Nissan unveils the new LEAF with up to 378km / 235 mile range

[cheesemp]

Hoping this means the original Leaf drops a bit in price for used models. Desperate to go electric but just can't justify more than £14000 on a car and the high range (40Kmh) model is around £17500 locally.

[big_hairy_rob]

Personally, I'd prefer a car that doesn't have all these technological 'features' which probably bumps the price up. If you can't stick to your lane or park, then you probably shouldn't be driving in the first place

[mikeo]

Personally, I'd prefer a car that doesn't have all these technological 'features' which probably bumps the price up. If you can't stick to your lane or park, then you probably shouldn't be driving in the first place

Indeed.

I'd also like to know what the "real world" range of this vehicle is? And how much things like temperature effects this (IE. summer compared to winter usage). I've heard people (IE. the folks that actually buy EVs) complain bitterly, that the real world figures bare little resemblance to what the manufacturers state. Any current EV owners care to comment?

[kalniel]

Personally, I'd prefer a car that doesn't have all these technological 'features' which probably bumps the price up. If you can't stick to your lane or park, then you probably shouldn't be driving in the first place

Except it earns the manufacturer brownie points with NCAP and insurers, thus ultimately probably reducing cost of ownership .

[philehidiot]

By compression ignition engines i'm assuming you mean mazda's HCCI engine which is a part time compression ignition engine that runs on petrol ... We should hear a lot more about it at IAA next week as they haven't officially announced it yet its all rumour to date!
As diesel engines are CI ...

One inefficiency i missed out before is the self discharge of batteries, most rechargeable batteries if left alone for a couple of months will go flat.

There was a car show a couple of weeks ago that had me in hysterics they were promoting all things green and had plenty of electric cars there plugged in being recharged by solar power ... except they weren't the panels could barely support one car the rest were being charged by a diesel gennie ... I kid you not!

The head of their R&D department said that petrol compression ignition engines will be available under the "sky active" (I think, I can't be arsed looking it up) brand in 2019. And yes, sorry I should have said petrol compression ignition. Aas you say, it looks like it'll actually be a standard spark ignition which converts to compression ignition when the conditions are correct but in order to achieve this it employs variable compression... that's some damn clever shizzle. What I don't want to see is that it employs spark plugs during almost all the challenging parts of driving, like setting off, accellerating down a slip road, etc and only uses CI when cruising or idling. Cruising and idling are very efficient as it is and so you'd end up with a very expensive and complex engine for minimal gains in this setting. I hope that spark plugs will only be used in order to get the operating temperature up and then it'll be a full time CI petrol engine. As you say, we'll know more soon! Me excited.

EDIT : As for the whole green thing, it's like virtue signalling with a multimillion pound reward for getting it right. People don't look at EVs as part of a system (how many people enjoy examining the engineering behind what they use? Most have more important things like their kids to think about) but simply see what is put in front of them. As a result you have governments using over simplified crap which is actually counterproductive in terms of global warming prevention to boost election chances and companies doing the same for market share. How many people will have looked to see that generator? Most will have seen a solar panel next to a car with a wire going into the car and made the assumption that they're not being totally lied to and treated like idiots. There's a huge problem with global warming but companies are capitalising on it in the wrong way and governments aren't helping. We need a real, honest coversation without idiots getting hysterical when you tell them the current approach is wrong but it doesn't happen as when you tell a lot of greenies that an EV isn't actually as environmentally sound as a petrol engine you get accused of everything from being Hitler, a racist and a molestor of dead baby seals. This kind of crap stops those who could actually help the problem from speaking out as they get hounded by ignorant, hysterical morons who think they have the moral high ground when they're actually propogating crap which is woresening the problem. Much to the delight of these companies which lie to our faces about the potential for solar, etc.

[Wrinkly]

e-Pedal is a rather poor choice of tech name. It made me chuckle thinking that was the solution for when the battery dies.

[badass]

Hmm, depends how you define efficient. In terms of converting the energy at the vehicle, the electricity is more efficient, but then you have to consider ho that electricity is generated. The efficiency of aa thermal poer station is typicaly 33-48% - so have the energy available ends up as waste heat - some of which might be recoverable in combined heat and power schemes. But from an EV perspective, less than half the input energy is converted to electricity. There are then distribution losses and so on. However a thermal power station (especially a gas turbine one) is likely to be much cleaner than a car IC engine.

That said, an I C? car has hidden costs in the distribution of fuel, and the weight of the fuel it carries (but then an EV has the weight of the 'fuel tank' or battery.

However it becoes slightly more complicated f you consider so called renewable energy sources - solar, wind etc,which in terms of generation are much cleaner than burning fossil fuels - if you ignore the emissions created during manufacture!

So its not a clear cut A is more efficient than B. However it is clear that EVs are cleaner and less polluting at the point of use than IC engines, and if the majority of power in the future is generated by non-combustion methods, then EVs will probably be a less polluting mode of transport than IC powered vehicles.

Also remember that in terms of energy consumption - EV's seem to hover around 120 MPGe i.e. if you used a petrol powered generator to generate the electricity to power a typical EV, it would use the same amount of petrol equivalent to 120 MPG.

[badass]

If you do the calculations then even if you assume EV motors are 95% efficient (they're not most of the time, only when cruising) then the efficiency from the point of release of energy, grid losses and so on means that in terms of energy efficiency they're currently roughly (back of envelope) on a par with internal combustion.

That looks plausible - except it's complete rubbish. Taking the complete energy lifecycle into account, EV's are around twice as efficient. i.e. apples to apples, EV's use around 1/2 the energy of an ICE powered car.

[badass]

Indeed.

