Nissan Leaf and some general EV Qs

boardzz

Wow! 8 hours from a public charge point. That's a long time.

BoatMad

boardzz wrote: »

Wow! 8 hours from a public charge point. That's a long time.

hence the uselessness of onboard chargers unless they are big ones

cros13

boardzz wrote: »

Wow! 8 hours from a public charge point. That's a long time.

That's why rapid chargers are great... 0-80% in 20 minutes.

BoatMad wrote: »

hence the uselessness of onboard chargers unless they are big ones

6kW plus is handy if you have charging at work or in emergencies to get you just enough range to get to the next rapid if one is down.
None of those scenarios will survive to mass-market EVs.

The 22kW dual charger setup in the model S is genuinely useful but it's needed given that you could have a 90 kWh pack to charge.
I think a good litmus test for daily utility is 100km range per hour of charging, any charging method above that is a useful addition.

BoatMad

6kW plus is handy if you have charging at work or in emergencies to get you just enough range to get to the next rapid if one is down.
None of those scenarios will survive to mass-market EVs.

The 22kW dual charger setup in the model S is genuinely useful but it's needed given that you could have a 90 kWh pack to charge.
I think a good litmus test for daily utility is 100km range per hour of charging, any charging method above that is a useful addition.

I agree entirely

I have 6 kw charging at work which is unnecessary over 8-12 hrs unless you want to share it. the Portable EVSE @ 10 amps is more than good enough for work charging.

2 hrs is more than I need to get back home.

And you never arrive with less than about 20% at most public points and the 6.6 Kw charger gets from 20-25% - 90% in about 2 hrs which is a lot faster than the 3.3 Kw the final 10% will take longer but it's still better than having to look for a fast charger unless you have to charge on route but when you get to your destination nothing beats having AC .

Dexter1979

I love the 22kW SCPs and do most my charging on them in my Zoe. Did half my trip around Ireland using them since FCPs of any kind are rare in some parts of the north west.

Dexter1979

Dexter1979 wrote: »

I love the 22kW SCPs and do most my charging on them in my Zoe. Did half my trip around Ireland using them since FCPs of any kind are rare in some parts of the north west.

Yes I can imagine the benefits of 22 Kw, people are obsessed with 50-100 + Kw DC charging which will be necessary as batteries get larger while on a long drive but the benefits of not having to use a DC charger or wait at one can't be underestimated, getting back to a charged car or at least more than you'd have the patients to wait for at a DC charger is really great.

robnet77

...how about this as cheap range extender??!!

http://www.electric-cars-are-for-girls.com/portable-generator.html

never mind the site name ...

cros13

robnet77 wrote: »

...how about this as cheap range extender??!!

http://www.electric-cars-are-for-girls.com/portable-generator.html

never mind the site name ...

Take it from someone who has a 34kW 650cc range extender... They are a bad idea.

I've yet to meet an i3 owner who wouldn't trade the range extender for a 40% larger battery in a heartbeat.

robnet77

cros13 wrote: »

Take it from someone who has a 34kW 650cc range extender... They are a bad idea.

I've yet to meet an i3 owner who wouldn't trade the range extender for a 40% larger battery in a heartbeat.

...okay but what are we talking about?
there is no larger battery option on the i3, plus on the Leaf the larger battery comes at 3.000 euro.

Is this or a similar solution available in Ireland?

cros13

robnet77 wrote: »

...okay but what are we talking about?

The i3 has an optional 34kW petrol generator (actually a 650cc motorbike engine in the rear) for range extender use. Vastly more capable than the 5kW generator in the link you posted and yet most people who've bought the rEx (myself included) would rather extra battery took up the space of the engine.

Either that or the ~€10k it cost in VRT, VAT and sticker price back.

BMW should have added more batteries in all that wasted space for the same money as the Rex.

BoatMad

I think the i3 and all these hybrids of varying castes are merely transitional technology. They dont really represent a clear technology path into the future.

