"TreeHugger: What does Director of Product Planning and Advanced Technology mean? Do you get to play with all the cool technology before anybody else?
Mark Perry: That's the fun part of the job, you're right. I sit between the engineers and the consumer. So the engineers tell us what we might be able to do, and then consumers say what they want in the marketplace. My job is to interpret both and then take what the engineers and designers have been thinking about help guide it to market.
TH: Can you give us a quick breakdown of the basics for the Leaf? What it costs, how far it goes, all those specs that a prospective consumer would want to know?
Perry: We're dealing with a five-passenger compact car. The EPA does call us a mid-size, but most people would put it in the same size class as a Nissan Sentra or even a Focus, that size of vehicle. We're actually a little bit larger than a Prius. It's a five-passenger sedan that goes 100 miles on a single charge. You have all the amenities that people would expect.
It's funny, sometimes I get the question, "Does it have a heater? Does it have a stereo system?" And I have to stop myself and slow down and say, "Well, people have those questions because they don't know what was sacrificed." The whole purpose and the whole concept behind the Leaf when we brought it through development was that it would be a real car. I mean, time and time again, people drive it, and the first thing they step out of it and say, "Well, that's kind of normal."
And for us, that's probably the single strongest kind of endorsement that we can get from folks. Because we've really worked hard to make this as normal a driving experience as we can. But with the big change being, you're sitting on a battery pack, and you don't have any emissions whatsoever. Not a drop of gas or a drop of oil touch this car at all, and we didn't even bother with a tailpipe.
So it's a five-passenger sedan with 100 miles of range, and it's got a 95 mph top speed. It's got a stereo system. It's got navigation. Standard Bluetooth. Again, a very easy car to use every day. It costs about $33,000 before the tax credits but there's a $7,500 tax credit from the federal government. And then, depending on where you are, the state incentives range from a high of about a $5,000 rebate in about four different states, and up and down the whole range.
TH: So is that California with the $5,000 rebate?
Perry: Yeah, California, Georgia. Hawaii's at $4,500. Colorado's at $6,000. Again, it all depends locally.
TH: That's on top of the $7,500 from the federal government?
Perry: That's correct. And then you go into parts of California hwere some air-quality-management districts add additional incentives on top of the state rebate. And we even have some employers, Sony Pictures and Fox in California, that are adding another $3,000 as an incentive for their employees to drive zero-emissions. So when you start adding it up, $7,500 from the feds, $5,000 from California, another three from a potential employer, the car gets down below $20,000 very quickly.
TH: Tell people what they can expect as far as charging up at home, how long it takes, and what that would cost. And also, what their options are when they're away from home, out on the road.
Perry: The Leaf comes standard with two levels of charging. Standard equipment is a cord set that you can plug in to any 120-volt wall outlet. We call that trickle charging, and you're going to get about five miles of range per hour of charging. We're limited by the amount of electricity that comes out of that plug. It's not a car challenge, it's more of how much electricity comes out of that plug.
And for many people, that's fine. If you drive 20, 30, 40 miles a day and that's all you go, a level-one charger is probably enough, because you're going to be doing most of your charging overnight in your garage. And in 10 or 12 hours of overnight charging, you get more than enough range to go about your daily business.
For those folks who want more convenience and a bit faster charging, there's something called level two. Level two is a 240-volt circuit. Think of your electric dryer circuit or the plug that might be in your garage for a central vacuum cleaner, or your plug for a refrigerator or a deep freeze. At 240-volts, you pick up about 12 to 15 miles per hour of charging. So in seven, seven and a half hours, you can go from zero to 100 percent.
Now, the fastest is something called DC fast charging. It's 480 volts of power. So it's not something you're typically going to see in a garage unless you're an arc welder as a hobbyist or something.
But you're going to see it out on the interstates and in malls and parking garages. That allows you to charge the LEAF from zero to 80 percent in 30 minutes.
