2016 Leaf to have up to 180 miles of range!!!

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evnow said:
DeeAgeaux said:
The likely outcome is the base Model 3 comes within $6k of a base LEAF.
The spokesman for Tesla already quoted $40k.

The most likely outcome is base Model 3 will be $15k over base Leaf by 2018.

$25 vs $40 (+/- 2k)

There is no Tesla spokesman with greater authority than Elon Musk.

And he again repeated half the price of a Model S or $35k for the base Model 3 on Nov 25 2014.

"We need the Gigafactory because there currently isn't enough battery cell capacity for a high-volume, pure electric car at any price," explains Musk. The Model 3 is 20% smaller than the Model S, so the battery pack can be just 80% of the size, but we're aiming for a 50% price reduction from the S, so we need the factory to make it affordable."

http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/entertainment/articles/2014-11/25/elon-musk-interview-tesla-p85d-mars" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


And Tesla is not just talking. They are pouring concrete on a $5 Billion battery factory to make it happen.

And I just saw Carlos quote $25/26k in Japan.

But the LEAF won't get the big battery for 25k. That is the one people will compare with the base Model 3 .
 
If they load down the 2016+ Leaf with a bigger battery I hope they can also provide a more powerful motor..
Other weight savings and aero improvements would be nice but for a practical mass market car I wouldn't expect huge gains.

As for the QC network, the model S needs 90-120kW because the car isn't very efficient. If Nissan can keep the V2 Leaf more or less as efficient as V1 then 50kW (or Kia 100kW?) Chademo wouldn't be all that much different than a 120kW supercharged model S given only a portion of the charge is at full power anyway.

Now with a strongly republican congress we'll surely get new tax incentives to cover these larger batteries in upcoming vehicles right?
 
GregH said:
Now with a strongly republican congress we'll surely get new tax incentives to cover these larger batteries in upcoming vehicles right?

Probably just rebates to cover the cost of coal rolling conversions.
 
GregH said:
...As for the QC network, the model S needs 90-120kW because the car isn't very efficient. If Nissan can keep the V2 Leaf more or less as efficient as V1 then 50kW (or Kia 100kW?) Chademo wouldn't be all that much different than a 120kW supercharged model S given only a portion of the charge is at full power anyway...
As Rebel44 pointed out upthread, a major problem with Chademo is the lack of redundancy. So far as I am aware, the minimum Supercharger station has 4 chargers and many/most have more, sometimes double or triple that number.

Chademo chargers have also turned out to be unreliable in many areas, according to numerous reports here at MNL: broken, limited access, or expensive to use. In my view there is simply no comparison between Tesla's Supercharger network and the Chademo model. Yes, the Tesla will likely cost more than a similar range Chademo-port-equipped Nissan. For local or regional travel the Nissan might well be a better buy. But if one is interested in a one BEV household with the ability to do interstate travel — as I am — paying extra for the Tesla Model III might well be worth it. We shall see.

As for your comment about the Supercharger not being able to charge at full speed to full charge, while true, it overlooks how the Supercharger network is best used. Those doing interstate travel charge only enough to get to the next station plus a modest reserve. That means that the vast majority of charging is done in the bottom half of the battery at full speed. This only works because one can rely on a Supercharger spot being open at the next station, 80-130 miles away*, thanks to the number of chargers at each location. It is a completely different paradigm from the Chademo model (as currently implemented).


* Some Supercharger station distances here on my home turf:
Code:
Station 1          Station 2         Miles   Terrain
Denver             Silverthorne      79.8    major elevation change (Eisenhower tunnel)
Silverthorne       Glenwood Springs  92.5    major elevation change (Vail Pass)
Glenwood Springs   Grand Junction    90.4    little elevation change
Grand Junction     Green River       97.1    little elevation change
Green River        Richfield         123     significant elevation change (Wasatch Pass)

Grand Junction     Moab              113     little elevation change
Moab               Blanding          74.4    significant elevation change
Blanding           Farmington        133     little elevation change
Farmington         Gallup            121     little elevation change
 
DeeAgeaux said:
There is no Tesla spokesman with greater authority than Elon Musk.

