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| Nissan Ellure Concept : Image from CleanMPG.COM |
When the old EV battery weak replace it, and bam your electric vehicle has like new range again! The EV battery recycled, no gasoline was burned during your vehicles use :) No tail pipe emissions near your home because of your EV. You can charge the EV in indoor spaces safely, like your smartphone, or using an extension cord & electrical outlet. A proper L2 setup now affordable too!
Nissan focused on making all the components of the LEAF in house to leverage existing manufacturing technology across all domains of the parts needed to build the LEAF using vertically integrated intellectual property and component manufacturing.
Profitable Vertical Integration
Building the electric motor in house with the inverter motor power controller & regenerative braking control algorithms allowed for more torque & power over a broad range of RPMs with good energy efficiency at many different power output levels in a cost efficient component package that became profitable after the steep development costs were absorbed into the sales volume revenue stream, or steep cost curve with longer ROI times, but ultimately greater long term profitability. Vertical supply chain optimization made better motor and controller configurations possible at lower costs. After all the Nissan LEAF stands for Leading Environmental Affordable Family / and is built on the same platform as the affordable Nissan Versa.
Fun Electric Torque
The instant torque from the electric motor also gives the LEAF V6 like initial acceleration, making it highly enjoyable to drive. Meg & I loved the driving dynamics of the LEAF despite its heavy iron frame. That IRON frame helped to make the LEAF affordable to access as a lease demo. ~$7000 to try one for 24 months & ~14,000 miles in our case : at ~$0.55 per mile including electricity & charging costs. the Total Cost Structure made it totally affordable to try as a new lithium-ion high speed electric vehicle, if 93MPH is fast enough. The 0-60mph ~9.9seconds is not fast, but try driving a Nissan LEAF and you will feel impressed by the instant acceleration performance.
Iron Mass Penalty + RUST
One of the main problem with the LEAF stems from cheap steel alloys that make the body heavy, prone to rusting & ultimately all that extra frame weight means lower performance & shorter range per charge. 24kWh might seem like a lot of energy, but LEAF weighs over ~3,300 lbs ~1,500 kg.
Using expensive carbon fiber, BMW builds i3 to around ~2,600lbs ~2,000kg by comparison. Tesla uses aluminum in the Model S to save mass vs steel, yet the Model S weighs over ~4,300 lbs ~2000 kg. Imagine a super light carbon fiber Tesla P100D with titanium fiber reinforced polymer lithium ion cell cases that drive the mass of the battery pack down further.
Optimization of the Platform
As power and energy density increase in the vehicle, so improves driving dynamics & performance, range, efficiency, everything improves with mass reduction. Aerodynamic shape optimization also influences performance since air is a working fluid with mass as a gas in the atmosphere, often contains water as rain or vapor pressure condensate, acid rain or worse. Those nasty exhaust gasses of gasoline vehicles are totally absent from the tailpipe of a battery electric vehicle zero emissions cleaner air miracle technology that makes it easier for everyone to breathe! Batteries from electric vehicles are also totally recyclable, including the up-cycling of still useful EV batteries that give the EV poor range but can work great for stationary grid backup energy storage applications.
MPG Gasoline Budget Math vs Lithium Ion Vehicle Battery Replacement Cost Cycle
In electric vehicles you replace buying gasoline with buying battery packs when the batteries wear out. The rest of the electric vehicle is better than a gas because of less vibration, lower entropy, fewer moving parts, and greater net system reliability of EV's like the Nissan LEAF when compared to the Nissan VERSA for example, a CVT garbage gasoline piston power setup that eats a tranny every 40,000mi in many examples.
Charge Where You Park
The smooth electric motor in the Nissan LEAF gives it the clean technology edge of fade prone finite life lithium ion batteries in a steel airbag VSC safety box that you can recharge at home using power from your homes grid connection, presuming you have an electrified parking stall to park the EV in either at home or at work, where a vehicle charger is feasible to operate.
Charge at Home or Work
Indoor and outdoor charging setups are available for home use, most commercial installations are outdoor and cost more than most home charging station setups. Level 2 charger at 30 amps of 220v are available for less than $450 now in 2018. The LEAF even comes with a L1 convenience charger extension cord that allows you to charge it at 5mi per hour charging on a standard 120v 15amps electrical outlet in America. Chargers for the LEAF are available in almost all countries. Nissan having Sold more than 320,000 LEAF's worldwide as of June 2018. Consider electricity costs where you live. You can even fast charge on the go with quick L3 chargers (like an EV gas station)
Consider Local Grid Power Costs
Some places in Eastern Washington State have grid power selling for $0.03/kWh due to their proximity to fully depreciated antique hydroelectric power installations. The average price for electricity in the USA is around $0.14/kWh. Check your utility rates to calculate out how much it will cost to recharge a ~24-100 kWh electric vehicle battery in your area to consider the charging cost structure for an electric vehicle. Also know that registration & insurance costs of different electric vehicle vary considerably, so check your rates to find out how you can save a ton of money with an affordable electric vehicle. The LEAF works great in stop & go traffic in urban driving environments and between cities even on the highway for short bursts given the limited single charge range.
Instead of MPG & gallons gas start thinking "Miles per kWh" or (X# of kWh per 100 miles)
I was able to regularly achieve 4.2mi / kWh in our 2013 Nissan Leaf S. Comparing this to the 2015 Prius's 46MPG involves a complexity since the mpg eq of a EV starts with energy content of gasoline or 33.7 kWh gallon. Given 11.9 gallon tank capacity the Prius can hold 401kWh of chemical energy in its fuel. Thats a ton of energy, almost 115,000 BTU or 121 MJ mega-joules!!! Sadly the Prius II hybrid drivetrain only achieves 46 MPG, yielding a single fix max range over 500 mile. Adding another 12 gallons of gas only takes about 10-30 min including the trip to a gas station. To match this refill speed performance high speed charging stations have to pump out massive amounts of power into electric vehicles. Tesla built its own supercharging stations that pump out 170mi of charge in a 30min charging session, as with the Tesla Model S 90kWh version, using 120kW of charging power over a proprietary 480V DC cable connection to the Tesla vehicle. ABB & Porsche developed a 350kW direct current charging system that only works with special vehicles for 120mi range in 8 minutes of charging : gas station speed fast charging ^^ that brings us back to the costs of gasoline. Society, humans, pay a large externality cost structure for gasoline because of the toxin mining refining and end use burning of gasoline, never indoors because the CO causes death when vehicles with a tailpipe are operated in inclosed spaces inhabited by living beings that breath normal atmospheric air mixtures. The atmospheric tail pipe emissions of gasoline & diesel vehicles are mixing into the earths atmosphere that all people in all countries share. Clean air an international issue of great importances because we need to be able to breath clean air in order to live healthy lives. Pollution steals like from people with preventable diseases, diseases caused by the pollution, sickness, suffering & faster death or shorter life. The battery electric vehicle offers a better way with battery recycling and zero tailpipe pollution!
Upward & onward with clean vehicle energy technology 42 FTW
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