Clearly every auto maker knows the future is battery driven EVs , given the level of development that is going on , remember cars are engineered about 10 years ahead.

I3 isn't a technological leader, merely one answer to current issues with batteries

@100

The I3 is a compliance car like all German Electrics.

They were made produce them and to be able to sell in California it had to be a minimum of 80 Miles electric range, hence compliance car.

Same with the E-Golf and why we only really have 70-80 miles range electrics, though the 30 Kwh Leaf will do 100 miles @100 Kph in warmer weather to possibly 110 miles at 80 Kph.

The 30 Kwh Leaf is what Nissan promised in the first place and it's cheaper than the 2011 24 Kwh which cost 30 K in Ireland so I suppose not so bad.

BoatMad

Deleted User wrote: »

The I3 is a compliance car like all German Electrics.

They were made produce them and to be able to sell in California it had to be a minimum of 80 Miles electric range, hence compliance car.

Same with the E-Golf and why we only really have 70-80 miles range electrics, though the 30 Kwh Leaf will do 100 miles @100 Kph in warmer weather to possibly 110 miles at 80 Kph.

oh I agree with that also, in that regards all these hybrids are gaming the systems even more then VW !!!

Hybrids were good 11 years ago when the MK II Prius arrived, they haven't progressed much since.

We could have killed diesel many years ago but companies don;t like change and just want to keep making money with existing tech.

God only knows the true extent of the damage diesel has done to human health and the environment.

Plug-ins are just an excuse for car manufacturers to continue to produce ICE's because they're necessary with their tiny battery sizes and they're more expensive than a proper EV. And you can't fast charge most of them apart from the Outlander, and luckily too because they're always want charging blocking proper EV's from essential infrastructure.

BoatMad

We could have killed diesel many years ago but companies don;t like change and just want to keep making money with existing tech.

God only knows the true extent of the damage diesel has done to human health and the environment.

IN Europe, Diesels were seen as a path to lower fuel consumption and therefore lower greenhouse gas emissions , what has been omitted in that has been NOx ( which is not a greenhouse gas, but harmful to humans ) and diesel particulates

Its not that companies dont what to change, car companies are incredible engineering operations, I used to work in several ( as an robotics designer), but the level of investment in particular technologies is mind blowingly huge and requires an enormous investment of money and energy , not to mention finding engineering talent. Changing that takes time. but anyone that looks sees that all major car companies are serious about EVs.

we are only at the start of a revolution in personal transport

BoatMad

BoatMad wrote: »

IN Europe, Diesels were seen as a path to lower fuel consumption and therefore lower greenhouse gas emissions , what has been omitted in that has been NOx ( which is not a greenhouse gas, but harmful to humans ) and diesel particulates

I agree with this, in the E.U destroying Human health is seen as less of a problem than Co2 which they deem more of a threat to mankind due to their misguided information.

BoatMad wrote: »

Its not that companies dont what to change, car companies are incredible engineering operations, I used to work in several ( as an robotics designer), but the level of investment in particular technologies is mind blowingly huge and requires an enormous investment of money and energy , not to mention finding engineering talent. Changing that takes time. but anyone that looks sees that all major car companies are serious about EVs.

we are only at the start of a revolution in personal transport

I disagree,

GM back in 2001 sold the NiMh battery patents to Chevron Texaco who would not under any circumstances licence the tech for EV use, it was clearly forbidden. The "only" acceptance was for mild hybrid use of no larger than Prius size battery.

If only they continued development, granted NiMh is old tech now but there have been improvements especially in relation to self discharge and a lot of the low self discharge batteries especially high quality ones like the Panasonic Eneloops will guarantee 2 years storage to 80% or close compared to the cheap ones who loose 70% of their charge after a week or two.

