dollars to purchase a product that requires me to then lease a required component. That distrust was earned by these companies when they leased EV’s to customers a decade ago then recalled and crushed them. I am actually quite surprise that so many people here are so trusting considering the past history.

 

"I would expect to keep the car with original battery for at least 10 years."

http://twitter.com/NissanEVs
"The battery will last around 5 years. We are investigating post-automotive applications for it."

 

There are refurbish options too. LOTS of 1st gen Insight guys have their IMA batteries refurbished for around a third of the cost of a new battery pack.

 

Interesting. I wonder if that is regardless of use? The last comment is also confusing. If these batteries have "post-automotive applications" that means they still work but have lower capacity. So a Nissan Leaf may only have a 80 mile range after 5 years instead of 100 miles when new.

I also take that to mean that batteries for EV's will not be warrantied as an emission component like the batteries in hybrids are.

 

I disagree about the Gen II Prius. Perhaps when you bought yours it was far from mainstream (although there was a significant waiting period and they probably could've sold more). But by 2007 they were selling more Prius in the U.S. than all of the Subaru models combined. More than all the Volvo models combined. I think it's in the top 5 for Toyota imports. And they were turning a profit on each one well before 2007, form what I understand. Prius sales are about 1/2 of all hybrids, hybrids are about 2.5% of all U.S. car sales (according to GreenCarCongress numbers), so over 1% of all cars sold in the last several years are Prius.

 

This battery leasing concept isn't unique to Nissan. People have been tossing this idea around for years, if you've been reading at www.evworld.com or other places. I believe it was proposed for the Th!nk vehicle as well, and some other European EVs that might be introduced to the U.S.

It definitely makes the car price more feasible for a lot of buyers, rather than force them to pay another 60% or more for something that hasn't been proven in the marketplace yet. Maybe 3,4 years down the road when prices are lower (due to mass production) and the reliability concerns have eased, then more people will be willing to buy the whole car. I've heard many people think the Prius is not a good gamble based entirely on the battery pack concerns, so obviously the EV field has to address those concerns.

 

Depends on the way you see it. It will probably lower the cost of running a car, at the expense of global warming and pollution.

Remember that almost 50% of U.S. electricity is generated from coal (source: wikipedia, in 2006) a total of 70% of U.S. electricity is based on fossil fuels.

Hence your nice electric car becomes mostly a coal powered car. In fact it is probably less efficient than a coal powered car as you lose energy during electricity generation, transportation, distribution, conversion, charging the batteries).

By using an electric car in such a scenario, you are generating probably more greenhouse gas and more pollution (smog) than by using an efficient gas car (like a Prius).

The only positive way to see it from a U.S. standpoint would be that it lessens dependency on foreign oil by using coal from the U.S.

To use another analogy, in Quebec (Canada), a law forces the national electricity provider to sell at the same price everywhere in the whole province. In a small archipelago in the middle of the St-Lawrence Gulf (ÃŽles-de-la-Madeleine), disconnected from the continent, this means they sell it a 1/3 of its costs, as it is made from diesel/crude oil. A solution the provider has found to minimize their loss is to subsidize installation and running cost of oil heating for houses. This way, the oil directly generates heat, instead of oil generating torque, generating current, generating high voltage on transportation lines, converted to distribution voltage, converted to 220VAC, converted to heat. It is then a lot more efficient (uses less oil to achieve the same goal). The same would apply for the example of an electric car in most of the U.S.

We have to make a distinction between the energy source and the energy medium:

1. Nissan Leaf in most of the U.S.:

• source: coal
• medium: chemical batteries

2. Toyota Prius:

• source: gas
• medium: gas&regenerated electricity from gas

Depending on where you live, selling this car could be called "[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwashing"]greenwashing[/ame]".

Put in a more visual way, here are the two sides of the medal:


[FONT=&quot]PS. Of course, if you live in such a place like Quebec, where it's 97% hydroelectricity, it would be another story. I would seriously think about buying such a car, but most of North America couldn’t say the same thing… [/FONT]

 

Philosophe, I think your argument is misleading in detail, although correct in general.

In terms of CO2, the 'average' emission per energy unit/mile in the US is considerably less than petrol on a per mile basis. Moreover, many people can produce their own solar electricity if they care to, even if their local producer is 'dirty'

 

Snohomish County PUD

Your electricity company may or may not have a breakdown like this. I live in Snohomish County, which is just north of Seattle's King County, and we get 77% of our electricity from hydroelectric generation - only 7% from coal. So it's a real no-brainer for me, but I think there are studies out there stating that coal is still far more efficient and cleaner compared to gasoline. And let's not forget about going to war for oil, supporting countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia, and supporting crooks that charged $4+/gallon while breaking records in profits.

http://www.seattle.gov/light/FuelMix/
It is 90% hydro and 3% wind for Seattle. Less than 1% from coal.