I'd also like to know what the "real world" range of this vehicle is? And how much things like temperature effects this (IE. summer compared to winter usage). I've heard people (IE. the folks that actually buy EVs) complain bitterly, that the real world figures bare little resemblance to what the manufacturers state. Any current EV owners care to comment?

The 2011 leaf claimed a 125 ish mile range that when independently tested was more like 90 miles. In the absence of better data, I would apply that ratio to the claimed range of the new one.

BMW claimed a 90 mile range for the original i3. Independently tested, the range was found to be around 90 miles. They do a bigger battery one now.

Source: Which? http://www.which.co.uk

[DanceswithUnix]

Cruising and idling are very efficient as it is and so you'd end up with a very expensive and complex engine for minimal gains in this setting.

Diesel engines are efficient at cruising (ie fixed motorway speed), petrol engines really aren't. Stop/start gets you efficient idling by shutting down the engine and avoiding the issue, and while acceleration burns a lot of petrol aiui most of that energy does end up in the car so it is actually efficient.

I found switching from a turbo diesel to turbo petrol in my current car which is similar size and power to the old one that it is only motorway cruising where I lose out on fuel economy so if HCCI fixes that it could be the death of diesel as you could basically have an engine with diesel performance on motorways but can do 7000rpm when needed. Just in time for us all to switch to electric

[Roobubba]

Indeed.

I'd also like to know what the "real world" range of this vehicle is? And how much things like temperature effects this (IE. summer compared to winter usage). I've heard people (IE. the folks that actually buy EVs) complain bitterly, that the real world figures bare little resemblance to what the manufacturers state. Any current EV owners care to comment?

My parents have the leaf mk1 and they get an all-weather range of minimum 75 miles from it, that's the worst-case.

For those still pushing fossil fuels, I'd add they charge theirs predominantly from the solar panels on their roof.
The future is surely large-scale distributed storage, including use of EV batteries as well as home-fixed batteries in addition to major new public infrastructure projects. It's still going to be a while, I grant, but the change is coming and it will be very disruptive over the next decade. We're seeing rapid advances in battery tech all the time - and while we'll be stuck with lithium for a good few years to come, there's a lot of research into alternative battery compositions to move away from Li, such as sodium or zinc which are more readily obtained and can provide even higher energy density.

Of course, I'm not even touching on the likely direction of travel of the industry (forgive the pun) over the longer term - that of large-scale non-ownership of vehicles when self-driving tech matures, and when/if the model can be proven and people come around to the idea.

[1stRaven]

Indeed.

I'd also like to know what the "real world" range of this vehicle is? And how much things like temperature effects this (IE. summer compared to winter usage). I've heard people (IE. the folks that actually buy EVs) complain bitterly, that the real world figures bare little resemblance to what the manufacturers state. Any current EV owners care to comment?

I have a 30Kw 2017 leaf and in the summer, would suggest a range of around 120miles from full to empty. However, this is dependent on traffic, elevation changes, number of people in the vehicle, speed etc etc. I tend to work off 1% is 1 mile which works well enough to let me plan charging stops for longer trips.

Haven't had it in the winter yet but the suggestion is around 80-90 miles if heater and air con are on.

With my weekly mileage, I am only having to charge 1 a week at the moment, using the solar panels at the weekend if possible. In the winter, the plan might be to plug the car in each night but rather than charging it, this should allow me to preheat the car each morning without affecting the range and therefore, enjoy a nice warm car from the start.

The new leaf looks better but 40kw is not a big enough change for me to swap mym pcp deal. However, there is a suggestion that the plus range which is due next year should have a 60kw battery for a good 200 mile range.

[keithwalton]

Skyactive-x is the name of mazda's new engine and it looks promising as a hybrid engine. I'm very familiar with it as we did some early prototypes for it.

For the other ends of the scale delphi have been working on the gdci concept which is full time compression ignition petrol engine, it's very efficient but difficult to control (feed forward required) and like the mazda needs in cylinder pressure sensors but delphi make those ...
MCE-5 are going the other way with a fully variable compression petrol engine, again very efficient and packs a very big punch yet uses minimal fuel. (200ps & 90mpg)

VW have been pushing the limits of conventional petrol and diesel engines with the lighthouse project.

The down side is all of these engines are in the early development stage and cost around a million euro's each ... but the potential is there

[outwar6010]

Whilst EVs are environmentally a disaster at the moment, they're probably where the future is (when generation of electicity catches up) and it's good to see genuine improvements in the technology. Even if we go down the hydrogen route, this technology will be useful. This will only cost Nissan money for now but it's forward looking and I expect that even with advanced in internal combusion engines, hybrid tech will become the norm in the near future.

The single pedal thing will probably die a death - I expect it would be more natural for advanced drivers wo are used to using engine braking rather than the brakes but for your average DSA trained driver it's adapting for the sake of the engineers trying to meet marketing targets rather than an improvement in control. The reason I say this is because if you tell the car what you want to do, then it can work out the most efficient way to acheive it, i.e. you say it should slow and the machine can choose to use inertia, friction or brakes or whatever to acheieve the desired amount of braking in the most efficient way. I suspect this will be brilliant in normal, long term use but will put off many at the test drive stage.

How are evs an environmental disaster? With petrol and diesel the vehicle constantly relies on incredibly damaging and harmful fuel. If you are talking about rare elements in batteries it's a one off environmental cost and they last for decades. Also there's only like 2% lithium in each battery.

[peterb]

One other efficiency of ECs is regenerative breaking. In an IC car, the kinetic energy in the moving vehicle is converted into heat and dissipated into the atmosphere. In an EV some of that energy recuperated as electrical energy and is put back into the battery.

[spacein_vader]

VW have been pushing the limits of conventional petrol and diesel engines

And emissions law.

On a serious note, a very interesting post. I had no idea such work into conventional power units was underway.