Most NiMh AA/AAA batteries are destroyed by junk chargers like the 10 euro ones or the crap that Lidl or Aldi have from time to time. Worse again are the chargers that claim to charge in 30 mins these are the ones to avoid, they are junk.

Anyway GM clearly realised their mistake years later but they got huge subsidies from the Government to produce big engines SUV's instead of putting this into electric car R&D so there was no incentive to continue with the project.

BoatMad

Deleted User wrote: »

I agree with this, in the E.U destroying Human health is seen as less of a problem than Co2 which they deem more of a threat to mankind due to their misguided information.



I disagree,

GM back in 2001 sold the NiMh battery patents to Chevron Texaco who would not under any circumstances licence the tech for EV use, it was clearly forbidden. The "only" acceptance was for mild hybrid use of no larger than Prius size battery.

If only they continued development, granted NiMh is old tech now but there have been improvements especially in relation to self discharge and a lot of the low self discharge batteries especially high quality ones like the Panasonic Eneloops will guarantee 2 years storage to 80% or close compared to the cheap ones who loose 70% of their charge after a week or two.

Most NiMh AA/AAA batteries are destroyed by junk chargers like the 10 euro ones or the crap that Lidl or Aldi have from time to time. Worse again are the chargers that claim to charge in 30 mins these are the ones to avoid, they are junk.

Anyway GM clearly realised their mistake years later but they got huge subsidies from the Government to produce big engines SUV's instead of putting this into electric car R&D so there was no incentive to continue with the project.

I have read the various books on this and I think all I can say is that Ovshinsky was very naive to sell the patents to GM.

Arguably the decision by Chevron to try and aggressively control large format NiMH was to try and control and become a monopoly supplier to the EV battery industry , certainly Ovshinsky also believed that .

Its worth noting that attempts are being made to do the same with Li technology , and the main reason it hasn't succeeded is that the Chinese are one of the leaders in LI and have refused to honour any patents.

The fact is that all the major car companies have very significant stakes or are building ones in EV technology. They are in fact going as fast as is practically possible . Theres a 10 year development cycle on cars, what you see today was conceptualised in 2005

BoatMad

BoatMad wrote: »

I have read the various books on this and I think all I can say is that Ovshinsky was very naive to sell the patents to GM.

You should watch the documentary "who killed the electric car" I imagine Ovshinsky sold the patents for financial reasons and if I remember correctly he was pretty old and retiring.

BoatMad wrote: »

Arguably the decision by Chevron to try and aggressively control large format NiMH was to try and control and become a monopoly supplier to the EV battery industry , certainly Ovshinsky also believed that .

No Chevron texaco bought the patents to bury the tech. Why else would they strictly forbid the use of the battery in electric cars ? unbelievable stuff !

BoatMad wrote: »

Its worth noting that attempts are being made to do the same with Li technology , and the main reason it hasn't succeeded is that the Chinese are one of the leaders in LI and have refused to honour any patents.

I think Li is more complicated to control in the fact there are so many different variations in the chemistry.

I would have said the Japanese are the leaders in Li tech.

BoatMad wrote: »

The fact is that all the major car companies have very significant stakes or are building ones in EV technology. They are in fact going as fast as is practically possible . Theres a 10 year development cycle on cars, what you see today was conceptualised in 2005

Unfortunately most of the joint ventures were with start up battery companies and notably between GM and A123 who went bust, though I don't remember if GM actually had a stake in A123.

GM were also promised a 200 mile range battery by another company I can;t remember who I think also went bust. So I think now they are more interested in buying batteries from well established companies with proven technology rather than try to construct batteries in house or rather by themselves.

BoatMad

I quote this

In the end, it may come down to whether our Chinese professors are smarter than their Chinese professors. In 2007, the People's Republic took the unprecedented step of appointing Dr. Wan Gang as its Minister of Science and Technology, a brilliant Shanghai engineer and university president, without the benefit of membership in the communist party.

