The Nissan Leaf has received some pretty good reviews recently and has been lauded as the first truly mass produced Electric Vehicle (EV). It will be built in Britain (Nissan’s Tyne and Wear plant to be exact safeguarding 2,250 jobs) one year after it hits UK showrooms in 2012. The five-door, five-passenger, Leaf is a city car powered by a 24kW lithium-ion battery pack split into 48 separate modules. Even this refinement shows that Nissan are seriously thinking ahead in terms of economic and practical servicing by allowing for the replacement of individual battery modules rather than the entire battery pack. Top speed comes in at just under 90 mph with a claimed 0-60 time of less than 10 seconds.
Nissa Leaf Electric Vehicle
Those numbers don’t have the same significance in the EV world as they would for genuine petrol heads, but they do at least suggest that the Leaf isn’t a four-wheeled electric toy and approaches genuine car-like performance. The number that arguably matters most is range and with the Leaf, Nissan contends that this slippery hatchback (.29 cD) is good for 100 miles per charge. That, they claim, is perfectly acceptable for the target demographic of urban dwellers and inner-city commuters. When the juice does run out, you can plug one of three different 110, 220 or 440 volt cables into one of two front-mounted ports.
Nissan will not give a price for the Leaf in the UK and it is still considering whether or not to lease the first cars along with their battery packs. What’s clear from many of the reviews is that driving an EV is a subtly different experience from driving a conventional internal combustion engined car. Before they part with their hard earned cash or arrange some sort of contract hire or leasing deal on the machine, customers are most probably going to insist on a test drive to get the feel of the thing (and frankly the wife and kids are going to want to go along just to experience the novelty). The battery-powered BMW MiniE for example virtually stands on its nose when you ease off the throttle. Other electric cars will freewheel, their speed virtually undiminished, until you brake when the motor frantically goes into reverse to generate current that can top up the battery. One of the main features of an all electric drive is the fact that maximum torque is produced at almost zero revolutions, so even the slightest press of the throttle will make an EV take off like a scalded cat!
Different driving and road conditions may also drain the battery at a different rate. Nissan says normal charging on a 240 volt 13A domestic supply will take 11 hours (fast charging on a 400 volt, 50kW unit can reduce that to around 8 hours but this will reduce battery life). Road Range (rather than Road Rage) or the worry about whether there’s enough juice left to reach your destination may well become the new middle-class car driver’s anxiety. What EVs may well also herald is an upsurge in temporary car insurance. Always test drive before you buy anything is a mantra in the second hand car market and sound advice for any vehicle purchase. Given that piloting any EV is so different from what you’ve been used to, prospective owners are likely to get short term car insurance in advance to cover their drive away test drive. This approach will also buy them time before they arrange obtain full annual motor insurance cover.
Of course, it is early days for the Leaf or other EVs and there’s currently little in the way of recharging infrastructure. Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, had pledged to install 22,500 electric car charging points across London, with 7,500 in place by 2013 of which 6,000 were to be installed at work places, 500 on the streets, 330 in public car parks, 50 at Tube stations, 140 in supermarket car parks and 120 at car clubs. This £60 million scheme was intended to make London the “Electric Car Capital of Europe” , but, following the Spending Review, the mayor’s earlier pledge of £20 million funding has now been cut back to just £7 million.
Boris also promised that no Londoner would be more than a mile from a charging point. At present there are only around 250 charging points in London with just over half of them funded by Transport for London (TfL), to service the capital’s 1,700 electric vehicles currently registered. What could tweak interest in the Leaf though is the availability of a government grant of up to £5,000 towards the price of an electric car. This subsidy was the brainchild of the former Labour government and the Department for Transport (DfT) anticipates around 8,600 of the cars will be sold in the first year of the scheme. So far, £43 million has been committed to the scheme that will run until March 2012, with a review taking place in January 2012. There are suggestions that the subsidy will continue after March 2012, albeit at a lower rate.
Source: thedrive.co.uk
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