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2007 Nissan Altima
Nissan to end ties with Toyota and create its own hybrid technology

A change is afoot at one of Japan's automotive giants. Nissan has been working in conjunction with Toyota since 2002 to develop a gasoline-electric hybrid system for its redesigned Altima mid-sized sedan. The company didn’t want to go full bore with hybrid technology and agreed to a production run of just 100,000 hybrid Altima sedans that would be sold in only eight states (California, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, Rhode Island, Maine and New Jersey). Now that Nissan has seen an upswing in the demand of hybrids, it has decided to ditch Toyota’s system for future models and use its own technology in its vehicles.

Nissan’s home-brewed hybrid system will be incorporated into compact cars (presumably the Sentra and Versa in the United States) and will use lithium-ion batteries instead of the nickel metal hydride (NiMH) batteries used by Toyota, Ford and Honda. The use of lithium-ion batteries will give Nissan faster recharge times and increased energy capacity. Nissan also plans to add a hybrid vehicle to its lineup that can be plugged into a wall outlet in your garage to speed up the charging process. The Daily Yomiri Online reports:

Nissan had not embarked on full-scale mass production of hybrid cars since it wanted to wait and see which types of low-emission cars would come to dominate the market. The maker has released only hybrid minivans on a limited scale, but as hybrid car sales by Toyota and Honda have grown in Japan and the United States, Nissan decided it would lose market share unless it entered the market with its own models.

It wasn't too long ago that Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn was rather dismissive of hybrid technology. "Hybrid sales account for less than 1 percent of global sales. It is a niche technology. The question is how much the consumer is willing to pay for them, and if they are unsure at $70 a barrel [for oil] then I would be very worried. For now it is a terrible business prospect," said Ghosn almost exactly a year ago. What a difference a year makes.

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Fuel Cell
By OrSin on 9/25/2006 8:28:23 AM , Rating: 2
Why not use fuel cells. Yes they might be too dangerous for airplanes but so far from all accounts they beat standard batteries hands down. Recharge time and capacity seems to be greater. Someone tell me if I'm wrong.




RE: Fuel Cell
By mindless1 on 9/25/2006 10:09:48 AM , Rating: 2
For one, because we already have an electricity supply infrastructure. Key in selling sufficient volume to make it profitable is to have everyone who wants one, able to power it. The initial buyer base will be small enough as it is.


RE: Fuel Cell
By Spivonious on 9/25/2006 10:21:47 AM , Rating: 2
I don't know about the fuel cells.

What I'd like to see is a pure electric car. And whatever happened to solar-powered cars? I remember reading that they charged very quickly in the sun and had several reserve batteries for cloudy days. All you'd have to do is allow them to also be plugged in to the wall as a third backup solution and you'd have a car that got an divide-by-zero error when computing mileage :)


RE: Fuel Cell
By number999 on 9/25/2006 11:28:55 AM , Rating: 3
I doubt there would ever be a large scale production of commercial solar cars. The energy derived from the surface area compared to the way people drive.... especially when one considers the cost and how vulnerable they are to cloudy days. You'd have to live closer to the equator and be in mostly sunny climes.

This isn't to say that solar cannot suppliment the energy. A University of Toronto professor, modified his Prius with solar cells on the rooftop to suppliment battery charging. This gives him a car that reaches 100 MPG, but at what cost I wouldn't know. He probably hacked his car to be in EV mode more too. European versions of the Prius do this but not NA due to battery warrentee issues according to Toyota but people hack it anyway.

A recent resource for car tech would be popular mechanics "100 MPG" car issue. It talks between costs and technologies available and although it is prohibitve to implement all the technologies, it isn't to create a 75-80 MPG car.


RE: Fuel Cell
By FITCamaro on 9/25/2006 12:25:17 PM , Rating: 2
Solar cells aren't small or efficient enough for them to actually power a car. You simply just can't fit enough of them on the car to make it go anywhere fast enough for people to be happy.

Pure electric cars will never become a reality unless battery capacity skyrockets and recharge time is minimal. You can only get like 50-60 miles out of them, 90-100 at most. That is fine for the daily commute, but what about if you want to go on a road trip or vacation? And also while you may not be spending money on gas, think of the drastically increased energy bill you'll have. Also, some power companies have a hard enough time meeting demand as it is much less if everyone were plugging in their cars every night.

The gas(or other combustible fuel)/electric hybrid is a much better design and far more feasible. That said, I need more pickup than a Prius has. And its fugly.


