Nissan’s New Electric Car
27 July 2009 | Green Cars | No Comments
The Japanese car manufacturer, Nissan, announced today it’s latest electric car prototype, a model similar to the existing car, Tiida, with improved performances. The car’s design will be made public on the second of august, at the company’s HQ from Yokohama.This zero-emission car will be available in the USA and Japan next year, with plans for the European market for 2012. It will be a five-seat family hatchback with four doors .
Together with the french automaker Renault, Nissan have set the EVs improvement and development as top priority, believing that environmentally-friendly electric cars are the thing of the future. It is said they plan to build 100,000 electric cars in the next two years.
The new electric car will be powered by a 24 kW/h lithium-ion battery, placed in the front of the vehicle, which provides their own-made electric motor with energy. The engine is capable of producing 80 kW(107 HP), equal with 206 pound-feet of torque which can push the car to a maximum speed of 140 km/h (87 mph). No information about the battery recharging time has been revealed by the company’s officials yet.
The main reason why electric cars still haven’t taken the “big step” and go globally commercial is the battery. The first electric car models from Nissan needed 26 minutes, provided with 440 volt of electricity, to charge the battery 80 percent. That is still a long time, if we consider today’s refueling time at petrol stations. But this is where Nissan promised to bring improvement with it’s new electric car: the driver will be announced in real-time by the on-board computer when and where to charge the battery. The system is called “EV-IT” and should work perfectly with the navigation system of the car. The option of receiving messages when the battery is fully charged is also available.
The company didn’t share the information about the new electric car’s price, but there is no expectation that it will be cheap. Although it will take some years until we will see electric cars cruising on the streets the hopes are high for this technology. There is definitely a need for a petroleum alternative, because of the harm for the environment and its availability. Even so, the reserves will last for only40 more years.
Tags: battery, charge, electric car, electric motor, electricity, energy, Environment, improvement, lithium-ion, Nissan, Renault, zero-emission