And he again repeated half the price of a Model S or $35k for the base Model 3 on Nov 25 2014

.....

But the LEAF won't get the big battery for 25k. That is the one people will compare with the base Model 3 .

Tesla doesn't have much of a history of keeping promises of price or timeline. The fact that the spokesman even talked about $40k should give an indication. Musk has also talked about "inflation adjusted" price. BTW, is he talking about base Model S price or the avg selling price ? There is a lot of wiggle room when one talks about a relative price, rather than an absolute.

OP was comparing base Leaf & Model E, so my statement stands. Now, Leaf may not even have a 200 mile range option - so a better comparison would be Infiniti EV, which I think will be priced the same as Model 3 and have similar range.
 
dgpcolorado said:
Chademo chargers have also turned out to be unreliable in many areas, according to numerous reports here at MNL: broken, limited access, or expensive to use. In my view there is simply no comparison between Tesla's Supercharger network and the Chademo model. Yes, the Tesla will likely cost more than a similar range Chademo-port-equipped Nissan. For local or regional travel the Nissan might well be a better buy. But if one is interested in a one BEV household with the ability to do interstate travel — as I am — paying extra for the Tesla Model III might well be worth it. We shall see.

The comparison between chademo & superchargers is similar to that between Android and Apple ecosystem. The only way chademo overcomes inherent disadvantages of a multi-owner uncoordinated layout is by overwhelming superchargers in terms of distribution and numbers. The reliability would be built on large numbers - rather than centrally managed.
 
GregH said:
If they load down the 2016+ Leaf with a bigger battery I hope they can also provide a more powerful motor..

Yes, there is not reason not to do this, for an EV like that not to be in the 8 sec range is sad. 10 seconds is pathetic.
 
evnow said:
The comparison between chademo & superchargers is similar to that between Android and Apple ecosystem. The only way chademo overcomes inherent disadvantages of a multi-owner uncoordinated layout is by overwhelming superchargers in terms of distribution and numbers. The reliability would be built on large numbers - rather than centrally managed.
The main problem with CHAdeMO chargers is that they are broken most of the time. There are probably 8 or 10 of them here in Utah and as of today I think there is exactly one that works right now. All of these units have had multiple problems and Nissan does nothing to fix them. ABB does nothing to fix them. The Nissan sales people are as frustrated as I am on this.

How many CHAdeMO chargers are open 24x7 ? Not very many.

Nissan has some work to do if they ever want to expand the EV market beyond niche status.

A LEAF with 180 mile range might help people forget how bad the charging stations are.
 
evnow said:
Tesla doesn't have much of a history of keeping promises of price or timeline. The fact that the spokesman even talked about $40k should give an indication. Musk has also talked about "inflation adjusted" price. BTW, is he talking about base Model S price or the avg selling price ? There is a lot of wiggle room when one talks about a relative price, rather than an absolute.

OP was comparing base Leaf & Model E, so my statement stands. Now, Leaf may not even have a 200 mile range option - so a better comparison would be Infiniti EV, which I think will be priced the same as Model 3 and have similar range.

The Roadster ended up at a higher cost.
The S came in exactly where they thought. Although few were ordering it, so Tesla discontinued it.
And yes, many of their stated dates have been off, yet some have been on target.
They are idealists and tend to think they can reach goals faster than they actually do. However, they have delivered on those promises, even though they are late.

As for what price point Musk was talking about, I'm sure it was base price.
No advertising, marketing event, etc have ever stated anything other than base price when talking about a new model offering.

The SC network is a dream to use. It is laid out very logically, although the basic network has not been completed yet. The CHAdeMO network is extremely spotty and is growing in a very haphazard method.
Add to that the built in redundancy of having 3-10 chargers (there are two with only 3 chargers) and better quality and is just plain more reliable.
 
Rebel44 said:
Lasareath said:
Have you ever tried a #CHAdeMo?


Rebel44 said:
Nice, but without something like Tesla Supercharger network, not good enough.