RE: Fuel Cell
By Jedi2155 on 9/25/2006 7:41:55 PM , Rating: 3
EV ranges have improved much by switching to nickel metal hydride & Lithium Ion batteries. The old lead acid batteries were too heavy and too short in range. If a EV car was made today, one could expect 100-200 miles of driving. As for the energy grid, I think if we were going to do electric cars, we could do it slowly. I remember there was some research on this and California's grid could and should be able to handle relatively easily about a million vehicles charging on the off-peak nite time hours. However that isn't enough for california as a whole but it is definitely a start until we get more power plants and etc.

I've always had the idea that Hybrids are the stepping stones to future technology as we improve it to the point where battery technology allows us to go fully electric as thats the most efficient method of storing energy. Fuel Cells are a nice alternative but requires a lot of resources to produce, store and transport the fuel before it can be used in a car. It would be better to just have a pure electric vehicle. Cost/range/weight are all the problems with Fuel Cells & EV's right now. GM's new fuel cell vehicle the "Sequel" weighs a hefty 4800 lbs, although it finally has reached around 300 Miles of drivable range through the incorporation of a hybrid powertrain as well.


RE: Fuel Cell
By number999 on 9/25/2006 8:23:54 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
if everyone were plugging in their cars every night


Electric companies would be glad for nightime energy usage. The danger would be during daytime peak periods. In fact nightime use would would even out the base usage. In fact I've stated before that microprocessor controlled charging units could take power from plugged in vehicles during peak demand to add to the grid and replace it later.


RE: Fuel Cell
By number999 on 9/25/2006 10:41:42 AM , Rating: 2
Fuel cells today are based on alkaline fuel cell technology combined with new polymer based catalysts. They are susceptible to impurities in the fuel as well as other factors including temperature, other than that, they're great. My biggest problem with them is the efficiency of production. Electrical energy needs to be produced then transferred, than stored as hydrogen. You lose energy every step of the way. From what I've read (and I can't remeber the source), the efficiency is not that great. I'd rather have EV based systems with a recycling of material than fuel cells.

Oh yeah fuel cells don't recharge. You just fuel them up.


RE: Fuel Cell
By number999 on 9/25/2006 10:48:06 AM , Rating: 2
Oh yeah forgot to say, it will cost billions of dollars to create a hydrogen supply infrastructure. The electrical infrastructure already exists although I'm not too sure about it handling the energy needs of millions of cars.

There is a proposal to put microproccor tech in the recharging circuits so that power from the them can be fed back into the grid during peak times and then fed back to the cars when electricity demand is not so dire.


RE: Fuel Cell
By AxemanFU on 9/25/2006 6:30:47 PM , Rating: 3
I think fuel cells might be better IF they were scalable to the sizes needed to power a car at reasonable costs. Today, they are far too costly on a per unit basis to even justify attempting to mass produce.

The thing that kills me about hybrids is their total economic and environmental cost to produce, operate and dispose of in an environmentally acceptable manner FAR exceeds that of an equivalent conventional super or ultra low emissions conventional gas powered car of equivalent size and capacity. The extra cost to get the materials to produce the battery systems and then incorporate them into the car, and to then later dispose of the waste batteries in a safe manner is very high. The equivalent extra fossil fuels used in the process of making the batteries and installing them alone from raw materials to finished product exceeds the emissions output difference from a hybrid to an ultra low emissions conventional car for well in exceess of the 100,000 mile estimated life of the battery system with today's technology, and that doesn't count disposal.

Basically, over all, hybrids as a category, are more damamging to the environment using current technology than the best conventional gasoline engine technology today. Maybe with a few more years's development, we can get past that point, but you shouldn't feel that bad if you are driving a conventional ulev vehicle...you are doing less harm than someone in a prius....heh...


RE: Fuel Cell
By number999 on 9/25/2006 9:35:34 PM , Rating: 1
quote:
their total economic and environmental cost to produce, operate and dispose of in an environmentally acceptable manner


ULEV: Ultra Low Emission Vehicles.ULEVs are 50% cleaner than the average new model year car.

SULEV: Super Ultra Low Emission Vehicle.SULEVs are 90% cleaner than the average new model year car.

It all counts on the metrics that you use. The environmental hybrids are usually lighter cars with more composites in them. The lighter the car the farther it goes and less pollution to manufacture them. As for the environmental costs of the battery, most of those can be and should be recovered by recycling especially since the commodity price of nickel is so high. I've always thought the battery should be sort of leased rather than bought outright. The cost would be lower then.

