How Nissan and Honda's $60 billion merger talks collapsed.
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Range anxiety is not an illegitimate concern though. Sure I probably don't need that capacity more than maybe once every year but what about when I do need it?
How am I supposed to be able to drive halfway across the country to see my family every Christmas if my car only has 150 miles of range and it takes 4 hours to fully recharge. That's going to turn a 3-hour road trip into 10 hours if we have to stop and wait for it to recharge. My problem with the leaf was that it had hardly any range at all so that problem was massively exacerbated.
It's great in a multi-car household where the other car is something with a bit more range but as you're only vehicle you better hope that no family emergency have a crop up.
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Because otherwise you're spending more energy converting water into a hydrogen then you get back from turning hydrogen into water.
You still do with Fusion power but at that point you have so much energy it doesn't matter how inefficient it is. Seriously even using nuclear power it doesn't work out as economically viable. It's really a wasteful and inefficient process.
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They weren't dependable is the problem. There were a lot of problems with early deterioration of the battery, supposedly from not having very good temperature control on the battery pack.
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Range anxiety is not an illegitimate concern though.
Hence why I focused on vehicle classes more common as a second car. We have two cars, and one never goes further than 100 miles in a given day.
That's the niche EVs should focus on, especially while battery tech makes >400 mile range impractical. I think Nissan (or any car company) could do quite well focusing on the second car market.
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Sure, and battery deterioration is largely only a problem if you don't have much range to begin with. They put larger batteries in after a year or two, which largely solved the problem for the intended use case: around town car.
But that's also why I mentioned reliability and price should be the focus. They're not going to be leading R&D on better battery range, so they might as well focus on a niche.
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I think you misunderstood me. I'm saying good trucks would use the fuel, not generate it. They'd stop at warehouses and hubs and whatnot to refuel using "waste" energy from the warehouse or hub.
The whole point is that trucks largely take routine routes, so it's fine if availability is limited because they can plan trips around refueling points. Also, they're massive, so there are plenty of options for storing the hydrogen since space isn't really an issue.
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Except the chevy volt is cheaper and has a longer range. Nissan has also done nothing with battery tech or chemistry. That's all been being advanced by Samsung, toyota and panasonic. There's nothing the leaf has to offer on a technology front, and there's no reason to buy one today. Even a decade ago it was a poor choice for 95% of the US market.
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Exactly. The whole point was to help farmers, but it was broad enough that car manufacturers could include SUVs under the rule.
We should've just allowed an exemption for models sold exclusively to farmers if that was a concern. Or just, don't do it.
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https://www.hyundaiusa.com/us/en/vehicles/nexo
Hyundai has one only available in CA.
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Right, which is why I said they should've focused on price and reliability. They're not going to lead on battery tech, so they should experiment with things like sodium ion batteries, which are much cheaper, have less fire risk, and they don't need the range anyway for a commuter/around town car.
Find a niche and fill it.
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I do worry about Nissan's future when they seem to be about this close to operating with zero profits.
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There are a lot of other personal uses for vans and pickups and other heavier duty vehicles in rural areas which require more power to haul things beyond farmers. Moving large amounts of wood and cleared brush, having off road capabilities that include lots of torque, and other stuff that has nothing to do with highway driving are common outside of cities.
The exemptions should be handled in a way that discourages owning such a vehicle for personal use in an urban setting without being tied to a business. Hell, that could involve who the vehicles are being advertised/targeted to for in addition to literal vehicle types.
The problem was not changing up when it became apparent that the outcome was discouraging high mileage small cars for commuting. Overthinking the how to discourage laerger trucks misses the point that car companies leaned into large vehicles and advertise to convince the population that they needed larger vehicles. They could have been barred from advertising large vehicles.
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Didn't the Bolt come out 6 years after the Leaf? It should be a lot better in that case as the pace of development has been pretty rapid in EV space relative to normal ICE development
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Sodium ion is a dead end for ev. Heavy and not even remotely close to energy dense enough. It never will be.
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I thought it was something like 75% as energy dense? If you're targeting a commuter with a max needed range of 150 miles, it seems more than sufficient.
It's not going to solve the range anxiety problem, but it's inexpensive, which is perfect for a cheap, around-town second car, which is precisely what the Leaf should be.
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100% agreed. There are multiple ways to solve this problem, yet we looked at none of them.
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Usability wise for energy storage by weight, it's more like 150wh compared to 250. They also don't handle moving around as well, which is bad for vehicles. Then because sodium is a larger ion, they're also always going to take up more space. So heavier and bigger makes them even less power efficient to move a vehicle and means heavier suspension and more tire wear.
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I think those tradeoffs are fine assuming a huge cost difference. I'm under the impression that sodium ion batteries cost something like 1/3 of a lithium ion battery. And since the battery is most of the cost of a car, a commuter could be very cost competitive.
I don't know about cold weather efficiency, but honestly, most of that 150 mile range is to account for winter range drop. A commuter only really needs about 75 miles usable range year round.
People would put up with a lot for an attractive price.
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Hydrogen remains a solution desperately in search of a problem.
If your aim is to generate locally, why not just use batteries? They're cheaper, more efficient, and more reliable. Why have the lossy and very high maintenance electrolysis and hydrogen storage/transfer process involved?
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There have been some recent advances on hydrogen production. I don't think this (sorry for the MSN link) is the one I heard of, but is an interesting example where cheaper catalysts are improving the efficiency of hydrogen production.
Now, I don't know if or when hydrogen will be more cost-effective than batteries, which are also experiencing massive advances. This is why I'm going to take the comment someone on Lemmy made about buying used EVs for the next little while - it's cheaper, they're lasting longer than predicted, and the advances lined up for the next few years are significant.
