Ghosn: 'We are getting there' on making Nissan Leaf profitable

Yea, the Leaf and Volt are like this too. I think a lot of conservatives would be converts if they took a test drive.

Okay. Here's where I tend to disagree. I think the hybrids are the best way to go, electric power to save on fuel, while a fuel engine recharges the electrics. It's a good match to extend driving distance. When braking, regenerative brakes create electrical power to recharge the system.

The problem I have with all-electric cars like the Volt and Leaf, is that they are not green. They are charged from the electric grid which is primarily generated from burning coal. A gasoline powered vehicle is much cleaner in comparison. All that electricity comes from somewhere else. A hybrid on the other hand, generates the electricity on board. I do not think conservatives will be converts anytime soon to electric vehicles. Gas powered vehicles and their technology have been refined for over a hundred years and have a pretty good track record. Electrics on the other hand, have also been around for over a hundred years but are still beset with problems.

Yea, the Leaf and Volt are like this too.

No, they aren't like the Altima hybrid. Difference being that the Leaf is all electric, and the Volt is driven only by an electric engine with the gas engine only partially recharging the electrics. The Altima hybrid, as with other hybrids, marries gas powered engine output with electric motor output. The older hybrids, like my daughter's Altima has about 195hp combined, about 149hp from the gas engine and the remainder from the electric motor. As needed, one or the other or both operate. The gas engine fully recharges the electrics without need for connection to a grid. The Leaf requires a connection, and the Volt requires a connection for a full charge. The new 2015 Altima hybrids have upped the hp to 250hp.

“Okay. Here's where I tend to disagree. I think the hybrids are the best way to go, electric power to save on fuel, while a fuel engine recharges the electrics. It's a good match to extend driving distance. When braking, regenerative brakes create electrical power to recharge the system. The problem I have with all-electric cars like the Volt and Leaf, is that they are not green.”

It's not your fault, but it drives me nuts that anti-EV pundits have spent years successfully deceiving people about the Volt. It is not an all-electric, it is a plug-in hybrid (also known as a range extended electric). It is pure electric for the first 40 miles every day and if you need to go farther, it automatically switches to a gas engine with a 340-mile gas tank.

With that being said, about 39% of our grid is coal, 27% is natural gas, 19% is nuclear, 7% hydropower, and the rest is mostly renewables (source). With the low cost of natural gas, its usage has been going up in recent years. Gasoline is a little cleaner than coal, but it isn't cleaner than the rest.

But I think the major reason for us to switch to electric vehicles, range extended or not, is to put the petro-dictators of the world in the poorhouse, all while using American-made electricity.

“No, they aren't like the Altima hybrid.”

Well, as far as that high torque acceleration off the line, they are. At higher speeds they are more average for cars in their class, while I'm sure the Altima Hybrid does better with its combined electric & gas power.

“Difference being that the Leaf is all electric, and the Volt is driven only by an electric engine with the gas engine only partially recharging the electrics.”

Okay, so you do know about the Volt's gas engine! You confused me there.

When it comes to fuel economy though, they will blow the Altima Hybrid out of the water. When you take the cost of gasoline versus the cost of electricity into account, the Volt gets 94 miles per gallon equivalent when driving in electric mode. Some places offer discounted electricity at night so you can get even better fuel economy.

But I think the major reason for us to switch to electric vehicles, range extended or not, is to put the petro-dictators of the world in the poorhouse, all while using American-made electricity.

Not a good enough reason, as long as politics rears it's ugly head in electrical generation and oil production. We have buttheads in power that block our utilities from producing efficient electrical generation, and that also block our oil production. My wife worked for a utility, PG&E, before retiring a few years ago. Politicians were doing things to block nuclear generation, even though it is pretty safe nowadays. PG&E was also forced to give up hot spring steam generation, pretty much giving it away for free to 3rd parties. My wife has been to both nuclear and hot spring sites and worked there. The hot springs generate electricity practically for free, supplying northern California. PG&E wanted to build other nuclear facilities but were blocked. Our politicians force them to subsidize solar and wind power generation, buying it for the grid even though costly (and taxpayers pay through the arse as well through other subsidies). Politicians are crippling our utilities.

On top of that, Obama and the dems are blocking pipelines and oil generation here in the USA, while they try to take credit for the growth of the economy caused by oil generation despite them. And Obama props up and supports foreign oil production elsewhere (Venezuela, Middle East, etc.) while hurting American oil production in the USA. So switching to electric vehicles is not benefitting us. These electric cars are not green, far from it. And the electricity is pumped to where it is used at large losses, and generated using expensive methods. Gasoline is still a smarter bet. Even more so if the buttheads in power would stop blocking American companies from producing oil and natural gas.

This is a false argument. The ratings for the Volt are 93 miles per gallon, when driving in all electric mode. That's the first 40 miles. For the Leaf, the ratings are 99 miles per gallon, and again the range is limited to anywhere from 40 to 80 miles or so.

My daughter's Altima Hybrid has a range of 700 miles or so. I know because she has driven it between California and Kansas and Texas several times. The range is phenomenal. Sure, she doesn't get the "mpg" of the Leaf or Volt, but she is not computing the "mpg" only from the electric driven miles, but through the entire range of the tank capacity. The estimates by EPA on the Volt for the entire range of the tank is 37 mpg, a far cry from your "94 mpg". Many ICE vehicles far exceed those 37 mpg estimates. Her Altima gets a rating of combined 34 mpg, comparable to the 37 mpg estimate for the Volt, hardly being blown out of the water.

