http://www.nissanusa.com/electric-car/

Boxer only testing the electric drive !

In the US nothing less is volume car. Anything less is a novelty.

Oh, and let’s see if Nissan can build a car with a battery double or triple the size of the Volt’s (AND good for 100,00 miles or 10 years)and sell it for $20,000.

And anyone that thinks that battery capacity is MORE measureable than fuel tank capacity has another thing coming. As an avid RVer, I’ve been living off of batteries from time to time for over two decades. No one, and I mean no one, has a decent, accurate, reliable, dependable means of measuring battery capacity WHILE IN USE. You can always stop, disconnect ALL loads from the battery, let the battery set for a spell, take a voltage reading, extrapolate the relative capacity, then re-engage the battery loads, and finally still run out of juice before the measurements predicted, but that’s just silly! No, I really would prefer to take my chances with an old fashioned tank of petrol and a wooden stick! JMHO.

Introducing models made to appeal more to American tastes is an easy way to leverage that investment even if the initial uptake is low.

Any uptake at all helps them distribute their fixed costs all the more.

On the other hand, a limited range EV, in a quality offering, at a great price would be something to look at. Plus the tax incentive would also apply. What do I do now if I am low on gas – stop at nearest station. What would I do in an EV? Same thing, how long would it take to discover where I could stop and charge at. Time? It takes less than 10 minutes to stop and fill up with gas, I would have no issue waiting 15-20 minutes to get enough charge to get home, plus I know I saw that there were chargers that could do a rapid charge – they are expensive – but savvy service station owners will make them available.

How about running out of juice in an EV? I have run out of gas before – not fun, just because there is a gas station on every corner does not make it easier. Do you carry a gas can? Full or empty? Does the gas station you walked 3 miles to offer you a can to borrow? Can you ask a store owner or a local homeowner for some gas if walking to a station is not an option? Maybe, but I would pack the equivilant of a syphon hose in my trunk – a 100′ extension cord, I am sure an offer of $5 for a 30 minute plugin would be easier to find then borrowing some gas.
PLUS, if the difference does happen to be $10k less, I could put up 2KW of solar panels (after incentives) with the savings. I am a Volt fan – but you have to be practical.

Someone might offer an on-board generator much smaller than the Volt’s 1.4L, intended not to sustain charge while providing all driving power, but rather to serve as a “limp-mode” / emergency charger; intended for use only when the battery is actually near depletion. It would get you off the road to safety (albiet very slowly), where you would park until the little generator could catch the battery up to the ten or so miles it could take to get to a suitable plug-in location.

Such a generator would be lighter, cheaper, possibly air-cooled, and a source of Volt-like security (if not performance) on a budget.

At a (slight) step up above this, a small and lightweight (but less ‘cheap’) generator might be designed to augment, or “stretch” battery charge, rather than sustain a state of charge. That theoretical ‘long haul up the matterhorn’ would about kill it, but again, you get what you pay for.

And no, I don’t think either of these things should be offered before the Volt. The Volt is as much about proving a point to the car-buying public as it is about anything else. If consumers buy some version of range-extender “lite” and are disappointed, many may not give serial electric drive another chance.

For the same reason, I don’t think that a ‘lite’ genset has any place on a Volt. 40 miles AER wouldn’t be a good fit for a small generator; it would provoke great dissatisfaction.

There could be a whole range of possibilities we’ll see where which starts on one end with a short AER and a big genset (Volt), and ends up with a long AER and a small genset (or ultimately, no genset).

I guess not, LOL! I can truthfully say that, in 30 days of driving, I have never run out of gas. Maybe even 30 months – I have been doing pretty well lately.

Well, we ran one of our race cars out of gas at Portland in 2006, so I guess not. Gas is heavy, so we try to carry the minimum. Sound familiar? We got our sums wrong and ran out about 500 feet from start/finish. Oh well, even the big guys do that once in awhile. Still finished first though, LMAO. I think somebody said it here the other day, “Even a blind pig finds an acorn once in awhile.”

In any case, with a 100+ mile range BEV I’m not going to be using that range every day… if the power is out, I could skip a day of recharging like if the power is out. Others may have their own backup home generators (I haven’t bought one myself, in my current home of 5 years I’ve only lost power a couple of times and only once was it longer than a couple of hours, and I’m in a rural area now, in my previous home that I had for 12 years I had only 2, maybe 3, overnight power outtages… and I guess I should knock on wood ).

But you are still right… there will be times the pure BEV can’t be recharged during an outtage when you do need it, and that’s when I get in my old car. The first generation (or two) of pure BEV’s won’t have range or the recharging infrastructure to be the only vehicle(s) in some (or most?) households. That’s why having choices available is a good thing.