Besides comparing hybrids to ULEVs is not a really fair comparison. Look at the conventional cars that are ULEV's that have comparable milage, really small cars which have limited appeal (but not to me ;)), or if you're looking at cars in the same class (Prius is a midsized car), the milage for conventional cars is less than half. From the numbers, over a 100000 miles, the Prius saves 2300 gallons of gas assuming conventional cars get 25 MPG and the Prius gets 60. Thats a lot of gas and a lot of fossil fuel that doesn't have to be imported and I think that more than makes up any differences in production, which I think are not that different when you factor the greater weight and of the conventional car. Most of the impact of hybrids and differences in cost are in the batteries. The hybrids' smaller engine is offset by the cost of the batteries but I've already talked about the batteries.

Lastly, driving pollutes the air in an uncontrollable manner. Manufacturing/recycling pollution can at least be captured or ameliorated or processes can be used that are less polluting or use less pollution. Almost all the parts of a Smart car supposedly are made to be recycled.


Actually looking at the cars that make the ULVE list is pretty disappointing, I mean a Chevy Aveo is defined as a ULEV II with 26 MPG. The Daimler-Benz Smart car gets at least 50% better milage not that any of the milage stats make sense but they are better than nothing.

PS. Not to be a nazi or anything but where did you get the idea that it's that much worse buiding hybrids? I've studied material science and nothing I know would really make that much of a difference in production especially compared to burning 2300 gallons of extra gasoline over 100000 miles.

http://www.greenercars.com/byclass2.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_Low_Emission_Ve...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_(automobile)
http://www.thesmart.ca/index.cfm?id=4817 recycling
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/03/zaps_ameri...


Good Job Nissan!
By Jedi2155 on 9/25/2006 5:40:04 AM , Rating: 2
It seems like Nissan is going in the right direction by allowing the vehicle to be recharged off the grid as that would definitely increase the efficiency of the vehicle and the overall cost of driving if properly maintained.

Hopefully with lithium ion batteries, they will be able to achieve a better MPG/performance and hopefully it will be a capable PHEV (Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicle) which would allow short distance electric only modes.

On the competition front, from what i've been able to gather so far, the 2009 Prius might offer something similar (the only thing i've pretty much confirmed is the move to lithium ion) as thats when the redesign is due to arrive. Early engineering reports gives it a around 80-110 MPG. Thats the car and i'm waiting for and the car i've been saving up for the past 5 years :-D.




RE: Good Job Nissan!
By metalqga on 9/25/2006 7:49:30 AM , Rating: 2
I welcome the idea of producing EV and HEV. The more companies make them the lower the price will go.
My maximum daily mileage is about 20km, which should be easily covered by the initial battery capacity. My gasoline car uses 4litres/100km(Suzuki 800sqcm) which is superb; but I do not want to be dependent on the oil countries because they are not reliable. For the last four years the price of propane/gasoline rose around 40-50%. Every accident (oil burst; sabotages) drives the prices up even more.
There is a tendency (in Europe at least) of moving towards cleaner production of electricity. The wind/water/solar power, fission/fusion reactions. The nuclear fission may be debatable, but the new fusion reactors(like the one being built in France) would eventually drive the environmental and production costs even further.


RE: Good Job Nissan!
By Kuroyama on 9/25/2006 8:12:53 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
There is a tendency (in Europe at least) of moving towards cleaner production of electricity. The wind/water/solar power, fission/fusion reactions.


What about Sweden, who is ditching their nuclear reactors in favor of dirty energy imported from the Baltics? Officially they're doing some 'clean energy' at home, but that is minimal compared to the amount of power being lost by closing the nuclear reactors.


RE: Good Job Nissan!
By danrien on 9/25/06, Rating: -1
RE: Good Job Nissan!
By PrinceGaz on 9/25/2006 12:14:49 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
There is a tendency (in Europe at least) of moving towards cleaner production of electricity. The wind/water/solar power, fission/fusion reactions. The nuclear fission may be debatable, but the new fusion reactors(like the one being built in France)...

Maybe I missed something, but I was under the impression that we are still years away from making a viable fusion-reactor for generating power.

I thought it still needed more energy to get them going than we've so far been able to get out, and that the fusion reaction has only been maintained for a few seconds rather than the many hours which would be needed to make it worthwhile.