Battery development has been named a top national priority in China. It is all reminiscent of the 1960's missile race, when a huge NASA organization led by Dr. Wernher von Braun beat the Russians to the moon, proving our Germans were better than their Germans.

Here's the link to the full article , an interesting read http://oilprice.com/Finance/investing-and-trading-reports/The-Great-Race-for-Battery-Technology.html

BoatMad

BoatMad wrote: »

I quote this

Here's the link to the full article , an interesting read http://oilprice.com/Finance/investing-and-trading-reports/The-Great-Race-for-Battery-Technology.html

China is definitely at the forefront of innovation today and a lot of good quality stuff is coming from China but sadly the costs have gone way up for the higher quality stuff. But still sold at 2-4 times their actual value. making the products ridiculously expensive.

I see some pretty high quality things like electric bikes and segway type scooters if you like to call them that all sold in the E.U for many times their actual cost. Sadly a lot of E.U retailers decide to import the cheapest of Chinese junk to make more profit.

The same with led bulbs.

They may end up being the best at battery making but for now it's Japan and probably why most of the western car makers are looking towards Japan as the suppliers of cells for the Gen II electrics and why Elon Musk is looking to build the largest battery factory on Earth using Japanese battery tech.

BoatMad

They may end up being the best at battery making but for now it's Japan and probably why most of the western car makers are looking towards Japan as the suppliers of cells for the Gen II electrics and why Elon Musk is looking to build the largest battery factory on Earth using Japanese battery tech.

you are a very " definitive " sort of fellow,

The fact is that Li technology was primary developed in the USA and some in the UK and the USA remains a big focus of Li development

The chineese visiting post grad and professors visiting US became heavily involved and China has a key focus on Li battery development and most of the renowned experts are today in China.

Japan is merely a manufacturing centre for this technology , in that regards panasonic was and is a leader in 16850 form factor Li ( like you use in a flashlight) and this was the form factor that Musk selected, primarily to keep the price down.

Panasonic are primarily involved in the Giga battery to transfer manufacturer technology and also to fund it,


The technology centres for Li are China and the US, not Japan

have a search on Google scholar and see who is authoring scholarly papers on LI, it aint the Japaneese

Nissan is now considering buying its batteries from LG, with is a korean company not Japanese


see this for exampe http://fortune.com/2015/07/27/battery-startup-china/

cros13

BoatMad wrote: »

I3 isn't a technological leader, merely one answer to current issues with batteries

I strongly disagree. It might lag a little in the powertrain (though I do like the modularised battery packs with individual BMS and the gaseous refrigerant thermal management of the batteries is very innovative in it's implementation). In terms of it's CFRP frame , many innovative crash safety features (things like mechanical initiators and break points throughout the car are amazingly well thought out) and the price BMW has been able to build it for are astounding.

The motor is well designed. The battery has good 60Ah Samsung SDI NMC cells that are almost bulletproof. 12 cells per module, individual BMS per module and 8 modules per pack. They tried NCA but they had a couple of fires..... interestingly according to my mate in BMW R&D the r134a-based thermal management system came about because of the issues with the NCA cells. Originally the plan was for pack with substantially more capacity.

Things that are admittedly terrible:

The range extender
The empty space in the frame left by the range extender in the BEV
The software... it's really bad, CCS was not properly implemented, bad decisions in the user facing stuff like charge timers, heck there are software issues even with the motor controller.

The i3 is a far far less compromised design than the Leaf.

TBi

Deleted User wrote: »

The I3 is a compliance car like all German Electrics.

They were made produce them and to be able to sell in California it had to be a minimum of 80 Miles electric range, hence compliance car.

Same with the E-Golf and why we only really have 70-80 miles range electrics, though the 30 Kwh Leaf will do 100 miles @100 Kph in warmer weather to possibly 110 miles at 80 Kph.

Speaking about the egolf, have you seen the Golf GTE? 50 km range in EV and the charging socket intelligently placed behind the VW logo on the front (just like the leaf).

