The first Nissan LEAF was the 2011 model, and it had 73 miles (117 km) of range — at a cost of $33,600 if Google’s AI research is right.
Why don’t you click on the damn link and check that it’s right?
An article citing an AI source is ridiculous. Especially for something so simple to research. Hell, the Wikipedia page probably has that info on it, with a source linked to corroborate.
Terribly-written article. Did this guy (or bot) have to hit a word count or something?
It would be more astounding if they could do this in a sedan or compact, instead of yet another SUV.
Or by massively improving the efficiency, rather than just the size of the battery… although as the original Leaf only had a 22kWh battery that would be 17mi/kWh, which is probably a bit optimistic.
what do you mean by effeciency? Electronics are already good. Wind resistance is where we can do things and even then it is mostly a size tradeoff not new developments.
With current technology yes it’s impossible, although those doughnut motors are next level, so you are spot on with tweaking the definition of efficiency. Things we can do now are as you mentioned wind resistance, Lucid have achieved over 5mi/kWh in a large luxury vehicle focusing on that.
You can focus on rolling resistance of the tyres, or my making an ultra-efficient smooth self-driving system.
Next is weight, making the car and batteries as light as possible. Although this would reduce the regenerative braking, the inefficiencies in that system would also be reduced.
Ancillary power, most cars have reasonably efficient heat-pump and electrical systems but shaving a few milliwatts from each system and cutting out a few truly unneeded systems will cut down on wasted power and weight. I like the Ami and it’s, ‘you already have a screen, entertainment system, and sat nav on your phone’ philosophy.
Now we get to the tweaking of the efficiency definition… how about we say you can have as many kWh as you like as long as it’s no bigger and no heavier than the origin leaf 22kWh pack?
Maybe adding solar or other micro-generation with an assumption on % of day/night driving and average power achieved by micro generation.
A 22kWh battery is about equivalent to a 3L tank of gas. Don’t care how efficient you make everything, you are not going to go far on that.
How about a battery the same size and weight as the 22kWh leaf battery?
Edit: I actually just looked up the 2010 Leaf pack and it’s 294kg, with CATL prototyping 500Wh/kg cells a 100kWh pack leaves 94kg for a nice box and BMS. Maybe this challenge is too easy.
I know 3 people who bought leafs and all had horrible problems with the battery.
2 of them got it replaced under warranty after more than 6 months wait, the third was just out of warranty and the car was a total loss
I would only take a Nissan if it was literally gifted to me for free
