edatoakrun
Well-known member
The vehicle pictured almost certainly is neither, as the photos are also not of a future production model at all.arnis said:...This Leaf looks exactly like facelift. Therefore it is not Leaf2...
The photos are of the car that Nissan said it was in it's video, a gen one LEAF modified to test autonomous features which will be on the gen two LEAF.
Why would Nissan spoil it's own gen two reveal by releasing photos of the car early?
When the gen two is actually announced, I'm sure there will be argument as to whether it is actually a new car, or just a face-lift...
A few more significant quotes from the article I linked yesterday:
http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1108175_next-nissan-leaf-propilot-self-driving-included-200-mile-range-or-more-confirmed/page-2A few further snippets on the next Leaf came from a question-and answer session earlier in the day with Takao Asami, a Nissan senior vice president of research and advanced engineering....
Asami noted that the company was preparing for DC fast-charging at rates up to 150 kilowatts, though he questioned the practicality of higher rates for mass-market electric cars.
And he confirmed that the next Leaf would continue with an air-cooled battery pack, saying changes in cell chemistry had "significantly reduced" concerns over battery durability.
"I am not concerned any more" about the durability of electric-car batteries, he concluded...
I agree with both of of those statements.
An ~150 kW charge rate is probably all that will be required in the immediate future by mass-market BEVs with total battery capacities from about 30 to 60 kWh, though trucks buses, and luxury BEVs with larger packs could benefit from higher charge rates (likely also with significantly higher costs per kWh) if and when such high-kW DC stations are ever deployed on a large scale.
And Nissan had it right a decade ago when it realized their was no future in developing BEV battery designs that required intensive active cooling, as the reduced cost and higher efficiency of ~passively cooled packs would inevitably lead to obsolescence of liquid or refrigerant based active cooling designs, as battery prices declined.