1. Too slow charging for car with 70+KWh battery

2. Mostly 1 charger per location, which pose big problem with congestion and even bigger, when thy are broken (which isnt exactly rare).
I respectfully disagree that chademo is too slow. Probably too fast for the current LEAF. Larger battery lets chedemo run flat out for about one hour... about right IMO.

Yes more will be needed. Might even be worth the fee when the battery is 70+ kWh.
 
KJD said:
The main problem with CHAdeMO chargers is that they are broken most of the time. There are probably 8 or 10 of them here in Utah and as of today I think there is exactly one that works right now. All of these units have had multiple problems and Nissan does nothing to fix them. ABB does nothing to fix them. The Nissan sales people are as frustrated as I am on this.

How many CHAdeMO chargers are open 24x7 ? Not very many.

Nissan has some work to do if they ever want to expand the EV market beyond niche status.

A LEAF with 180 mile range might help people forget how bad the charging stations are.

I couldn't agree more with everything you said. I have never been able to use chademo because it was either broken or there was a line of cars waiting to use it. The other problem is the uninformed (95%) trying to charge to 100% on chademo.

I really, really hope for a 160+ mile Leaf. I'm fairly certain the Tesla will be at least $12k more with supercharging enabled, which is more than I want to spend.
 
For an "in town car" (less than 40 miles before returning home) the current Leaf does fine.

As a commuter car in a metro area, it's pretty good, especially if you can charge at work. Even if you can't, 60 mile RT is pretty manage-able. An incremental increase from a 24KW to 30KW would solve the needs of those on the margin.

As an inter-city car...There needs to be a big step forward, but I am not sure it all needs to be based on a bigger battery.

I think the first thing you need to set is what average travel speed over ground combining driving and charging time.
There are several factors that go into that including:

Max charge rate in of the battery at different levels of charge
Efficiency of the car at different speeds
Capacity of the battery
Spacing of charging stations on the highway
Time used starting and stopping a charging session.

Suppose you want to average 50 MPH average, could travel at 60 MPH at 20 KW/hr and charge at 96 KW/hr.

Averaging 50 MPH could be 5 hours at 60 MPH followed by an hour of charging. Or that could be 50 minutes at 60 MPH followed by 10 minutes of charging. One requires a much bigger battery. The other requires more infrastructure. I would argue that it is better to improve the infrastructure that would be used 100% of the time by the people doing inter-city travel, than to sink money into bigger batteries that will be used 10% of the time when you do that occasional inter-city trip.

There are pros and cons on larger batteries. True, for the 90% of the time you are not intercity, the number of cycles your battery will go through will be smaller with a larger battery so the degradation should be less. On the other hand, you pay for that in cost and weight and less efficiency. For any designer, the range of choices is different in 2009 vs 2014 vs 2019. Really big batteries (60-100KW) may make sense now, but will they make sense of if plentiful quick charging stations are spaced every 50 miles on the highway? I am thinking that around 36KW might be the sweet spot once the infrastructure improves.
 
evnow said:
The comparison between chademo & superchargers is similar to that between Android and Apple ecosystem. The only way chademo overcomes inherent disadvantages of a multi-owner uncoordinated layout is by overwhelming superchargers in terms of distribution and numbers. The reliability would be built on large numbers - rather than centrally managed.
Except that there aren't large numbers of Chademo chargers in most places and the places needed for real interstate travel tend to have few or none. And why would anyone put hundreds of Chademo chargers out in the boondocks, to enable long distance travel, using the current model of installation? Who is going to pay for it?

The Chademo network in coastal Washington and Oregon is NOT representative of the country as a whole. And there is a whole lot of empty space to cover once one gets beyond densely populated areas, such as the east and west coasts. Again, who is going to pay for a hodge-podge network of Chademo stations to cover such places?

I just don't understand how the Chademo model can be compared to Tesla's deliberately designed Supercharger network. I don't get it.
 
KJD said:
The main problem with CHAdeMO chargers is that they are broken most of the time. There are probably 8 or 10 of them here in Utah and as of today I think there is exactly one that works right now. All of these units have had multiple problems and Nissan does nothing to fix them. ABB does nothing to fix them. The Nissan sales people are as frustrated as I am on this.