Now... why the hell they put the socket for the EGolf behind the petrol door is beyond me, especially when the GTE can put it in the correct location. For this reason i have to agree with Mad_Lad about these cars being 'compliance' cars.

BoatMad

BoatMad wrote: »

you are a very " definitive " sort of fellow,

The fact is that Li technology was primary developed in the USA and some in the UK and the USA remains a big focus of Li development

The chineese visiting post grad and professors visiting US became heavily involved and China has a key focus on Li battery development and most of the renowned experts are today in China.

Japan is merely a manufacturing centre for this technology , in that regards panasonic was and is a leader in 16850 form factor Li ( like you use in a flashlight) and this was the form factor that Musk selected, primarily to keep the price down.

Panasonic are primarily involved in the Giga battery to transfer manufacturer technology and also to fund it,


The technology centres for Li are China and the US, not Japan

have a search on Google scholar and see who is authoring scholarly papers on LI, it aint the Japaneese

Nissan is now considering buying its batteries from LG, with is a korean company not Japanese


see this for exampe http://fortune.com/2015/07/27/battery-startup-china/

I'm not arguing the China may be heavily involved in R&D but they have in the past come out with mad statements about major developments to draw in investors and we haven't seen these new developments many years later.

Give me enough time and I can dig up a few articles.

I didn't say where Nissan were getting their future batteries from. I can only say where they're getting them from now.

TBi

TBi wrote: »

Speaking about the egolf, have you seen the Golf GTE? 50 km range in EV and the charging socket intelligently placed behind the VW logo on the front (just like the leaf).

Now... why the hell they put the socket for the EGolf behind the petrol door is beyond me, especially when the GTE can put it in the correct location. For this reason i have to agree with Mad_Lad about these cars being 'compliance' cars.

Why have 50 Kms range when you can have 140-160 Leaf ? (30 Kwh)

These plug ins are stupidly expensive. But good for the companies because they can still make ICE's in house.

The GTE complies with German law that car companies have to electrify more of their fleets. So plug-ins and lower range fully electric comply with this.

cros13

cros13 wrote: »

I strongly disagree. It might lag a little in the powertrain (though I do like the modularised battery packs with individual BMS and the gaseous refrigerant thermal management of the batteries is very innovative in it's implementation). In terms of it's CFRP frame , many innovative crash safety features (things like mechanical initiators and break points throughout the car are amazingly well thought out) and the price BMW has been able to build it for are astounding.

The motor is well designed. The battery has good 60Ah Samsung SDI NMC cells that are almost bulletproof. 12 cells per module, individual BMS per module and 8 modules per pack. They tried NCA but they had a couple of fires..... interestingly according to my mate in BMW R&D the r134a-based thermal management system came about because of the issues with the NCA cells. Originally the plan was for pack with substantially more capacity.

Things that are admittedly terrible:

The range extender
The empty space in the frame left by the range extender in the BEV
The software... it's really bad, CCS was not properly implemented, bad decisions in the user facing stuff like charge timers, heck there are software issues even with the motor controller.

The i3 is a far far less compromised design than the Leaf.

No one denies the I3 is a good car, but it could have (should have) been much more.

Leaf was invented at a time when batteries cost twice what they do now so you can't compare the two. Nissan did an amazing job to keep costs down using existing technologies.

I thought the 30 kwh Leaf was expensive until I remembered the MK I 24 kwh was 30K from 2011-late 2013.

robnet77

Deleted User wrote: »

Why have 50 Kms range when you can have 140-160 Leaf ? (30 Kwh)

...what is the range of the BMW i3 BEV please?

robnet77

robnet77 wrote: »

...what is the range of the BMW i3 BEV please?

According to the EPA about 128 Kms for the I3 Battery only.

They gave the Leaf 30 Kwh 172 kms and the 24 Kwh 135 kms.