Electric Car - Nissan LEAF

The Nissan Leaf is a compact five-door hatchback electric car manufactured by Nissan and launched worldwide in December 2010.

What is LEAF?
"LEAF" stand for Leading, Environmentally friendly, Affordable, Family car.

Special Features?

The Nissan Leaf is Zero Emission Vehicles(ZEV). It produces no tailpipe pollution or greenhouse gas emissions and 100% dependence on electricity.

Battery Pack?
The Nissan Leaf loaded with 24 kWh lithium-ion battery produces 90kW and supplies power to the 80kW AC electric motor which produces 80kW (107 horsepower) and 280Nm of torque. The battery pack is expected to retain 70% to 80% of its capacity after 10 years but its actual lifespan depends on how often fast charging (440-volt) is used and also on environmental factors.

Performance?
LEAF has a top speed of over 150km/h. Unofficially, 0 to 97 km/h performance has been tested at 7.0 seconds.

How far can it go with one charge?
1. EPA LA4 test cycle: 160km per charge (standard)
2. Ideal driving conditions: 220km per charge
3. Highway driving in the summer: 112km per charge
*Travel range can be affected by climate, speed, driving style, cargo and topography

Recharging?
the Leaf can be charged overnight from a 200V power outlet in about 8 hours, or via a DC quick charger in under 30 minutes.

Price?
Japan ¥3.76 million (US$44,600)
United States US$32,780
United Kingdom GB£28,990 (US$44,800)
Malaysia To Be Announced (estimated RM 120,000)

Electric Car - Advantages and Disadvantages

With the price of oil soaring and gasoline prices rising as a result, the desire for alternative fuels is higher than ever. If you're thinking about purchasing a electric car, there are many things to consider. Below is a brief list of advantages and disadvantages ofbowning a electric car (Ev Car)

 















Advantages
Zero-emissions vehicle. The Ev is completely electric, it has no gasoline or diesel powered engine to supplement for power. Electric vehicles (EV's) utilize no fossil fuels, so there are no emissions whatsoever. As a result the environment will be cleaner with less smog and greenhouse gases.

Quiet ride. Since electric cars don't have conventional fossil fuel engines (which utilizes internal combustion for power), they run smoother and quieter. At low speeds, electric vehicles are virtually silent.

Electric cars are easy to assemble. The engine system for EV's is simple, EV engines have less parts, less moving parts which can translate to fewer visits to a garage for repairs over the life of the car. At the same time, EV car require less maintenance.

Electricity is readily available. Electricity is everywhere and easy to come by. Owners do not need to set up electricity stations on the corner to re-charge cars. It can be done at home. Almost 100 percent of EV car batteries can be recycled, which keeps old batteries from becoming a disposal problem.

Disadvantages
Limited traveling radius. One charge on a battery can take the car approximately 160km. Therefore if owner plan on traveling a long distance, they may be at the risk of the battery getting discharged. As such there are no battery charging stations available on all roads and highways.

Charging and cost. It takes 6-8 hours to fully recharge the battery. You can not expect to be ready to go in a few minutes after wearing down the battery. If owner live in an apartment or don't have a garage or a place where they can plug in to a 220 volt outlet, charging EV can be a problem. Your electric bill will probably increase as you have to draw power from your home electrical system to charge your car.

Less powerful. Electric cars cannot compete with gas powered cars in terms of speed and acceleration. Technology has not yet developed an electrical system as powerful as a gas powered vehicle.

Environment costs. Though the vehicle running on electricity does not produce pollution, the power plants producing electricity do produce pollution. The pollutants created by thermal power plants which burns fossil fuels to generate electricity are one of major source of air-pollution.

Electric Car - How it works

Inside an Electric Car

The heart of an electric car is the combination of:

• The electric motor
• The motor's controller
• The batteries

A simple DC controller connected to the batteries and the DC motor. If the driver floors the accelerator pedal, the controller delivers the full 96 volts from the batteries to the motor. If the driver take his/her foot off the accelerator, the controller delivers zero volts to the motor. For any setting in between, the controller "chops" the 96 volts thousands of times per second to create an average voltage somewhere between 0 and 96 volts.

The controller takes power from the batteries and delivers it to the motor. The accelerator pedal hooks to a pair of potentiometers (variable resistors), and these potentiometers provide the signal that tells the controller how much power it is supposed to deliver. The controller can deliver zero power (when the car is stopped), full power (when the driver floors the accelerator pedal), or any power level in between.
The controller normally dominates the scene when you open the hood, as you can see here:

The 300-volt, 50-kilowatt controller for this electric car is the box marked "U.S. Electricar."