How many CHAdeMO chargers are open 24x7 ? Not very many.

Nissan has some work to do if they ever want to expand the EV market beyond niche status.

A LEAF with 180 mile range might help people forget how bad the charging stations are.
And where I live there are no Chademo chargers. Zero. Zip. None. The nearest one is 300 miles away. There is no way I could drive a 160 mile range LEAF to Salt Lake City, never mind California or Oregon. And I don't see that changing for the foreseeable future. But I could make trips like that in a Tesla today.

The Tesla Model III will almost certainly be more expensive than LEAF 2, but you get what you pay for. If one wants a city or regional car, LEAF 2 with double the range of LEAF 1 would be fine. If you want one BEV that can handle long distance trips in addition to local travel then Tesla is the only current option. Otherwise it's back to burning oil to get around, something I am trying to avoid. Others don't give a damn. So be it.
 
dgpcolorado said:
I just don't understand how the Chademo model can be compared to Tesla's deliberately designed Supercharger network. I don't get it.

I think the comparison is apt. I don't think you can really compare hardware standards and software standards like that. Chademo requires significant capital resources, both for the initial build and the ongoing maintenance. The question is "what is the incentive?" There is a huge market for smartphones, and lower cost for Android is one reason that it got a lead on Windows Mobile early on. Now that MS has made Windows free on small devices, compatibility helps Android to maintain the lead. Tesla has an incentive to build out and maintain superchargers because they want to sell cars. Until a Chademo-enabled manufacturer has that same drive, Superchargers will have the lead. If another EV manufacturer made a long-range EV, they'd have to give some serious consideration to quick charging. As it stands, the other manufacturers makes city cars, and DC charging is just not going to be a priority in a city car.
 
I've been wondering how a charger can be down at a Nissan dealer when the expertise to maintain and repair cars is (presumably there.) With all the car electronics and other subsystems how can a charger be more complex and difficult to maintain? Must be more to this. Whatever is wrong needs to be fixed as it sticks out like a sore thumb to us Leaf owners.
 
Turnover said:
I've been wondering how a charger can be down at a Nissan dealer when the expertise to maintain and repair cars is (presumably there.) With all the car electronics and other subsystems how can a charger be more complex and difficult to maintain? Must be more to this. Whatever is wrong needs to be fixed as it sticks out like a sore thumb to us Leaf owners.

Do the dealers own the equipment outright, or do they participate in some sort of charging network? In my experience, having entities share responsibility means the same as having no one be responsible. Since there are no long-range Chademo-compliant cars around, the usage rate on these things is too low to recover the investment. "Having one" on the books might be worthwhile due to some sort of deals with government or Corporate HQ, but having actually working ones probably does not help sell any vehicles, nor does it generate enough hourly fees to keep them up.
 
dgpcolorado said:
Except that there aren't large numbers of Chademo chargers in most places ...
Right. The way Chademo can compete with superchargers is building reliability through numbers and overwhelming it with ubiquity. Definitely not there right now (even in PNW). Chademo needs to be almost as numerous as gas stations.

BTW, superchargers can hardly handle 500k cars a year - as they are now.
 
Rebel44 said:
Nice, but without something like Tesla Supercharger network, not good enough.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1foQYcb4mw[/youtube]

Seriously, LEAF has already been "good enough" for over 100,000 buyers. I think one with double the range would find a decent reception. As far as ChaDeMo, there is provision for higher charge rates. It just hasn't been needed yet.

http://www.chademo.com/wp/technology/optimal/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
 
Zythryn said:
The S came in exactly where they thought. Although few were ordering it, so Tesla discontinued it.
Let us be clear why few ordered S40.

It was crippled.

No QC/Supercharging. Seriously ? Supercharging is the USP as many people are claiming here.

But for this intentional handicap, a lot of people would have bought S40.

So, though on paper S came in at the forecast price, de facto it was $10k more.

Going by history, may be they will have a "half price" 3 that very few will order and will be discontinued after a couple thousand cars have been built.
 
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