A study done by USDOT in 2003 found that 78% of Americans drive less than 40 miles round-trip in their daily commute. So if someone fell into that category, I'm sure that over 90% of the miles they put on their Volt would be electric, and would therefore enjoy that 94 miles per gallon equivalent most of the time. (I think it went from 93 to 94 in the 2012 model year.)

If someone’s proportion of road-trip mileage is high then your point would be applicable. However, I think the vast majority of Americans put the vast majority of miles on their cars during their daily work commute.

Regarding fuel sources, I don't know about Obama supporting Middle East production, but for decades our navy has definitely been providing free rent-a-cop services for the shipping lanes of the Persian Gulf to the tune of $50 billion a year.

If a majority of the United States and Europe switched to electric cars, it would be a godsend to the West's geopolitical situation, starving petro-dictators of income (think Putin, Iran, etc.), as well as saving us money on military spending, not to mention all the money people would save using electricity instead of gasoline (around 60% lower fuel cost at normal electricity prices, even more if you get a discounted nighttime electricity plan).

If a majority of the United States and Europe switched to electric cars, it would be a godsend to the West's geopolitical situation, starving petro-dictators of income (think Putin, Iran, etc.),...

You don't realize it, but the reality is that our electrical grid is strained as it is. If that switch you propose were to happen, our grid would fail. That's a fact. As I stated earlier, far better to produce the electricity at the point where it is needed, as in a hybrid vehicle, than to generate it elsewhere and lose much of it in resistance over gridlines.

Also, that "study" is flawed. Many areas of the country have commuters traveling far more miles daily than those electric vehicles would support, far more than 20 miles each way. Here in California, it's easy to put on 100 miles or more commuting to a job. I know many friends and relatives who commute up to 100 miles each way, every day. People can't afford to live where their jobs are, and need to commute long distances. And they are not just going to their jobs, but taking detours for shopping and other errands.

Until our leaders (Obama won't listen) wise up and support power generation at home (as in traditional coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear), electrical vehicles are a losing proposition. Our electric grid will fail.

“You don't realize it, but the reality is that our electrical grid is strained as it is. If that switch you propose were to happen, our grid would fail. That's a fact.”

This is a popular misconception, although maybe a little less so in the absolutely highest-strained areas of the country, which happen to be in your home state of California. Most electric car owners charge their cars at night. Every electric car sold today has the ability to do “delayed charging.” It works by setting the “end time,” let's say 6 am, that you need the car to be ready and charged. You only have to set it up once. Then every day when you come home in the evening and plug-in, the car recognizes that it is “home,” evaluates the charge capacity of the charger, and calculates when it needs to begin charging in order to have the car fully charged for you when you leave for work in the morning, like at 6 am in the following example. If you drove 40 miles that day, then it might need to start charging at 2 am. If you only drove 10 miles, then it might not need to start charging until 5 am. (These are just example numbers.) This also makes sure that, across a community, the start time is staggered.

If 100 million people bought electric cars tomorrow morning and then went home and plugged them in tomorrow afternoon, then yes, the grid would fail. However, electric car sales are gradually rising, so electric companies have plenty of time to adjust. Furthermore, as more and more electric companies start to offer discounted nighttime charging, customers will be motivated to charge their cars at night when there is plenty of excess energy, even in the worst parts of California.

This is an example of a graph of electricity usage over the course of a typical day, from midnight to midnight. All of that “intermediate demand” is just sitting there waiting to be used at night.

Here in Houston, we have a couple of companies offering discounted plans, like this one from Reliant energy giving you a discount from 8 pm to 8 am on weekdays and all day on weekends and this one from TXU Energy giving you free nights from 9 pm to 6 am. Here is a plan from your very own PG&E. The downside to these plans is you pay a little more during the day, so you would need to pencil it out for your own situation.

“As I stated earlier, far better to produce the electricity at the point where it is needed, as in a hybrid vehicle, than to generate it elsewhere and lose much of it in resistance over gridlines.”

While there might be a few places in the country that suffer from high transmission losses, the national average is a meager 6%.

“Also, that ‘study’ is flawed... I know many friends...”

I'm sorry, but your anecdotal evidence does not stand up against hard data. Sure, there are people who fall into the 22% who go more than 40 miles, and maybe in California people commute more than the national average (it would make sense given the property values there). If we are throwing anecdotal evidence around, I live in the suburbs of Houston, a city with one of the highest amounts of urban sprawl in the country (in other words, it is really spread out), and yet all of my friends have a commute of less than 40 miles. I myself can drive to downtown and back and it would be under 40 miles.

There is only one very cool thing in the hybrid technology: They replaced the transmission with an electric motor(s)

That means you have a torquey car with a heavy battery load. The same car with a turbo and about half or less of the batteries would actually perform quite well and not have that scary battery replacement cost.

All that green-eco-claptrap is just that. Cars aren’t the problem anyway...In the big cities, diesel trucks are. Stop-and-go delivery trucks and buses could be run as electrics, with appropriately-sized, small-displacement generators running constantly to keep the batteries charged. They could run on gasoline, propane or LNG.

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