Pam got her 1997 Solectria Force in the pages of the Seattle Times Feb 28th in the 'Autobiography' section of NWAutos. Check it out here: 'I love my car because'
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Happy New Year! There is so much EV news right now that it is difficult to present it in an organized fashion, so we will present some highlights and some links to whet your appetite for more.
Back in November we attended the Auto Show in Seattle and saw several EVs and PHEVs on the floor, along with the gas-guzzling offerings of the industry. The contrast was vivid (see below).
Mid-December we attended the Nissan press conference at Qwest Field and were able to drive the Leaf (disguised in a Versa body) as well as see the actual Leaf up close, and it was a pleasant introduction to the car. The drive system is super quiet; I didn't hear any gear noise, and little tire noise. Acceleration is quick enough to satisfy g-force junkies, and in a more practical vein, quick and balanced so that the car will be very driveable in traffic. We didn't get to see the guts of the car, but a cut-away chassis was photographed at another event, giving us a glimpse of the battery arrangement, and the motor (see below).
We continue to wait for other next-gen charging equipment to roll out, but prototypes are appearing from various manufacturers including Aerovironment, developer of the EV1 (Impact) drive system.
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Ghosn's first electric car, the Leaf, can travel only 100 miles without recharging — putting him in competition with hybrid vehicles that have no such limits.
In December, Nissan brought a Leaf to Seattle to generate interest. By the end of the year, some 900 Seattle-area drivers will have the chance to buy one
Not only will they get one of the first mass-produced, highway-capable, battery-powered autos, they'll also help answer questions about what it will take to make such cars practical.
The driving habits of first adopters — who will spend $28,000 to $35,000 for the car before a federal tax credit of $7,500 — will be closely studied by scientists to help federal and local governments figure out how to build a charging network that's envisioned to one day stretch across the continent.
The biggest stumbling block may be out of Ghosn's control: gas prices. His success, or that of anyone who builds EVs, hinges on whether car buyers get fed up paying increasingly higher prices at the pump, says Jerome York, the former Chrysler chief financial officer who has advised billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian. On Thursday, gasoline averaged $2.71 a gallon in the U.S., according to AAA.
"If gas is $2 a gallon, this whole regulatory effort to promote EVs is going to be an ugly train wreck," York says.
Ghosn has supporters.
"We look very positively on the fact that they're being innovative and have a plan for EVs that it looks like they'll be able to achieve," says Gilles Michel, assistant director of the New Jersey Division of Investment, which began buying its 6.6 million Nissan shares in March 2009. Since then, the stock price has more than doubled.
Ghosn needs a bold move to restore his brands' luster. Nissan's profit peaked in 2005 at $4.8 billion. He's going all out to populate the planet with electric vehicles, starting in December with the Leaf.
Ghosn is upending a century of automotive tradition by selling the Leaf without a battery. Instead, owners will rent the battery pack and pay for the miles used, like a cellphone plan.
Drivers will recharge at home or at public plug-in stations, hitching to 3-foot-high metal posts. Or they may swap the batteries, like exchanging an empty propane tank for a full one. The price: about $120 a month in the U.S. for battery rental and electricity.
Battery recycling
Nissan is betting on a surge in electric vehicles sales after its Leaf debuts, and has set up a joint venture with a Japanese trading house to deal with a major environmental concern -- recycling the car batteries. The venture with Sumitomo Corporation is expected to begin operations in late 2010 in Japan and the U.S.
Sources: NWautos staff, Associated Press
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Nissan turns new Leaf with all-electric wager
The crowd of 600 falls silent as an employee asks CEO Carlos Ghosn if he's staking too much of Nissan's future on electric cars and not enough on green alternatives like Toyota's Prius gas-electric hybrid.
Ghosn smiles as he steps to the edge of the stage at Nissan's headquarters in Yokohama, Japan.
Hybrids, diesels and gas engines aren't enough, Ghosn responds. In a world where oil prices may triple and political upheaval and climate change are intensifying, governments are promoting all-electric cars. Consumers will embrace them as soon as the price is right, he says.
"This is about preserving the planet," Ghosn says. "If we start being skeptical, nothing is going to happen."
A few minutes later, Ghosn shifts from evangelist to micromanager. A Nissan ad that touts zero-emission motoring for future generations is vague, he tells a dozen executives.
"We should say specifically 'young people, first-new-car buyer,' " he says.
Ghosn, 55, who turned Nissan into the most profitable of the world's seven biggest automakers in 2005 and made Ghosn-san a Japanese household name, is placing the auto industry's biggest bet yet on electric vehicles, or EVs.
He is facing an abundance of challenges. It may take until 2030 for automotive batteries to be cheap enough for widespread commercial use, the National Research Council said recently. Before then, governments may tire of propping up the EV industry with tax breaks and buyer incentives.
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| Nissan Leaf Console |
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| Leaf Battery Unit |
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| Leaf Motor |
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| Leaf Floorboard & Battery Pack |
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| Tesla Motors Mobbed |
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| At the Auto Show:
Up on the Concourse with the exotics, Tesla Motors was drawing an enthusiastic crowd. This was in contrast to the lighter population of other exhibits. Tesla Motors is surpassing, in sales and in numbers, the previous efforts of the big automakers to produce an EV, and is now funded with federal dollars to be able to do more of the same. With the addition of the model S, the future of Tesla Motors looks busy as interest in EVs grows and the willingness to diverge from the oil crowd increases. A brash startup, indeed.
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| Are You Kidding Me??? |
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| One thing that was decidedly noticeable at the Seattle Auto Show was the low gas mileage of most of the models on display. It begs the question, do the big auto makers get it? Did we bail them out for nothing? Hmmm.
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| Sheesh! |
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| There Were Exceptions |
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| Pam Checks Out Hymotion Prius |
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| MC Electric Vehicles Displays Coulomb Charging Port |
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| Converj, the Cadillac version of the Volt |
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| Fisker Karma PHEV |
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| On August 5, 2009, Electric Transportation Engineering Corporation (eTec), a subsidiary of ECOtality, Inc. (OTCBB:ETLY) was awarded a $99.8 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to embark on this Project. The Project officially was launched on October 1, 2009 and will last approximately 36 months.
eTec is partnering with Nissan North America to deploy up to 4,700 zero-emission electric vehicles, the Nissan LEAF, and 11,210 charging systems to support them in strategic markets in five states: Arizona, California, Oregon, Tennessee, and Washington.
The EV Project will collect and analyze data to characterize vehicle use in diverse topographic and climatic conditions, evaluate the effectiveness of charge infrastructure, and conduct trials of various revenue systems for commercial and public charge infrastructure. The ultimate goal of The EV Project is to take the lessons learned from the deployment of these first 4,700 EVs, and the charging infrastructure supporting them, to enable the streamlined deployment of the next 5,000,000 EVs.
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| June 28, 2009
The SAE standard J1772 charging connector for plug-in vehicles passed another threshold on its way to finalization this week. Underwriters Laboratories has completed its certification testing on the connector developed by Yazaki. The UL testing has verified the safety and durability characteristics of the 5-pin connector. Virtually all of the automakers from the U.S., Japan and Europe are planning to use the standard plug on upcoming electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles.
The plug supports both charging and two way communications and is designed to survive at least 10,000 connection and disconnection cycles. Now that the UL testing has been completed, the standard specification will be put to a vote of the SAE committee in July. The standard defines physical and performance characteristics for both electrical and mechanical behavior so that other companies can build compatible connectors and vehicle sockets.
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