RE: Good Job Nissan!
By Sahrin on 9/25/2006 12:40:25 PM , Rating: 2
ITER in France is an experimental reactor - they are looking to break even on energy budget for the first time with a fusion reactor. (Break even - create same amount of energy as used to produce). As far as Europe moving away from fission - Europe pays a lot of lip service to the renewable movement, but the countries that are having the most success with this (Germany primarily) are not the ones doing the squawking.


RE: Good Job Nissan!
By metalqga on 9/25/2006 1:54:13 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Maybe I missed something, but I was under the impression that we are still years away from making a viable fusion-reactor for generating power.

As a "Dailytech" reader you should think a few years ahead. I think this technology would eventually be perfected and will become our main source of energy.


Just don't use Sony batteries?
By FXi on 9/25/2006 7:24:00 AM , Rating: 3
Wouldn't want that Prius to end up like the Sony battery powered laptops...




RE: Just don't use Sony batteries?
By Jharne on 9/25/2006 7:58:10 AM , Rating: 4
Might make for a interesting jet engine effect.


RE: Just don't use Sony batteries?
By jconan on 9/25/2006 1:26:26 PM , Rating: 2
yep... like no dell or apple notebooks on airplanes with li-ion batteries same goes for cars no nissan or sentras in parking lots! or hazardous locations... imagine the hazards for these cars in extreme hot zones just look the same as batteries over charging


RE: Just don't use Sony batteries?
By Jedi2155 on 9/25/2006 7:47:01 PM , Rating: 2
Car manufacturer's are probably going to use a more modern lithium ion battery that are less prone to...explosive reactions. Valence's Saphion batteries are suppose to fill this market as well as a few other competitors. They're same stuff used in segways to prevent people from randomly going up in flames >_>.


how much?
By Chernobyl68 on 9/25/2006 11:53:35 AM , Rating: 2
for all the cars that plug into the wall, has anyone actually determined the cost of this electricity vs. to cost of comparable fuel?
of you get
x mpg at say $3.00 per gallon, what is your cost at
y m/amp-hour at x.xx per kw/hr?





RE: how much?
By wingless on 9/25/2006 2:17:48 PM , Rating: 2
If that car uses as much power as my computer (cool and quiet turned off, overclocked, and a 7900GT cooking me in my room) Then the world is doomed.

Ofcourse we know thats not the case. It charges quickly and probably is really good on power usage. Unlike our environmentally unsafe 500+ watt computers that we leave on 24/7.

I think we do need to sit down with some real world numbers and determine the real cost advantage of these cars though so lets do it when Nissan releases some real data.


RE: how much?
By ddopson on 9/25/2006 2:59:55 PM , Rating: 2
It takes in the range of 90 kW to drive a motor vehicle. As in, a helluva lot more than even the most tricked out PC.

Still, 90kW is about 9$ / hr, which is competitive with gas costs.


RE: how much?
By konekobot on 9/25/2006 2:48:30 PM , Rating: 3
if you go to the tesla motors website, i know that their car gets roughly 2¢ per mile. So my 4 cyl car gets 30mpg @ $3.00-a-gallon or 10¢ per mile. That's a 5x difference in efficiency. Of course we're talking about an EV and not an HEV like the aforementioned nissan.


RE: how much?
By Jedi2155 on 9/25/2006 7:49:02 PM , Rating: 2
Generally EV's are much cheaper than conventional combustions engines. Even in California. Although we can't even discuss the HEV from Nissan till we get some numbers.


Lower petrol bill, higher light bill...
By wingless on 9/25/2006 12:06:14 PM , Rating: 2
What you save in gas, you will pay for in your home's light bill. Be sure to plug it up when you get to work LOL.




RE: Lower petrol bill, higher light bill...
By GhandiInstinct on 9/25/2006 1:09:19 PM , Rating: 1
I can charge my car with my mind...


By lemonadesoda on 9/25/2006 5:48:27 PM , Rating: 3
Get the GF to wear a woolly jumper... and rub, vigorously. By the end of the night there will be enough static for you to charge your batteries!


Oh...
By ksherman on 9/25/2006 6:29:15 PM , Rating: 2
Thats a very nice loking Altima. Front end could use a little more of a change, but it sure looks nice. Is Nissan still planning on ditching the Altima Hybrid? From the article, it seemed as though they were, in favor of adding it to the smaller cars.




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