So those are the three levels of charging that are out there.
TH: And what's Nissan's strategy for getting that network of charging stations out there so that people have the ability to go longer distances?
Perry: That's one of the things that Nissan started. We started this about three years ago and we took a real holistic approach to the market development. We knew we couldn't just bring the car to market. We also had to work on infrastructure, charging stations, planning with the various cities and states and regions, to actually think about where these charging stations should go, how many, how they should roll out.
Right now, we see about 14,000 public charging stations going in the ground between now and the end of 2011, across about 19 states. Those are just the ones that we're just aware of today. There's an announcement almost every other day about another charging station supplier, or a grant, or monies that have been expended for charging stations.
So places like San Diego, Phoenix, Tucson, Nashville, Houston, Dallas, South Carolina, Chicago-they're putting in a large number of public charging stations, both in anticipation of vehicles coming to those markets, or in markets where we're launching today. One of the reasons we picked those markets was because they had that level of commitment to supplying charging stations.
We're going to learn a lot in the next two years. Our hypothesis going into all of this is that almost 80 percent of the charging events are going to happen overnight in your garage. But we also know that people need a sense of peace of mind, that they see public charging stations out there and know they you can use them if they need to top off. Or, if you're an apartment dweller or a condo dweller and you really don't have a garage where you park your car, well, you're going to live and rely on that public infrastructure.
TH: I can vouch for the fact that driving style has quite a bit to do with how many miles you get out of a full battery. How much does driving style impact range overall?
Perry: It is really an impact of your style. But really, the biggest drag on range, just like it is on an internal combustion car, is vehicle speed. The aerodynamic load of actually pushing a car through the air, it's a curve that accelerates in its steepness as vehicle speed increases. And that's why you get fewer miles per gallon at 70 than you do at 55.
And it's no different from with an EV. You have lower range if you travel at 70-75 mph than if you traveled at 55. So the single biggest impact on range is speed. If your commute is a lot of interstate travel, your range will probably be around 75 to 80 miles.. If you're using the Leaf around town and your speeds are 35-40 mph, you could see 110-120 miles of range. If you really drive conservatively, you could get over 130 miles of range. So again, it truly does depend on the type of driving you do.
And then you have the impact of the heater on range. Because there is no source of heat on the car, we actually had to put one in. It was really similar in design and concept to a space heater. You run electricity through a coil. That's how you warm the air to keep you warm as a passenger, and that takes energy. And the only place you can get energy in a Leaf is out of the battery.
TH: How's the roll-out been so far? I understand there have been some delays with delivery?
Perry: You used the term "delay," as far as our deliveries. I wouldn't go with "delay." What we're dealing with right is a huge demand for the car. We have folks that have been waiting patiently for their deliveries and we're not delivering cars as fast as they want, so in their minds it is a delay.
If you look at our production plans, we've built almost 4,000 Leafs globally already. So our production plans are right on track, it's just we have not met consumer expectations here in the U.S. We've made a commitment to everyone who has ordered a car so far that you'll have your Leaf by the end of summer, so we've made that commitment to folks.
TH: How many pre-orders did Nissan get for the Leaf?
Perry: Back in April of last year we set a goal for ourself to have 20,000 reservations for the car before December 2010. We actually hit that number 90 days early, in September. So we had to cut off the reservations at that point because we had more than enough.
And then we had to learn how many of those reservations actually converted to orders and final deliveries. And that's a learning process that we've gone through during the last 90-120 days. We have a pretty good feeling now of how many of those folks given where we are with pricing and delivery times, how many of those folks will actually go all the way through to delivery. And again, we appreciate everybody's patience. We beg forgiveness if we are not meeting their expectations. But we're getting cars to them just as fast as we can.
TH: An electric car has no tail pipe, it emits no carbon dioxide. But there is embodied energy in manufacturing the car and the battery. And there's an environmental impact from the electricity that charges the battery (in the U.S., as we know all too well, our power grid is dominated by coal). So walk us through the math, a well-to-wheels analysis of the overall environmental impact of an electric car like the Leaf.
