Nissan Drops the 24kWh Leaf in favor of 30kWh in France

cros13

Amid rumors on PushEVs and InsideEVs of 24kWh pack production ending at Sunderland.

Brochures now only list 30kWh:
https://www.nissan-cdn.net/content/dam/Nissan/fr/brochures/Brochures-vehicules/eBrochure-LEAF.pdf

listermint

cros13 wrote: »

Amid rumors on PushEVs and InsideEVs of 24kWh pack production ending at Sunderland.

Brochures now only list 30kWh:
https://www.nissan-cdn.net/content/dam/Nissan/fr/brochures/Brochures-vehicules/eBrochure-LEAF.pdf

No real reason to continue production of it I suppose

KCross

Didnt they already drop the 24kWh in the US last year?

And werent there rumours that Sunderland is tooling up for the next size battery... 40kWh "ish" for the MY18?

unkel

Opportunity for someone to pick up one the last 24kWh powered cars for a massive discount! €17k-€18k might be doable.

cros13

KCross wrote: »

Didnt they already drop the 24kWh in the US last year?

Yes, they dropped 24kWh production at the Nissan plant in Smyrna in late 2015. They got rid of 24kWH inventory by making the base S trim 24kWh while the SV and SL went 30kWh only. If sunderland production has stopped that's the end of the 24kWh in europe, leaving the Oppama plant in Japan the last factory to produce the 24kWh pack. The Guangdong plant will produce packs for a new "affordable" EV for the chinese market .Production of the Venucia e30 won't be scaling up as previously planned.

KCross wrote: »

And werent there rumours that Sunderland is tooling up for the next size battery... 40kWh "ish" for the MY18?

Yup

slave1

.and in a few years the 30kW will be dropped in favour of the 40kW etc., maybe not quite the same speed as PC processor generations but the principal remains....

isnottheword

I wonder will they keep a stock of 24kW's for battery refits on the originals or will they now officially support 30kW's for what was originally a 24kW based car? It's already been established (according to others here and elsewhere) that it's possible to slot in a 30 kW - just not with official Nissan support.

cros13

I understand they have to provide parts for a minimum of 10 years. They could do that by keeping a stock or by providing 30kWh replacement packs.

It's worth noting that Sunderland doesn't produce cells for the 30kWh packs. The 24kWh-based cells are used for 14V and 48V batteries sold by Hyperdrive Innovation, who are hawking them for mild hybrids and grid storage.
https://hyperdriveinnovation.com/applications/#electric-vehicles

Don't know what they are going to do or whether production is continuing for them and the xstorage products.

zilog_jones

Don't Li-ion batteries degrade over time, even if they're not used? Seems like a bad idea to keep old cells in stock if that is still the case, but maintaining production of old parts probably isn't feasible either.

cros13

Yes, they will degrade with calendar age. However they would be stored in ideal conditions, or manufacturing may not be completed, possibly stored without the electrolyte etc. Either way the packs would have a long lifespan in storage, far beyond the 10 year mark.

It's also possible just to swap in an equivalent composed of newer cells.

Yes , exactly, I would not say they'd manufacturer current cells and store them considering the cost of battery tech in a few years will be a lot better and cheaper.

isnottheword

Deleted User wrote: »

Yes , exactly, I would not say they'd manufacturer current cells and store them considering the cost of battery tech in a few years will be a lot better and cheaper.

Easier for them then to provide the 30kW pack off the shelf - but for their own reasons, they probably won't want to do that (albeit someone should be able to do it after-market when the time comes).

BoatMad

slave1 wrote: »

.and in a few years the 30kW will be dropped in favour of the 40kW etc., maybe not quite the same speed as PC processor generations but the principal remains....

note really, last time I looked , Cork is not getting any further away , but software grows to consume processor power.

Ultimately a 300Km car ( under all conditions ) ticks most people boxes for an average car doing average mileage

theres no real comparison with CPU power

The majority of people will not use the full cpu power, not even close not even in most modern laptops.

bk

Deleted User wrote: »

The majority of people will not use the full cpu power, not even close not even in most modern laptops.

Interestingly, this years new Intel CPU has almost no performance improvement over last years model! Yes, it uses less power to do the same, which is obviously great for laptops, but the lack in jump of performance is bad for desktop and workstation users like gamers, video editors, etc. who don't care about power usage.

As you say, the reality for most PC users (excluding the likes of gamers, video editors, etc.) software hasn't grown at all to consume processor power and even a 10 year old laptop is fine for surfing the web, youtube, MS office, etc. that most people are doing.

I've seen a similar cycle with almost every other technology category I've followed. Desktops, Laptops, Tablets, smartphones. The first few generations show massive jumps from generation to generation and are well worth upgrading. But then it hits a point where it gets good enough for most people and while the technology continues to get better, the differences aren't big enough for people to care and upgrading slows way down. Then the advancements change more to delivering that same great performance in cheaper models.

I suspect the exact same will happen with EV's. To start with we will continue to get ever increasing battery sizes/range and quicker charging. But then eventually it will hit a point of good enough for most people and people will be slow to buy the newer higher capacity model when their current one already does the job. At that point it will switch to making that good enough capacity ever cheaper, so that it can be delivered in cheaper models.

slave1

BoatMad wrote: »

note really, last time I looked , Cork is not getting any further away , but software grows to consume processor power.

Ultimately a 300Km car ( under all conditions ) ticks most people boxes for an average car doing average mileage

theres no real comparison with CPU power

Totally understand, my comparision was more aligned with Model A gets replaced with Model B which is a more powerful version and then Model A gets phased out, Model B will then get replaced with Model C and get phased out etc. etc.
So Leaf is 24kWh, then 30kWh and 24kWh, then 30kWh only, then 40kWh and 30kWh, then 40kWh only, then 50kWh......n

cros13

The difference here is that we're starting out from a point much closer to the theoretical physical limits of lithium ion batteries.
A lot of this initial bump we're seeing with vehicle batteries is just automotive cells catching up with cells used for consumer electronics.

In the long term we're going to see a bump from new technologies like metal air batteries. But until that point I don't see passenger cars going past 130-150 kWh due to cost and weight considerations.

In the case of low-cost EVs like the leaf, once we hit 70kWh I see manufacturers reducing the price or lowering the kerb weight instead.