Posted on 02/20/2010 1:12:28 AM PST by bruinbirdman
The question isn't whether the world is ready for the Leaf. It's whether the Leaf is ready for the world.
The most daring gamble in the automobile world is Nissan's electric car, the Leaf.
But is this car, coming at the end of the year, really ready for prime time? Undoubtedly Nissan (NSANY) can sell some in the U.S.--a few thousand a year, perhaps 10,000 or 20,000 or 30,000. Some people always want something new.
But the Leaf is more likely to be a sales failure than a sales success.
It's not pleasant to rain on someone's parade before Job 1. But I'll stick my neck out. The Leaf will get all the favorable publicity in the world but be blown away in the market.
Nissan is planning capacity to build 150,000 cars a year in Tennessee. Alas the Leaf compares unfavorably with today's gasoline-engine cars to be a serious hit. It doesn't have the range of a conventional car, it doesn't have the top speed, it costs more and it takes forever to refuel, assuming you have a place to refuel it. The advantage is that electricity costs less than gasoline. Most important, Nissan and the entire automobile world will learn how e-cars operate in the real world.
Let's go over what we have been told about the Leaf already:
It's a pure electric, a plug-in with no auxiliary gas motor to bring it along when the batteries run out, as with the Chevy Volt. It's a four-door sedan, 175 inches long, a hair shorter than the Honda Civic at 177, with a top speed near 90 mph.
Production in the U.S.--in Tennessee where Nissan has its plant--is to start late in 2012. Some Japan-built Leafs will start arriving at the end of this year, representing
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Leaf? Who’s grand marketing idea was that?
"Leafs will start arriving at the end of this year, representing a small scale test for the car. A battery plant will be built with a capacity of 200,000 lithium battery sets a year. We taxpayers will advance $1.4 billion for the projects"
"Nissan is working with communities and power companies to set up charging stations. There may be thousands--there's taxpayer money here after all, $100 million or more."
yitbos
There are always people who like to live in the past, refusing to embrace new technology along with the hiccups that accompany them. You have to start somewhere and then improve on those new ideas as time goes by. I applaud Nissan’s efforts.
The biggest flop since Ryan Leaf!
Ah, if it was Nissan's effort,, We at FR would support their effort too..... but money is taken from me at gun point to support this fantasy. Do you support that also?
uh, a brilliant marketer who wants to remind all sports fans of the fabulous NFL success of Ryan Leaf??
Germany has quietly nixed all subsidies of bio-fuel. And they use a lot of diesel.
Spain, the leader in solar electricity generation stopped subsidizing all green energy two years ago.
They got tired of going broke on the green energy scam.
yitbos
Invest in copper.
Then figure out where the electridiocy is going to come from. Ligtning perhaps?
Some people are incredibly short sighted and dense.
It’s a amazing that even here, there are those who live in a fantasy land.
The 100 mile, or less, range will be the killer in California. Because of housing costs in the Bay Area and SoCal there are a lot of people who live more than 50 miles from work. Unless you work for a government agency or a mega corporation with big bucks to invest in “Green Initiatives” your employer probably won’t be able to provide any way for you to charge while you are at work.
I can think of other things to spend $1.5 billion on - like deficit reduction.
I see massive power outages. Did anybody ever consider that?
What silly crap. 100 miles wouldn’t get me to Fort Worth and back.
And then there is the $1.6 billion ATVM loan from the Department of Energy.
http://www.atvmloan.energy.gov/keydocs/nissanconditionalcom.pdf
This remains to be seen. Obama wants to increase the tax burden on energy to discourage its use (not green, ehh?). Many tax increases are on the way to pay for more socialist programs, value added tax, cap and trade, etc. Sneaky ways to increase the tax burden on the middle class are in the works via a "Commission."
The charging stations will have to be wired EVERYWHERE. Who is going to pay for the installation of this wiring? Where are all the electricians coming from to wire every parking area in America?
