Audio clip
Mark Perry
A top Nissan official in the U.S. said Monday that Tennessee is one of the first locations where it will sell its new all-electric car after it arrives in late 2010.
Also, the company eventually would like to make the car and its batteries in Smyrna, Tenn., and the Chattanooga area is in line for electric refueling infrastructure for the new vehicle, said Mark Perry, director of product planning and strategy for Nissan North America.
“Tennessee will be a launch market,” said Mr. Perry, additionally mentioning Oregon and Sonoma County, Calif.
The car will seat five and be in the size range of a Sentra or Versa, he told the Chattanooga Engineers Club.
“It will have 100 miles of pure battery range,” Mr. Perry said. He said Toyota’s 2010 Prius hybrid electric gets about 10 miles range on pure battery, while the planned Chevy Volt will get 40.
Mr. Perry said the Nissan, running on a lithium ion battery pack, won’t be a test model.
“We’re ready to go mass production and mass sales,” he said.
The Nissan official said that while the cost for a conventional vehicle of similar size may range from $28,000 to $30,000, the federal government is offering a tax credit of up to $7,500 on the electric. There also will be other steps to lower the buyer’s initial costs.
He said maintenance costs will be about $1,350 lower annually for the pure electric vehicle than a conventional car.
“The pay back is immediate,” Mr. Perry said. He estimated the cost to “fill the tank” in the Tennessee Valley at about 90 cents, and it will take about four to eight hours to do so at a residence.
Mr. Perry said plans are to get that time frame down to four hours in 2012.
Jim Frierson, who directs the Advanced Transportation Technology Institute in Chattanooga, said Nissan’s plans are “music to our ears.”
He said the drive for putting electric vehicles on the road is “the space race of the decade.”
In terms of recharging infrastructure, plans are to start in the Nashville-Murfreesboro-Franklin area. Nissan’s USA headquarters are located in Franklin. Then, plans are to gain infrastructure in Knoxville and Chattanooga and eventually into North Carolina, Mr. Perry said.
While the car will be made in Japan at first, Mr. Perry said the company likes to produce vehicles where they’re purchased.
Mike Pare, the deputy Business editor at the Chattanooga Times Free Press, has worked at the paper for 27 years. In addition to editing, Mike also writes Business stories and covers Volkswagen, economic development and manufacturing in Chattanooga and the surrounding area. In the past he also has covered higher education. Mike, a native of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., received a bachelor’s degree in communications from Florida Atlantic University. he worked at the Rome News-Tribune before ...
I applaud Nissan for their vision to build a 100 mi range EV. They picked the "sweet spot" of substantial range yet not excessive in battery cost (even this is ~20K+ battery). One common misconception about EVs is that "infrastructure" is required in order to make them a realistic solution. The main infrastructure is already in place and it is everywhere - called the 120V standard outlet. Every night, using hairdryer-level power you can get 60 miles range, or easily the full 100 mi using level II (clothes dryer-type power). Starting each day with 100 mi is quite practical. Charging "stations" will be icing on the cake someday, but be careful not to think of them as chicken-and-egg the way the H2 fuel cell people need H2 stations - whole different animal. EVs can be practical right away for your commuter car without expensive and unique charging infrastructure.
GOOD FOR NISSAN. I will be ready for another car about that time and we will seriously be looking at the Nissan EV product.
I encourage everybody to watch "Who Killed the Electric Car". There is a sequel coming too.
It covers alot of facts that you can easily confirm on the web. In short GM (and most of the other car makers) make alot of money selling us the gasoline powered car. GM held the patents to the NiMH battery tech used in their EV1 in the late 90s. When they scrapped their EV program, they sold the patents to Texaco who 5 days later was bought up by Chevron who won't license the tech for EV vehicles.
This battery technology now at least a decade old is capable of pushing a small SUV or compact car over 100 miles per charge and the Toyota versions have lasted over 150K miles (still kicking). Imagine what a decade of improvements on this battery could deliver.
Chevron sued Toyota to the tune of $30M to force Toyota to quit building NiMH batteries for EVs and there are indications that there was also a gag-order put in place. The last of the RAV4-EVs were sold in 2002 or 2003 and many of them are still running around the USA on electric power only. There are a number of people who have added solar to their rooftops in CA and they charge their vehicles for FREE.
How much do YOU pay for gasoline every year? Last summer when gas was $3.75 I figured up that over a distance of 200K miles an 18 mpg vehicles costs roughly $42K to fuel.
By the way this is the current price of several EVs nearly to market today. Hmmm, drive a gasoline vehicle that costs and cost and costs or buy an EV with 100 mile range that I can charge at home and that over 200K miles would pay for itself AND the solar roof top in savings over the gasoline version. EASY choice assuming the durable NiMH batteries were available.
GM and the other car manufacturers are really pushing Lithium-Ion tech. NiMH delivers less power per pound but is MUCH more robust and forgiving. Amazing how quiet the big companies are about the NiMH batteries... The Volt is a mere shadow of what it could have been had GM not quit the EV program and had to start all over.
Our gov't (if they were truly dedicated to changing America) ought to encourage Chevron to release the NiMH patents or at least license the patents at a reasonable cost. They expire in 2015 I think.
Let us use this technology while the Lithium-Ion tech matures. The NiMH battery tech is the perfect 100 mile range battery tech for the next decade. Some Rav4-EVs have over 150K miles on the original batteries. Some of the Prius taxis have over 250K miles on the original batteries. Amazing durability.
I fear there is just too much money in continuing to do the same old same old in America and that we'll waste valuable years before we start making our air cleaner and we'll stop wasting our resources. We have the technology to move away from fossil fuels except where necessary (heavy trucks, trains, airplanes, heavy industry). Why don't we? For those of us who need a safe comfortable commuter vehicle, an EV is perfect.
For each kWh of battery capacity you can actually access, the vehicle will go 3 to 6 miles in all-electric mode. Kids raised closer to a freeway have more permanent lung damage than those raised farther away. It's not the freeway; it's the exhaust of acid-forming products that eat away delicate lung tissue during the crucial 12-18 years of lung development. Electric cars travel well over 100 miles on the energy equivalent of one gallon of gas. If the average consumer drives 1000 miles with wall-electric would take 250 kilo-Watt-hours of electric, about what's needed to run two refrigerators. If you live in a more arid place than TN you might be concerned to know that it takes 25 gallons of potable water to extract and refine that gasoline. Avoiding burning 250 million gallons of gasoline per week would release a lot of resources... Now here is something that we're supposedly looking for: American energy supplies that we can invest in that produce jobs here and build American manufacturing, without engaging in trade wars.
According to the financial pages today,GM lost 9.6 billion dollars in just the last quarter. Even using GM's inflated statistics that would have funded 9.6 EV1 programs. We're repeatedly bailing them out why? To save jobs of course. On the other hand if we just paid employees of GM and their suppliers to stay how it would be cheaper than the tens of billions of dollars to keep GM afloat.
FWIW I want to see GM and Detroit in general live and thrive. I don't want to fund their hardheadedness.
I encourage everyone to get onto the web and talk to people who owned EV1s, who own electric S-10s based on the EV1 tech, who own electric Ford Rangers built by Ford, and who own RAV4-EVs. Gasoline is obsolete for alot of us even if the auto industry won't admit it. Talk to the people who have the tech in their garage and who have driven these vehicles. There are plenty of naysayers who have never even seen an electric car who will argue until they are blue in the face that electric cars just won't work...
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