N952JL said:
I have just read through all ten pages of this topic. And it is clear we have a very divers group of drivers on this topic. I have been driving my leaf since Dec 2011. I was the first leaf reserved for GA and the second one deliviered. As elsewhere mentioned the number one question I am asked is "range". I tell them the EPA estimates are honest. Without hypermilling you can achieve the EPA estimates in normal day to day city driving. Then I go on to tell them I have never ran out of juice, and the Leaf handles 97 to 98% of all my trips, but only 65 to 70% of my yearly milage. Yes a full 30% of my milage is made up of 3% of my trips. That stops people cold.
You see with the current range limits, while very well for day to day driving will not fit the need of the adverage driver. He doesn't buy a car for his day to day work comute. A big part of his purchase decision is "freedom". The freedom to leave town on a three day weekend. To just hop in the car and drive up to Atlanta for a special concer. Wait, can't no range. To plan a trip to Vegas, Nope, can't drive to the airport no range. We do not have any charging structure between Warner Robins and the Atlanta Airport and besides you don't have the time to wait 6 hrs for a level 2 to recharge anyway.
You talk about a "sweet point" and all you think about is your normal driving day will sometimes exceed 100 miles and you need extra. that is all well and good but unless your range includes the drop of the hat weekend road trip you are not being real.
Now to me the sweet point is a honest to God 250 mile interstate speed range. About 4 hrs at 70 (about 280) would be perfect. As most will want to stop for something by that time and having a QC near every 100 to 150 miles would fit nicely. It gives you a four to one ration of drive to charge time while on the road. Now do you need this every day of the year? No. But if the car is going to meet your driving requirements, you will need it. Or have a second ICE to fit your other driving requirements and that is not something the adverage person wants.
OK, so what do I see happening. It is possible that between now and 2020 we could have a 96kWh battery that is the same size and weight as the current 24. I believe it would need to have a good active TMS for long life. And I believe the price would be no more than twice what the current battery pack cost. Leave 6 kWh as a reserver much like the current 24kWh battery only has 23 usuable. This still gives us 90 kWh at arround 4 miles/kWh would give us a 360 mile range, much more than is needed. Now of course this assumes a break through in batteries giving us 4x more power at the same rate while only costing 2x more. In addition to the battery we will need a corresponding increase in charger so as to be able to recharge this batter within six hrs at night.
Now many of you are correct in that this is an over kill and we don't need to haul that much weight around when most of the time we don't need the range. You do that with your ICE car. Each gal of gas weights about six lbs per gal.
I didn't like the volt because of the weight and complexity of the volts ice engine. The volt is not a true BEV with the gas engine to recharge the batter. The ICE engine does contribute it's share to the drive wheels whenever they are on the road.
Why cary that engine around when you don't need it? I agree so I also see a range extender gen set business being created. Ether battery trailers or small micro gensets designed to put out 30 to 40 kWh and small/light enough to sit on a platform and can slide into a trailer receiver. Running of of a LP cylinder with a two to three hour range would be ideal. Then just swapp out the LP bottle and go on your way.
This is just my two cents worth but it seems to be back up by the numbers in the telsa S,.
It seems useful to run through the exercise of insisting that many of us, once in awhile, need to far exceed the limitations of our BEVs and travel 100-200-300 or more miles at 70-75 mph, and to heck with the limitations.
I like the idea of at least exploring a range extender and other answers to this.
On another front, I think some here are over-banking on radical improvements in battery specifications. They could happen and probably have a higher likelihood of happening ("happening" is defined here as actually being sold in mass-volumes to consumers and not developing horrible quality issues that force recalls and harm business more than help) than if this were 1995 or 2005, but the history of the EV business is fraught with expectations of radical battery improvements just around the corner, and so this bears at least mentioning and reminding.
On the question of a market and product sweet spot, I think there can be more than one desirable product with more than one desirable price and range @45 or @75 mph. So, the focus on 280 or 300 miles @ 75 mph seems worth discussing at times, but I'd also add:
What about 85 miles @ 70 mph?
I think for some of us (how many is hard to quantify) Nissan did not quite get it right with 24 kWh and about 3.5 miles per kWh or more at slower speeds. They came close enough for many of our purposes, but to speak up about my future purchasing so Nissan knows what I'd like, I suspect that when my Leaf lease is up, my next BEV will have about 35 to 45 kWh (as much as I can afford) and that there will be more competition for my dollars than there was in October 2012.
Then again, if someone really comes up with a fantastically well-implemented range-extender by the time my lease is up, (whether it is a liquid or gas-to-power range extender or a battery range extender which is something I hadn't really considered until now), I would consider it. I'm not sure if I'd get it. I might well prefer the simplicity of an all-in-one 36 kWh vehicle, but I'd try to give it some fair consideration to a range extender and see what the real-world pros and cons are.