Perry: Well, the good news is that there have been about 43 studies done on this topic. So we just reference studies done by places like Argon National Labs and The Electric Power Research Institute. Even Google has done their own independent studies. All of them conclude that, even in the worst case scenario of 100 percent coal-fired electricity, the well-to-wheel environmental impact is still better than an internal combustion engine.
It's almost an apples to oranges comparison, however, because that's only considering the CO2 emitted by a gas-powered car. It ignores transportation, distribution, and refining on the gas side. But for some reason, the folks who want to bring up this argument always want to talk about generating electricity and the car on the electric vehicle side. So it's really not even a fair comparison. But even in an unfair comparison, we are better off.
Then you roll into the fact that electricity is different by region, it's different by state, it's different even by locale. In Seattle, we're 100 percent zero emission. Seattle benefits from a lot of hydroelectric power, so their grid is net carbon zero today. So an EV, a Nissan Leaf charging in Seattle, does absolutely nothing, it's zero zero zero considering everything.
You have markets like California where they're up to 25 percent renewable. So again, zero emission. Now West Virginia, maybe a different story. Again, nationwide, almost 44-45 percent of electricity is generated by coal-fired plants. I mean, that's just a fact.
The other part is that the utility companies are under some of the same pressures that the automotive companies are to clean up their emissions. So the good news about the electric grid is that it is going to continually get cleaner. Some places are already at zero, some places are at 20 percent renewable, some places are at 40. But all those will just continually get better.
TH: The other EV that's hitting the market just around this same time is, of course, the Chevy Volt. Do you see that as your main competitor in this market space?
Perry: I think the media would like to say that there is some kind of horserace or score keeping going on. But consumers have a very clear choice. Either you have a zero emission, pure battery electric vehicle like the Leaf: no gas, no oil, no emissions. Or you have a vehicle that has a gas generator on board, uses gas, uses oil, and is not zero emission.
And you are dealing with a plug-in hybrid versus a pure battery electric. I think a better comparison would be a Volt against a Prius or a Volt against a future plug-in Prius, or something else. But right now, the only two vehicles out there in any type of volume are the Volt and the Leaf-two completely different concepts, two completely different technologies- but folks do like to keep score. It's kind of like playing basketball and football.
I'm not sure if the score really matters because they're two separate markets.
TH: Lets talk a little bit about the future of electric cars overall. What sorts of changes can we expect to see as the technology advances? And from Nissan's perspective, how big is the EV market?
Perry: We see a market for battery electric vehicles of about 10 percent by 2020. That's looking globally; some markets will be higher, some markets will be lower. But we expect to see 10 percent of the global volume being battery electric by 2020. You look at that and say, "OK, is that a niche or not?"
What people may not realize is that hybrids today are two to three percent of the marketplace, and people think of them as commercially viable, successful, well established technology. But it's at two to three percent. So you look at that number versus 10 and you would say, "OK. Well, an EV is no longer a niche at 10." But then you roll that into the rest of the market, it's still got diesels and gas powered cars and everything else.
I think what we see in the future is that there isn't one singular technology that solves all of the market needs. Sure, battery electrics have a roll, plug-in hybrids have a roll, diesels have a roll. We've got to continue to improve our internal combustion engines also. But as we look ahead, beyond 2020, you have the pressures of population growth, markets like China and India growing and their middle class moving to transportation. Are they going to go through the same steps we did, or are they going to jump over a technology and go straight to something with less climate impact?
And that's what we have to get ready for. We absolutely have to do it here in the United States. We haven't really talked about the issues of balance of trade and the billion dollars a day that goes to purchase imported oil. I mean, sooner or later we have to change that, and the battery electric vehicle is a part of that future."
Em: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/02 ... odcast.php