In this car, the controller takes in 300 volts DC from the battery pack. It converts it into a maximum of 240 volts AC, three-phase, to send to the motor. It does this using very large transistors that rapidly turn the batteries' voltage on and off to create a sine wave.
When you push on the gas pedal, a cable from the pedal connects to these two potentiometers:

The potentiometers hook to the gas pedal and send a signal to the controller.

The signal from the potentiometers tells the controller how much power to deliver to the electric car's motor. There are two potentiometers for safety's sake. The controller reads both potentiometers and makes sure that their signals are equal. If they are not, then the controller does not operate. This arrangement guards against a situation where a potentiometer fails in the full-on position.

Heavy cables (on the left) connect the battery pack to the controller. In the middle is a very large on/off switch. The bundle of small wires on the right carries signals from thermometers located between the batteries, as well as power for fans that keep the batteries cool and ventilated.

The heavy wires entering and leaving the controller

The controller's job in a DC electric car is easy to understand. Let's assume that the battery pack contains 12 12-volt batteries, wired in series to create 144 volts. The controller takes in 144 volts DC, and delivers it to the motor in a controlled way.
The very simplest DC controller would be a big on/off switch wired to the accelerator pedal. When you push the pedal, it would turn the switch on, and when you take your foot off the pedal, it would turn it off. As the driver, you would have to push and release the accelerator to pulse the motor on and off to maintain a given speed.
Obviously, that sort of on/off approach would work but it would be a pain to drive, so the controller does the pulsing for you. The controller reads the setting of the accelerator pedal from the potentiometers and regulates the power accordingly. Let's say that you have the accelerator pushed halfway down. The controller reads that setting from the potentiometer and rapidly switches the power to the motor on and off so that it is on half the time and off half the time. If you have the accelerator pedal 25 percent of the way down, the controller pulses the power so it is on 25 percent of the time and off 75 percent of the time.
Most controllers pulse the power more than 15,000 times per second, in order to keep the pulsation outside the range of human hearing. The pulsed current causes the motor housing to vibrate at that frequency, so by pulsing at more than 15,000 cycles per second, the controller and motor are silent to human ears.

An AC controller hooks to an AC motor. Using six sets of power transistors, the controller takes in 300 volts DC and produces 240 volts AC, 3-phase.  The controller additionally provides a charging system for the batteries, and a DC-to-DC converter to recharge the 12-volt accessory battery.

In an AC controller, the job is a little more complicated, but it is the same idea. The controller creates three pseudo-sine waves. It does this by taking the DC voltage from the batteries and pulsing it on and off. In an AC controller, there is the additional need to reverse the polarity of the voltage 60 times a second. Therefore, you actually need six sets of transistors in an AC controller, while you need only one set in a DC controller. In the AC controller, for each phase you need one set of transistors to pulse the voltage and another set to reverse the polarity. You replicate that three times for the three phases -- six total sets of transistors.
Most DC controllers used in electric cars come from the electric forklift industry. The Hughes AC controller seen in the photo above is the same sort of AC controller used in the GM/Saturn EV-1 electric vehicle. It can deliver a maximum of 50,000 watts to the motor.

 Link: howstuffworks

Electric Car - Basic Knowledge

Electric cars are a variety of electric vehicle (EV); the term "electric vehicle" refers to any vehicle that uses electric motors for propulsion, while "electric car" generally refers to road-going automobiles powered by electricity.

Ev car are different from Hybrid car as we mentioned before. It is powered by an electric motor rather than a gasoline engine.It create less pollution than gasoline-powered cars, so they are an environmentally friendly alternative to gasoline-powered vehicles.

Under the hood, there are a lot of differences between gasoline and electric cars:

* The gasoline engine is replaced by an electric motor.
* The electric motor gets its power from a controller.
* The controller gets its power from an array of rechargeable batteries.

Electric vehicles use electricity stored on the car in batteries. Sometimes, 12 or 24 batteries, or more, are needed to power the car. Just like a remote-controlled, model electric car has an electric motor that turns the wheels and a battery to run that motor. When the batteries is exhausted, the car is usually plugged in into a special charging unit or plug right into a regular electrical wall outlet.

From the outside, you would probably have no idea that a car is electric because most of the electric cars are created by converting a gasoline-powered car, and in that case it is impossible to tell.