Think of the thousands of miles of copper wire that will have to be installed. Think of the digging up of parking lots to put in trenches to carry the conduit and wire to individual charging outlets. Think of the huge new demand from transformers and substations across the country.
This is the dumbest idea EVER. There is no way the country, the taxpayer or the consumer SAVES any money.
The dramatically limited range of these cars means they will be abandoned on the highways by the droves because people misjudged the distances they had to drive. They will be abandoned in strategically bad spots because they will go dead in traffic with no way to recharge. When you run out of gasoline, you can carry a gas can to the vehicle to restart. You can't carry electricity in a one gallon can.
To say this is "progress" is ridiculous. Yes, the technology is theoretically available but the practical aspects of the mass use of the technology is lunacy. We can send people to the moon from a technical standpoint but we cannot afford as a society to do it on a regular basis.
The world's governments are on the verge of financial collapse from every hair-brained scheme already being financed by do-gooders. This is the final nail in the coffin of modern societies.
40 or 50K for a limited range beer can that they can bury you in after you are involved in a collision. Why am I not surprised. Meanwhile the liberals will be riding in limos and Hummers.
In a word, yes.
The money has already been taken at gunpoint, to the tune of around 7 trillion$ so far.
The Congressional idjits and O'Muslim will spend it before they can be arrested (in the general sense of the word) and replaced.
Would you rather it continue going to ACORN, SEIU, and the Black Brotherhood instead?
I have always thought that electric cars would find their biggest buyer to be the government for use in motor pools. However, why should the government buy a Nissan when they own a competitor?
I expect every single frickin’ Hollywood-type who cried and lamented the loss of their GM EV-1 to run out and buy a Leaf.
Front end like a carp. Back end like a hippo.
Bad combo.
“There are always people who like to live in the past, refusing to embrace new technology”
Liberalspeak for living in Fantasyland and refusing to deal with reality.
And if E-cars should catch on, where will the electricity come from? The envirowackos have made sure we won’t have enough of that.
“The Congressional idjits and O’Muslim will spend it before they can be arrested (in the general sense of the word)”
How about doing it in the most specific sense of the word???
Considering the recent bad winter, would anyone like to get stuck in one of these?
I'm sure the government has. If they can get a large part of the population on electric cars they can cause a distribution problem with the power supply that forces them onto some type of public transportation scheme.
Forcing some type of public transportation seems to be the goal of the lefties for some reason. It likely has to do with control. Public transportation is not flexible. People can then be forced to live and work in designated areas.
“””There are always people who like to live in the past, refusing to embrace new technology along with the hiccups that accompany them. You have to start somewhere and then improve on those new ideas as time goes by. I applaud Nissan’s efforts.”””
There are always people who like to live without taking into account the economics of a new idea. These are the people who are bankrupting America by coming up with stupid ideas that will not be profitable.
One example is the new train from Albuquerque, NM to Santa FE, NM. The train cost something like $500 million and the operating loss is over $20 million per year.
Or ethanol or wind power or solar power-—all examples of projects that make no sense and only exist because government prints money to pay the construction costs and absorbs the operating loss.
America is already in deep financial doo-doo. Money losing projects only make it worse.
Follow the money.
Electricity does cost much less than gasoline, even if it takes anywhere from 10 to 100 times as long to recharge an electric vehicle as to refill a a gas tank. But these lithium batteries will cost much more than a replacement engine, and may need to be replaced every 5-10 years.
With the upcoming Chevy Volt, “Longevity is the unanswered question,” (GM Vice Chairmna Bob) Lutz allowed, but he added that simulations have left him optimistic that a lithium-ion battery’s life expectancy will be competitive with nickel-metal hydride, the current standard in hybrids. As a backup, he said, “We’re being conservative on battery life. For our cost calculations we’re assuming each car will need a replacement during the warranty period.” And the replacement battery might well cost five figures.
With that in mind, and with its claimed hundred-mile range, I could see buying a used Leaf for a work car, maybe someday, but only if the manufacturer or previous owner has already installed a new battery pack.
