edatoakrun
Well-known member
9/8/16-thread title edited with new info.
8/16/17- thread title edited to reflect the Note e-Power is series hybrid ICEV
Now that the announcement is official, and less than a year away from sale in Japan, I think its time for a thread dedicated to Nissan's e-Power range-extended BEV (BEVx).
I hope a the USA market introduction will not come much later.
Hopefully, the e-Power will be something close to what I asked for ~five years ago on the BEVx thread, a small ICE available for charge-while-you-drive use on longer trips.
But it looks like Nissan will show no more innovation about introducing an alternate hydrocarbon fuel than any other manufacture has, so I expect you will still have to gas-up your e-Power, once you drive beyond your battery + DC charge network range.
8/16/17- thread title edited to reflect the Note e-Power is series hybrid ICEV
Now that the announcement is official, and less than a year away from sale in Japan, I think its time for a thread dedicated to Nissan's e-Power range-extended BEV (BEVx).
I hope a the USA market introduction will not come much later.
http://www.autonews.com/article/20160625/OEM05/306279981/nissans-to-do-list-range-autonomyNissan's to-do list: Range, autonomy
2 new technologies part of push to be leader
Nissan Motor Co. will introduce two new technologies this year to move the needle on CEO Carlo Ghosn's goal of making Nissan a leader in electric vehicles and self-driving cars.
The first is a new range extender that Nissan says will tackle two of the biggest hurdles confronting electric vehicles: cost and limited range.
The other is the first deployment of Nissan's upcoming autonomous-drive technologies: a single-lane self-driving steering feature.
Both technologies will debut in Japan-market vehicles in the current fiscal year ending March 31, 2017. The company will subsequently introduce the autonomous-drive function in the U.S., Europe and China.
Nissan has not announced a plan for introducing the range extender to other markets...
"It will utilize a new e-Power system that matches the agility, quietness, strong acceleration and efficiency of the Nissan Leaf."
Its biggest difference from the Leaf will be the engine. When the proposed new car's battery runs low, a gasoline engine will kick in to recharge it, giving the car a longer range...
Toshiyuki Nakajima, a manager at Nissan's advanced vehicle engineering department, said the e-Power system has several advantages.
The system should be less expensive because its battery doesn't need to store as much power as a pure EV battery does, and so it can be smaller, he said...
Similarly, the engine doesn't need to be as big as on a traditional gasoline-powered car. The engine on the range-extender hybrid will serve only as a generator and can be tuned to continuously operate within it range of peak efficiency.
"We want to simplify the system," Nakajima said...
Hopefully, the e-Power will be something close to what I asked for ~five years ago on the BEVx thread, a small ICE available for charge-while-you-drive use on longer trips.
But it looks like Nissan will show no more innovation about introducing an alternate hydrocarbon fuel than any other manufacture has, so I expect you will still have to gas-up your e-Power, once you drive beyond your battery + DC charge network range.
http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=6847#p151224The “range–extended” EV (BEVx) considered
Thu Nov 17, 2011 8:50 am
...a true ICE ”range extender” for a BEV is not a bad Idea, It's just that current designs are all abysmal failures, from the point of energy efficiency and driver utility. Putting an ICE drivetrain in an EV, whether in series, parallel, or any other hybrid configuration, is not advisable, IMO. Invariably, you will get an overweight, overpriced, underperforming vehicle, like the Volt. It seems almost as ridiculous, to install an extremely expensive and heavy large battery pack (like the Tesla S long-range options) which is only occasionally required by the BEV driver.
A functional range extender would consist of:
A small displacement (200-600 CC) ICE generator, run at highest-efficiency rpm, to recharge the battery pack. Generator output would not be sufficient to drive the vehicle, just enough to extend the battery pack range to the next convenient recharge location.
It would not run on gasoline, but a less polluting, and more stable fuel, such as propane (easier refueling) or CNG (lower cost). 5 gallons of Propane, for example, would probably offer about 200 miles of range extension for a LEAF-sized BEV.
The fuel would also be available to a combustion cabin heater, the one use for which battery energy storage is particularly inefficient...