With all due respect, I just don't think Ghohn (or anyone at Nissan NA, apparently) comprehends the present and future experiences of LEAF drivers with DC charging in the USA, and the I for one, am losing my
patience.
Yes, if we had more competent and functional governmental agencies, on the local, state, and federal level, we already could have a network of DC charge stations suited to American driving needs, that is dependable 24 hour stations with multi-vehicle charge capability, located at strategic inter-city highway routes, at locations where drivers want to stop for food, drink, and rest during longer trips, just like already exist (to varying extents) in many other advanced economies.
But this is just not happening, in the USA, where for good or bad, we have so largely ceded most economic development questions to corporate control.
What we do have, are nearly all single DC chargers per site, making them
unreliable by design, located haphazardly, and where they often are a cash drain for the hosts, rather than a means of attracting revenue through food and beverage sales to those pausing to charge.
Nissan cannot build the US infrastructure itself, but as the largest seller of BEVs in the USA, it is in a unique position to demonstrate the viability of our future DC charging infrastructure nationwide by promoting
some number of convenient and reliable charge stations at
some number of locations.
As an example, is there anyone who drives the Sacramento-bay area highway 80 route who wouldn't prefer one
dependable (with multiple vehicle charge capability) charge station somewhere near the middle of those ~80 miles, to the ~half dozen unreliable single DCs along that route today?
Will scattering another half dozen single chargers on this route, each as likely to be broken or in use as the ones there already (which as of today, seems to be the best we can hope for) really improve your driving experience?
After over four years of USA BEV sales, why has Nissan still not approached a food or beverage chain and offered to promote their mutual profitability, by adding the attraction of DC charge stations (that
BEV drivers can rely on, to have multiple DC charge points functional and available, 7/24) at some of the more heavily traveled BEV inter-city routes?
Or does Nissan really want to wait another five or ten years to hit 50,000 USA sales?
Nissan expects Leaf sales to hit 50,000
Ghosn: All we need is EV-charging network
Lindsay Chappell RSS feed
Automotive News
April 13, 2015 - 12:01 am ET
NEW YORK -- Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn said his U.S. team should be able to raise sales of the electric Leaf to 50,000 a year, up from a little more than 30,000 last year.
But Ghosn also believes that it is not current EV technology or a lack of appeal that is holding sales back -- only the need for a bigger U.S. public battery-charging network.
Ghosn said Nissan is still working toward the first phase of factory capacity for battery modules, produced at its Smyrna, Tenn., assembly plant.
"The basic plan is based on 50,000 cars a year," he said this month at the New York auto show, when asked whether Leaf sales would support Nissan's U.S. investment in EV battery manufacturing.
"Selling 50,000 EVs in North America should not be, in my opinion, a task which is beyond our capacity," Ghosn said. "I feel very good about the capacity we have today."
But he said that more investment in EV-charging facilities is necessary by governments and public-private initiatives.
"As long as you don't have charging infrastructure, you know, we're not going to see a very strong development of the electric car," Ghosn said. "And the countries which are going to have this charging infrastructure are going to see a very big burst of zero-emission" vehicles.
He said the sales outlook is bogged down by two time-consuming obstacles:
1. Governments first must reach the decision to invest in infrastructure, then
2. The infrastructure must be constructed.
"Unfortunately, it's decisions made by government, and execution made by the states, the cities and the communities, which means that we're going to have to be patient," Ghosn said...
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