The company’s best engineering brains said last week the quest for environmentally sustainable private transportation in the coming decade will be plug-in, rechargeable electric cars.
Nissan is backing this thinking with a firm pledge: it will have an electric car in showrooms in the US and Japan in 2010, with a view to selling the cars globally in 2012.
Nissan’s partner Renault (they share Carlos Ghosn as their chief executive and hold stocks in one another) announced in January that electric cars - badged as Renaults but using the Nissan-developed battery drivetrain - would be sold in Israel by 2011.
Acutely aware of consumers’ and environmentalists’ concerns over carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and its implication in global warming and climate change, Nissan engineers think cars that run on electricity are the key to lowering greenhouse gas emissions, reducing pollution and easing the reliance for personal mobility on finite petroleum reserves.
What offers the best potential, the engineers say, is a pure electric car, one that owners can plug in and recharge from their domestic electricity supply, just like a big mobile phone on wheels.
Electric cars have appeal because they generate no emissions (they don’t have an exhaust pipe because they don’t burn fuel) and are as clean to run as the way a nation’s electricity supply is generated.
In Portugal last week, Nissan assembled about 60 models to demonstrate the breadth of its global portfolio - from quirky Japanese domestic microcars to its dinosaur Titan, a 5.6-litre, V8, petrol-guzzling (19.6 L/100 km, city) pick-up truck.
But the company also used the car-fest, called Nissan 360, to show two concept cars that offer a tantalising window to the future.
One is the Mixim concept which was first revealed at the Frankfurt motor show last year. It’s an all-electric, rechargeable car.
The other concept, the EA2, showcases the latest step in the company’s thinking - drive-by-wire technology.
Nissan calls the drive-by-wire technology X-by-Wire, denoting wholly electrical operation of typically mechanical connection for essentials such as steering and brakes.
X-by-Wire electronics rid the car of mechanical linkages, such as steering columns, making the apparatus more compact, liberating cabin space and using less energy.
And while the EA2 is closer to showroom reality than the futuristic Mixim concept, the as-yet-unnamed 2010 production electric car is expected to draw on both concept car technologies.
The production car is expected take about six hours on 100-volt electricity to recharge, offering a 160 km driving range. Plugged in to 200 volts, it will have a “rapid charge” feature that sees the recharge time drop to 30 minutes, says Nissan’s general manager of technology planning Toshihiro Ninomiya.
The latest-generation laminated lithium-ion batteries, located like pavers under a car’s sandwich floor, are 20 per cent lighter than a conventional petrol engine, he says. About 80 per cent of their storage capacity remains after five years of use.
The batteries, in the Mixim concept at least, power two super motors - one for the front wheels, the other for the rear wheels, with computers taking care of the co-ordination of torque between the four wheels individually.
They’re now working on lighter electric motors housed in each wheel assembly, Mr Ninomiya says.
Where the rear numberplate normally would go is a flap that hides the car’s socket, where it would be plugged in at home, work or even potentially at electricity meters on streets.
“The total CO2 created by the manufacturing and usage (of electric cars) is dramatically reduced compared to internal combustion engines,” says Masanori Ueda, the deputy general manager of Nissan’s global environmental planning department.
“The number of the parts that can be reused (recycled) compared to an internal combustion engine is not so complicated - just a motor, inverter and battery,” he says. “Even the electricity can be provided by renewable energy.”
Of course, the fact that some countries’ electricity supply is generated by nuclear reactors or dirty coal-fired plants remains a matter for concern. But the increasing development of wind, solar, tidal or geothermal electricity could offer a win-win situation: no CO2 emissions in generating the electricity and none in its use powering cars.
“We are now collaborating with an energy company to generate electricity through a renewable source, like the wind or solar. That is one of the scopes we are now studying,” Mr Ueda says.
He says the power company is set to supply a Japanese city’s entire electricity needs in a pilot project.
“It’s not our direct responsibility but we now are studying with them. We will have a test in Japan in a city. That electricity can be supplied by renewable energy. That is the model case.”
Which city?
“Please don’t ask; it is a secret,” he replies with a smile. “The mayor is ready to make an announcement. Before the announcement, I cannot say.
“We will try to expand this pilot project all over the world.”
Nissan has already taken the plunge with a hybrid petrol-electric car for US customers. The mid-sized Altima HEV (hybrid electric vehicle) uses a Toyota-supplied petrol-electric system. Basically, it uses Toyota’s Prius-style electronics and battery allied to a Nissan 2.5-litre, four-cylinder, petrol engine. But Mr Ninomiya believes it’s only an intermediate step.
The car was developed at a time when Nissan was in a financial nosedive and couldn’t muster the resources to develop its own hybrid system. The company took the simpler route of accessing Toyota’s hybrid technology, and is now looking at making its own hybrid system.
We drove the Altima HEV (above) around Portugal’s coastal Cascais region and came away strangely nonplussed.
Yes, it’s odd that when you turn on the car, apart from the dashboard lighting up with a 0-150-kilowatt meter (where the tacho would be), there’s nothing physical to alert you that the car is running. But pop the automatic shift into drive and ease on the accelerator and there’s a detectable driveline snatch as the petrol motor fires into life.
When coasting, the petrol engine shuts off, with the car running solely on electricity (topped up partly by regenerative brakes) that’s stored in a lithium-ion battery in the engine bay. But it’s not the sci-fi silent ride one might expect. Without its combustion engine purring, there’s plenty of road, tyre and wind noise to fill the void.
When accelerating, the engine fires back to life for added power, but again there’s a detectable shunt.
After a half-hour loop on a mixture of flowing roads and stop-start streets, the onboard computer read 8.5 L/100 km. That’s reasonable for a Camry-sized car, but hardly revolutionary. After driving the car, I didn’t feel like I’d saved the planet.
There’s also the lingering questions of the longevity of hybrid systems (their complexity, weight, battery life and possible replacement cost in the future) and end-of-life recycling.
If hybrids are but a stepping stone in a quest to reduce emissions, what about hydrogen cars?
Hydrogen-powered cars either burn hydrogen in an internal combustion engine (such as BMW’s Hydrogen 7 limousine and Mazda’s hydrogen RX-8) or use fuel cells to chemically generate electricity from the hydrogen.
Either way, they don’t produce greenhouse gas emissions as you drive.
Nissan’s general manager of powertrain engineering Yo Usuba argues that hydrogen cars aren’t the ultimate answer. That’s because hydrogen is difficult to store onboard under pressure and, at ultra-low temperatures, is difficult to manage on its path from tank to engine. And there’s only a handful of hydrogen refilling stations on the planet.
“To use hydrogen in a combustion engine is still technically difficult,”
Mr Usuba says. “If we try to use hydrogen fuel, it is better to transform it into electricity. A fuel-cell vehicle is more reasonable.”
Going against fuel cells, though, is the expense, he says. “That’s why the solution comes to the electric vehicle. We need to use electricity in the vehicle - (for) air-conditioning and (to) operate the audio - to enjoy the vehicle. So electricity is the easy way to cover all the requirements.”
If Mr Usuba and his colleagues are right, motorists and the entire planet might just thank them for it.
* Andrew Heasley travelled to Portugal as guest of Nissan Australia.
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