Nissan Leaf Electric Car

The Nissan Leaf electric car is making a 22 city tour and stopped at Stanford yesterday for a lecture and viewing of the car (although we didn't get to drive it). The car looked - well, like a car - and the most of the information was standard electric car stuff. For instance, a 24kWh Li-ion battery pack with a 80 kW (106 HP) motor will propel it up to 100 miles with a top speed of about 90 MPH. They covered the usual stuff about 95% of all trips in the US being less than 100 miles and 80% of the charging will be at work and home. The also estimated that it will save about $1,400 a year in gas costs, which just about covers the cost of the battery over the 10-year life.

They are working hard to be the first affordable EV. They expect to start taking orders in Spring of 2010 and start delivering cars later that year.

For me, the most valuable information from this lecture is that they are collecting zip codes of people interested in the Leaf on the web site and sharing these statistics with the electric utilities and some utilities are starting to upgrade the transformers in the areas that will likely have a lot of EVs. They also mentioned that some places can be very difficult to get permits to install the charging stations in personal garages. They said that the Mini-EV program gave up trying to setup the electric car program in New Jersey because of these problems. The reason this was interesting to me is that it points to a possible business opportunity!

Here are my notes:

Mark Perry, Director of Product Planning, Nissan

Site: www.nisanusa.com/leaf-electric-car

• Late CY2010 launch
• Taking orders Spring 2010
• 99% recyclable, even battery (although it costs more than is recovered)
• Like Versa, seats 5
• 100 mile range (US LA4), 90MPH top speed
• 24kWh provides over 90 kW power, Laminated Li-ion Manganese, by AESC
• AC motor 80kw/280Nm
• Weighs 3000 lb, batteries 450 lbs
• 100 miles covers 95% of US driving patterns
• Battery degrades 5 years to 80% and then about 72% in 10 years (assuming 12,500 miles per years)
• Regen can put 30% back in the battery
• Charging timer, heating cooler through cell phone
• Charging time: Level 1: 16+ hours, Level 2: 8 hours at first, 4 hours later, Level 3: 25 mins to 80%
• Expect 80% of charging will be at home and work
• Gas at 25 MPG $3/gal, $1,800
• EV at 11c kWh is $396
• Fleet/commercial 2010, public 2012
• Need to do work to get markets ready
• Maintenance will be about 1/3 of gas car
• No V2G, but looking at SmartGrid and charging based on price
• Leaf price will be $30k to $35k. At this price, it is profitable to Nissan.
• Cost to consumer could be $26k with incentives

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