Nissan Leaf battery vehicle only expected to have 80-mile range after five years

Greg BlencoeAug 29, 2009 22:15:19 GMT Partager

Here is an excerpt from an All Cars Electric blog entry titled “Nissan’s VP of Product Planning Discusses LEAF Battery” that was posted on Wednesday:

“According to (Nissan’s North American Vice President of Product Planning, Larry) Dominique, ‘Nissan expects LEAF batteries to retain 80% of their charge capacity at five years.’”

Nissan says the Leaf (see the YouTube video below) will have a range of “up to 100 miles” when the vehicle is new. If the average person drives 12,000 to 15,000 miles per year, this means the Nissan Leaf will have a driving range of up to 80 miles when the vehicle has been driven an average of 60,000 to 75,000 miles.

Not good.

Furthermore, you probably noticed that Nissan is careful to say that the Leaf will get “up to 100 miles” of range. The 100-mile figure will be achieved during slower driving.

Along those lines, Consumer Reports has said that the battery range in vehicles will “plummet” during highway driving. Bill Reinert from Toyota also discussed this issue in the YouTube video at the following link.

However, as I showed in the following YouTube video, people do indeed still drive on the highway!

Moreover, here are two excerpts from an outstanding blog entry by battery car enthusiast (and former Tesla Chief Marketing Officer) Darryl Siry titled “Nissan’s first big mistake out of the blocks (Nissan Leaf)” that was published on August 2nd:

“Nissan has upped the ante of exaggerating the realistic range of their vehicle by using the LA4 cycle as the single number they quote, which is the same as what we refer to as ‘EPA City’, or ‘UDDS’ driving cycle. As you can see below, this test cycle assumes an average driving speed of 19.59 mph and in the 22 minute driving cycle, it assumes you only break 40 mph once, for about 100 seconds, and never exceed about 58 mph.”

“There is no doubt in my mind that if they stick to their ‘100 mile’ number, consumers will be very disappointed in their purchase and the disparity between claimed and actual range will become immediately and widely heard on the internet.”

Darryl covered this issue in great detail in a fascinating blog entry titled “The Problem with EV Range Figures” which was posted on May 14th. He made the following comment about the typical real-world range of battery vehicles:

“I would say that as a general rule of thumb, if a company quotes an EPA range, you should apply a factor of 70% to that to get a realistic average range for a full charge.”

Therefore, the Nissan Leaf will get up to 100 miles of driving range when the vehicle is new and up to 80 miles of driving range when the vehicle is five years old. But this will only be achieved when the vehicle is not being driven aggressively and/or at high speeds.

The average driving range for consumers who drive the Nissan Leaf aggressively and/or at high speeds could be significantly lower.

Perhaps this is why EinChicago called the vehicle the Nissan “Leaf-You-Stranded-Waiting-For-The-Tow-Truck” on a recent HuffingtonPost.com blog post.

The 431-mile real-world driving range of the Toyota FCHV-adv (mid-size SUV) hydrogen fuel cell vehicle is looking pretty good right now. And so is thetrunk space.