Nissan bets on electric cars, not biofuels
CHIBA, Japan--Nissan is going to come out with more hybrid cars and completely electric vehicles in a few years.
But it's less excited about ethanol and biodiesel.
Nissan's Minoru Shinohara amid the Ceatec crowds.
(Credit: Michael Kanellos/CNET News.com)Technically speaking, designing an ethanol or biodiesel car is fairly straightforward, said Minoru Shinohara, senior vice president and general manager of the Technology Development Division at Nissan, during a meeting at the Ceatec show here this week.
The problem is the cost of the fuel. Both biodiesel and ethanol cost more than regular gas, when changes in mileage and other factors are calculated.
"The most important thing is availability of fuel," Shinohara said. In the future, he speculated, biofuel cars could account for 10 percent to 20 percent of all cars sold. It's a large percentage, but nowhere close to a majority.
There are also the political and societal questions, he added. Do you have to use cropland that might be better used in growing food? Do you have to cut down tropical forests?
It's the opposite with cars that run on electricity. The societal questions are easy. The tough part is coming up with a battery that is small enough and cheap enough to put into a car.
Electric cars probably won't be replacements for current petroleum cars. Batteries can't provide a range that gas-powered cars can. Instead, manufacturers will tout them as second cars or town cars designed for ordinary, short commutes. Getting consumers to understand, and act on, the town car concept is going to take a lot of marketing and work, Shinohara said.
"They (electric cars) are not a replacement for traditional vehicles," he said.
Nissan's electric plans are already under way. The company currently sells some hybrid vehicles that rely on components and technology from Toyota. It will come out with cars based on its own hybrid system in 2010. (Nissan got a good share of the buzz at last month's Frankfurt auto show with its electric-powered concept car, the Mixim.)
The first mass-produced electric car from Nissan will then likely follow in 2011 or 2012, Shinohara added. It will likely be a city car. He's a lot less excited about the concept about plug-in hybrids--again, it's the price/benefit equation.
The basis of these future hybrids and electrics will likely come from batteries from a joint venture formed earlier this year between Nissan and NEC.
The problem isn't weather or not there is food to feed the hungry, its a matter of who pays for the food that the hungry can't afford. Unfortunately seed isn't free, in fact Corn and soybean seed is VERY expensive. The fuel the farmer used to till the soil, plant the seed, and harvest the crops isn't free either. Plus, the farmer needs something for the time he spent doing all that.
It's not do we have enough, but whose going to pay for it?
With a global population approaching 7 billion, the last thing we should be doing is burning our food to drive down the street. We need to be developing electric, and improving battery technology, to save the food for hungry mouths.
http://www.chevrolet.com/electriccar/?seo=goo_electric_car
the US comes from coal-fired power plants". The actual amount
is about 50% currently, and sure to decrease in the future. It
should go without saying that we need to clean up the power
grid: electric cars will benefit from that. There are a lot of ways
to produce electricity.
Furthermore, studies have shown - repeatedly -- that electric
cars charged even from 100% coal-generated power still
produce less CO2 emissions than gasoline cars, due to their
high efficiency. If you bring your power sources down to 50%
coal, then it should beat biofuels pretty easily.
You may need to do a little more research on this. There have been a number of studies showing that electric cars may not add any power requirements to our grid due to the time (evenings) that most autos will be recharging. Power grids generally have to pump out a constant amount of power 24 hours. Due to businesses using enormous amount of power during the day for HVAC systems and the like, there is excess power in the evenings when folks go home -- and, in theory, recharge their cars.
While we could debate whether additional power would be needed if we switched all vehicles on the road to electric, there is one argument that is difficult to debate. We are going to have to fix the coal fired plants to some other method for generating electricity. There are areas of the country (Pacific Northwest) where most energy is from renewable resources, but on the East Coast, it is a very different picture. Whether the new energy sources are solar, wind, nuclear, or some other method - we need to start working on replacing them. We will need more power in our future, not less, regardless of the electric car issue, and we need all of our power plants to be generating electricity from sources that do not create CO2.
he said.
I wouldn't be so quick to assume that. At the rate battery
technology is improving, EVs and PHEVs could replace a large
portion of "traditional vehicles" over the coming, say, 20 years.
cars in asia, south america and europe dont meet the requirements necessary to sell them here.
Consider what EPA regs alone have done to the cost of a car in the last 25 years alone. On board computer systems, electronic fuel injection, catalytic converters, Thinner oil modifications to engines ETC. ETC. ETC. ETC. I bet between safety and emissions requirements they have tripled the cost of a car in required modifications to meet US standards.
We should examine every platform, but those vehicles you refer to aren't yet ready for U.S. prime time.
many residents who have garages or carports where they can recharge their cars. Ans even city dwellers need to go places outside the city. The only reason Nissan is not building a plug-in is because they simply don't have the technology and are settling for a reduced sized version of the GM EV-1 flop, recently voted one of the worst 50 cars of all time by Time magazine. GM will have an electric with a range extender in production by late 2010. It will destroy the sales of this Nissan vehicle here and in Europe.
Take a test drive today...
http://www.katu.com/news/consumer/Other/9539367.html?video=YHI&t=a
The only problem is the need for massive electric power generation growth in the future; the only viable solution is nuclear power, including fuel reprocessing and breeder reactors.
Ethanol is useful as a food supplement (Jack Daniels?}, but as long as there are hungry people in the world, burning it is perhaps even immoral. In fact all the other fuel proposals are either ridiculously wasteful of energy, or excessively polluting, or ludicrously expensive or they have some combination of these problems.
There is enough coal and tar sands to supply us with the liquid fuel required for cars, but homes should all convert to electric power for heating. With the above scenario, we would solve the energy problem, the US dependence on imported oil, and the global warming problem. The only immoral part might be that the Arabs will have to invent a way to make food from their oil,
Chinese electric cars will be in the US market late 2008 or early 2009 I believe.
Two of US companies right now sell Chinese Electric cars, one of them is Zap http://www.zapworld.com
Several companies and researchers have announced major breakthroughs in battery capacity, which is all that has been keeping the electric car from widespread adoption. Within a few years, batteries (or ultra-capacitors) that can power a car for hundreds of miles on a single charge may be available.
Electric cars have many potential advantages over internal combustion cars: simpler design, much more reliable, no more tuneups or oil changes required, much lower energy (fuel) costs, zero emissions, etc.
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by PeekOyle
May 20, 2008 5:48 AM PDT
- Just to counter a few points made above.
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See all 35 Comments >>1. The GM EV1 was a test car that was available for lease, there was only about 1500 of them made. You couldnt buy one! Thats how GM was able to crush them. Therefore saying that the EV1, which was obviously a test platform, was a flop etc seems rather pointless.
2. I'm really getting sick and tired of ppl bringing up the 'The long tail-pipe theory' whenever EV's are mentioned. It's been proven numerous times that the 'Wheel to Wheel' efficiency of EV's powered by coal-fired electricity is always superior to the 'Wheel to Wheel' efficiency of ICE vehicles.