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Nissan Leaf EV to Have Ultra-Cheap Battery Pack
fast company ^ | May 5, 2010 | Ariel Schwartz

Posted on 05/08/2010 7:37:51 AM PDT by mylife

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To: Moltke
Shhh.... Don't tell anyone. Here's my plan: I'm going to sell a tow behind battery charger, that runs on gasoline. You pull it behind your Leaf, and it charges the battery. It will also provide air conditioning in the summer. Waste heat will heat the Leaf in cold weather. It will extend your range from 50 miles, to 400 miles, so you can take it on vacations, and fill it up at regular filling stations.

What a plan!! Only $11,000.

21 posted on 05/08/2010 9:58:38 AM PDT by norwaypinesavage (Galileo: In science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of one individual)
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To: mylife

You wanna see traffic clogs?

Just wait ‘till the liberals start buying Leafmobiles and find they have to creep along at 20 mph on busy roads trying to squeeze a few more miles out of them just to get home to their federally-subsidized charging station without having to call for a tow truck.


22 posted on 05/08/2010 10:34:32 AM PDT by Fresh Wind ("...a whip of political correctness strangles their voice"-Vaclav Klaus on GW skeptics)
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To: norwaypinesavage

LOL, great plan. I was only going to mention an auxilliary gasoline heater...looks like you’ve got the A/C problem covered as well!


23 posted on 05/08/2010 10:51:17 AM PDT by Moltke (panem et circensis - it's back!)
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To: mylife

I really like Nissan styling, but Volkwagen has a better idea: a four cylinder engine with a turbocharger! Wheeeeeeee! It’s economical until you need to accelerate and then it’s a kick in the seat.

Forget all those batteries and Rube Goldberg devices.


24 posted on 05/08/2010 12:13:30 PM PDT by RoadTest (Religion is a substitute for the relationship God wants with you.)
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To: babygene

http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2003/ArthurGolnik.shtml. It’s in kilograms so you have to convert...

motor efficiencies are over 90%. Chargers in the high 90s.


OK then, 97% charger efficiency, and 92% motor efficiency...

At 8 cents per KW-hr average (14.3 cents in New York state) the 40 KW-hr battery will take $3.58 cents to “fill up” and a high of $6.41 in NY.

Sounds like a fill up is more than half the price of old fashioned gasoline - after you have spent $33,000 on a puny little car...:^)


25 posted on 05/08/2010 1:37:05 PM PDT by az_gila (AZ - one Governor down... we don't want her back...)
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To: az_gila

“Sounds like a fill up is more than half the price of old fashioned gasoline”

I wasn’t arguing that the electric car is viable, only that the numbers being used were wrong.

Indeed, the price of charging an electric car is bound to go up substantially once their in common use, because the tax man will find a way to extract the road tax...

Also, the electric car ends up polluting MORE, because much of the electricity will be generated by burning coal.


26 posted on 05/08/2010 2:41:56 PM PDT by babygene (Figures don't lie, but liars can figure...)
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To: babygene
Plus, the engine is only 40% efficient so that makes it effectively 11.176 kWh of useful energy.

That is thermal efficiency at an ideal load. If you figure in the whole drivetrain and real-world driving conditions, its less than half that in useful energy, i.e. propulsion.
27 posted on 05/09/2010 6:08:47 AM PDT by wolf78 (Inflation is a form of taxation, too. Cranky Libertarian - equal opportunity offender.)
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To: wolf78

“its less than half that in useful energy, i.e. propulsion.”

Actually it’s worse than that... This efficiency conversion was based on both the gasoline engine and the electric motor(s) being the same size. They are not.

The sizing for electric motors in EV conversions is odd. A vehicle that used a 100HP engine would only take about a 20 HP electric motor to give similar performance. This is well established and has to do with the rating systems for gas versus electric motors among other things. Brake HP for gas engines and average for electric motors.

So we wouldn’t be comparing a 26 KW gas engine to a 26 kw electric motor. The equivalent gas engine would be maybe 120 KW.

In my opinion, Hybrids make a lot more sense than electrics though.


28 posted on 05/09/2010 7:35:26 AM PDT by babygene (Figures don't lie, but liars can figure...)
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