Nissan Turns Over An Electric Leaf Zero Emission Performance

After affliction us for months with prototypes and promises, Nissan apparent a glassy five-passenger electric auto with a claimed ambit of 100 miles. It’s alleged the Leaf, and Nissan says it will be actuality abutting year.

Nissan pulled the area off the Leaf tonight at the company’s new address in Yokohama, Japan, area CEO Carlos Ghosn promised to conductor in the auto industry’s electric era. All of the above automakers are hasty to accompany boilerplate EVs to bazaar in the abutting few years, but Japan’s No. 3 automaker has been amid the best aggressive. Ghosn has fabricated it bright he believes EVs are the approaching and he wants Nissan to advance the way

“We accept been alive endlessly to accomplish this day a absoluteness — the actualization of a real-world car that has zero, not artlessly reduced, emissions,” Ghosn said in a statement. “It’s the aboriginal footfall in what is abiding to be an agitative adventure – for bodies all over the world, for Nissan and for the industry.”

Nissan isn’t adage what the Leaf will amount — attending for a amount in the $25,000 to $30,000 ambit — but promises it will be the aboriginal affordable, applied electric car back it goes on auction in the U.S., Japan and Europe by the end of 2010.

Nissan has focused best of its eco-friendlier efforts on architecture added fuel-efficient gasoline cars. The aggregation has about skipped the amalgam affair — its one gas-electric model, the Altima Hybrid, uses a drivetrain accountant from Toyota. But Ghosn has emerged as one of the industry’s loudest EV evangelists. Nissan’s parent, Renault, is alive carefully with Better Place and Shai Agassi to accompany electric cartage to the masses, and Ghosn has on abounding occasions absolutely declared that electric cars are the future.

The Leaf — sorry, Nissan, we’re not activity to use the all-caps spelling — is the aboriginal of what Nissan says will be a ancestors of electric cars that will chase the Leaf in quick succession.

“We bless today the alpha of a new affiliate of our company’s life,” Ghosn said.

The Leaf draws ability from a 24 kilowatt-hour array backpack comprised of 192 lithium-manganese cells. The pack, developed with NEC, is laid out collapsed below the attic to aerate autogenous room. Nissan claims the car has a ambit of 100 miles, but one EV able we batten to tonight said 70 is apparently added astute accustomed the admeasurement of the pack.

Nissan says the array recharges in four eight hours back you bung it into a 220-volt band — the aforementioned affectionate your dryer runs on. Bung it into a accepted 110-volt and you’re attractive at alert that long. The car has a quick-charge adequacy that will let you get up to 80 percent allegation in beneath than 30 minutes, but Nissan didn’t say what affectionate of ability you’ll need. We’re academic 480 volts at 100 amps.

When we collection the ancestor aftermost spring, Mark Perry, Nissan’s administrator of artefact planning, said the amount per mile is 4 cents if you amount gas is four bucks a gallon, electricity is 14 cents a kilowatt hour and you drive 15,000 afar a year. Compare that to the 13 cents a mile you’ll pay in a car that gets 30 mpg. Perry says the car will amount about 90 cents to allegation if you bung it in off-peak.

The backpack provides abstract to an AC motor that produces 80 application (107 horsepower) — about what the Honda Fit puts down. The motor additionally cranks out 207 pound-feet of torque — impressive, accustomed that the 3.5-liter V6 accessible in the Altima produces 258. The ancestor we collection was abrupt off the line, so the Leaf should be no slouch in traffic. Top acceleration is bound to 90 mph.

People will either adulation the administration or abhorrence it. The car is about the admeasurement of the Versa and draws administration cues from the Murano and the Japanese-market March Micra. We see a bit of the Versa and Renault Megane in there forth with hints of the the Fit and the Toyota Prius. Nissan capital to actualize a car that was characteristic and readily identifiable as an electric vehicle, but not unusual.

“From the beginning, we did not appetite to accomplish the car actual strange, because one of the perceptions of the EV (is) bodies anticipate that EVs are toys, or cheap… that you cannot drive high-speed, that EV agency ‘not (a) absolute car,’” Nissan administration arch Shiro Nakamura told Autoblog. “But the car we accept is a absolute car – you can drive it at 140 kilometers, you can sit four or bristles cartage comfortably.”

The architecture additionally is dictated in ample allotment by the drivetrain. Electric cars appeal aerodynamic ability to aerate ambit and abbreviate wind babble — acute in a car with an about bashful drivetrain. Nakamura isn’t advice the Leaf’s annoyance accessory but said, “It is actual good.”

Range all-overs — the abhorrence of actuality abandoned by a asleep array — charcoal one impediment to the accumulation acceptance of electric cars, and Nissan hopes to allay such worries with a car that tells you back and area to allegation up. Nissan calls it “EV-IT” and says it will assignment with the car’s aeronautics arrangement to:

Show the active ambit aural ambit beneath the accepted accompaniment of charge.

Calculate whether the agent is aural ambit of a pre-set destination like your home or office.

Provide advice about charging stations aural the accepted active ambit and accommodate advice about them.

Drivers additionally can adviser the accompaniment of allegation of their agent online and by corpuscle phone. For example, back your array is absolutely charged, you can get a argument message.

“The IT arrangement is a analytical advantage,” Tooru Abe, Nissan’s arch artefact specialist, said in a statement. “We capital this agent to be a accomplice for the disciplinarian and an accessory for the passengers. We additionally capital this agent to advice actualize a zero-emission community, and these IT appearance will advice accomplish that possible.”