That has already been tried. Even with artificial incentives to promote their use within the government, using golf cart type vehicles to encourage maintenance at military bases, most branches got rid of them, one branch accustomed to past poverty grabbed them, and still they generally go unused.
Hydrocarbon based fuels provide a relatively safe, portable, low technology fuel supply, easily convertible to mechanical power within our economic structures.
The carbon credit crew are so corrupt that even if their arguments had any sound positions, they also have doubt cast upon their credibility.
Wow! The Gremlin of the 70s and Pacer of the 80s compacted into one much more compact commuter for the new millennia!
Probably most of us have... years ago when this topic first came up. Liberals, and even some members here, are totally clueless about consequences. A good example is the "ethanol solution" from two years ago.
I'm convinced that the majority of the US population are incredibly stoooopid.
Yea! Let's go Green!!!
And how about heating and air conditioning?
But this is a step backward. Higher cost and lower performance. Makes no sense.
You got to start somewhere, and improve on that over time.
I’ve heard nothing from Barry or lefty environmentalists about the environmental impact of mountains of acid-leaking batteries filling landfills if this technology takes off. I have no answers myself, but common sense leads me to believe that the solution may be worse than the problem.
Further, there is nothing that says that this particular style of propulsion is actually the future. Should we also sink billions into natural gas, ethanol, mini-nukes, solar, and every other "new technology" that someone wants us to embrace?
Sorry, but the capitalist system works best. Let the inventors bear the risk and rewards, and let the market choose what will succeed. Socializing the risk, privatizing the reward, pushing a technology before its ready, and allowing politicians to choose what paths future technologies take is just not wise.
Supply v demand. Add hundreds of millions of cars wanting to recharge every night, and demand explodes. When demand goes up, and the supply does not, then prices explode.
Not everyone lives in a small state like Texas. However, for a city car (sendcond car/commuter) it might just work. If I drive one end of town to the other, it is less than 10 miles, my commute is just under 5 miles - and I ride a bike in the summer.
I’m not green, just a cheapskate.
I
m willing to let the market decide, if we can keep Uncle Sam’s fingers out of the pie - so as to speak.
That's better than my old Honda 600 Coupe, which topped out at 84 MPH (which was how fast I was going when I was pulled over). But not as fast as my mother's stock '68 Volks bug, which topped out at 94 MPH (might have gone faster but it was becoming airborne).
Honda didn't sell a lot of their '600s, but VW sold a LOT of bugs. So topping out at 90 MPH might just be enough. / sarc
Well, at least you admit to being a communist or socialist. What they do with the booty afterward is a moot point.
Whatever kind of battery is in a 2000 Prius, my sister hasn't replaced it yet, 95,000 miles.
yitbos
The only plan a max capacity of 150,000 per year for th whole US. Assuming that 10% were to go to LA (probably high) it would take 400 years to get that many cars in LA.
Especially for the urban/city market. I took my Bullitt out for a ride last Monday and I think I only got up to 85 max.
So far, the high cost of battery replacement isn’t having much impact on the resale value of hybrids. The Automotive Lease Guide (ALG)—the resale value bible—only recently began assessing hybrids. “We had concerns about battery life,” says ALG CEO John Blair. “But our analysts told us that battery life was really a nonissue. They found that the batteries have a 10-year life expectancy, which is quite reasonable.”
Still, hybrids don’t hold their value as well as their gasoline-powered siblings, batteries aside. For example, a three-year-old Honda Civic is worth about $12,000, retaining about 60 percent of its original sticker price of $20,000, according to Blair. But a hybrid Honda Civic holds only 58 percent of its original sticker price after three years, giving it a used price of $13,630, down from a new price of $23,500. “The new car buyer is more into bells and whistles, while used car buyers are all about value,” says Blair.
“Assaulted Batteries” May 27, 2008
http://www.newsweek.com/id/138808/page/2
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