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Nissan ePower - Good or Evil?

64K views 139 replies 25 participants last post by  McPhee  
#1 · (Edited)
I guess it is inevitable that Nissan will introduce their "ePower" serial-hybrid tech into Europe, to compete with Toyota hybrids. They can even do the same "No need to plug in" advertising :rolleyes:

Is more hybrid choice (non plug in) good or evil? Or something in the middle?

Incidentally, I get annoyed when the press use REX to describe a car powered 100% by petrol. Talk about confusing the public - "Ooh the Nissan REX is much cheaper than the BMW i3"

Nissan to END Diesel car sales in UK and Europe | Cars UK
 
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#3 ·
I have mixed feelings.

A mate got an IS300h and it has had the "gateway drug" impact that I hope Toyota and Lexus hybrids can have on drivers. I think we have seen many move from hybrids to PHEV or BEV.

At present the choice of hybrids is limited, so perhaps an ePower Qashqai (for example) isn't a bad idea and surely a lot better than a diesel? They are already doing a Serena minivan and another annoying press article.

Nissan Serena e-Power Is an Electric Minivan With a Range Extender

Re a "real" Nissan REX, I love my Ampera but the problem with (large battery + ICE) is cost is high and you end up with more to go wrong, whereas a BEV has less. I suspect VW profit margin on GTE is a fraction compared to GTI, despite small battery.
 
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#4 ·
I think hybrids used to be a good stepping stone, but things have moved on.

People I speak to now, as opposed a few years ago, about EVs, are concerned about range above anything else. They don't need convincing that the technology works any more.

Other factors are lack of choice and price.

I think that e-POWER is interesting, but then I remember that it's like having a very low range EV with a petrol generator in the boot. Except that it's already connected up. It's just another way of using fossil fuels to power the car, except that it happens to have an electric motor in it. It's not EV.

I'm actually getting quite weary of trying to argue against hybrids. I fully understand why people think hybrids still have a place. I don't need to hear about dozens of scenarios as to why they are useful. My point has always been to keep the two modes of power separate, distinguishing between zero emissions and polluting-capable vehicles at point of use.

Separating the two technologies will allow for manufacturers to concentrate on battery technology, rather than ICE technology.
 
#5 · (Edited)
When I started getting interested in ev it niggled me to see the word niche on forums and the media, as far as I was concerned my new Leaf was the future and surely everyone is going to want this. Well things don't move fast enough in the car industry to keep pace with drivers' needs and desires when the technology goes off on a tangent. Which is what has happened here.
Now it is all about batteries. But it is and it isn't.
We had more electric horseless carriages before we had the internal combustion engine take over and dominate personal transport.
A hundred years go by and along comes the lithium iron battery and acts as catalyst to make electric horseless carriages seem viable again. But so crucial are these new batteries that they completely obscure what the new vehicles are all about.
EVs are fundamentally about electric motors turning the wheels and when we are all driving around in BEVs with so much battery capacity that nobody ever mentions range and rapids, all the talk will be about the torque or whatever that the electric motors in one particular model have compared to another.
But we have a long way to go to reach those happy days.
So we need the motor industry to concentrate on designing and making vehicles with electric motors turning the wheels as a first priority.
Then they need to ensure that people will buy those vehicles. They are good at that already. They offer various options.
And an on-board petrol generator is just one of those options.

There have been decades of ice developments so that is not an issue.
And no matter what direction I travel in I am no more than 5 miles from a petrol filling station, so fuel if needed is not an issue.

I chose a car with an on-board petrol generator to ensure I could drive more (and the majority) of my miles electric than I was already doing so in my Leaf and ice vehicles.
I think everyone who wants to do the same should be given that choice.
 
#6 ·
We need a new term which I believe should be Petrol-Electric, to my ears serial hybrid is too technical for the average Joe. Will he think it runs on cornflakes? Many are familiar with the concept from Diesel-Electric railway locomotives. Ok there is a small battery but the press using the term Range Extender is just ridiculous. Does it even allow driving without the motor running?
 
#9 ·
I think people will soon start to assume that all EV are plug-in just as they assumed my Leaf is a hybrid and the rex part of my i3 turns the wheels.
The most commonly asked question when I got my Leaf was, "where do you charge it?" answer "on my drive".
My work mates then would see that I would park my car where I could get access to a socket (I had about five places) and occasionally they moved their cars to allow me to charge.
It's all a big learning process and what terms get adopted are anybody's guess.
 
#7 ·
With the governments random idea of all hybrids needing to do 50 miles on pure electric by some arbitrary date then you'd hope manufacturers would be developing and releasing cars as soon as possible so they recoup their investment before everyone else is making a similar product.

Petrol and Diesel electric will reduce some emissions because the losses in the gearbox have gone, but ultimately they are a doomed technology and investing money in them just seems ridiculous to me.
 
#11 ·
I thought I'd better check that my memory wasn't deceiving me... it wasn't btw :LOL: ...

"It’s a car that’s best suited around town. For the most part you’re driving around silently in electric mode. The petrol engine doesn’t need to be on all the time. The petrol generator does come on every now and then to generate power but briefly. That said, one of the downsides to the Note e-Power was the rather noisy petrol generator which abruptly disrupted the electric silence."

However...
"... Long distance motorway driving is not its forte. Petrol engine remained on for most of it to keep powering the motors over the long distance...."

e-Power: Nissan's Idea of a Hybrid Future - DriveLife
 
#12 ·
Good.

By developing the mechanical parts and getting solid evolution of the design yet without building massively expensive niche cars with currently-expensive batteries (that only monied folks with a driveway can afford to buy as a hobby thing) it gets these drive systems into 'proper' mass production where the fiery furnace of real life will hone their credentials. Then it is just a case of adding batteries when it can be done at a cost the market can bear.
 
#13 ·
I thought I'd better check that my memory wasn't deceiving me... it wasn't btw :LOL: ...

"It’s a car that’s best suited around town. For the most part you’re driving around silently in electric mode. The petrol engine doesn’t need to be on all the time. The petrol generator does come on every now and then to generate power but briefly. That said, one of the downsides to the Note e-Power was the rather noisy petrol generator which abruptly disrupted the electric silence."

However...
"... Long distance motorway driving is not its forte. Petrol engine remained on for most of it to keep powering the motors over the long distance...."

e-Power: Nissan's Idea of a Hybrid Future - DriveLife
I like that, you know more about it than I do.
 
#14 · (Edited)
I thought I'd better check that my memory wasn't deceiving me... it wasn't btw :LOL: ...

"It’s a car that’s best suited around town. For the most part you’re driving around silently in electric mode. The petrol engine doesn’t need to be on all the time. The petrol generator does come on every now and then to generate power but briefly. That said, one of the downsides to the Note e-Power was the rather noisy petrol generator which abruptly disrupted the electric silence."

However...
"... Long distance motorway driving is not its forte. Petrol engine remained on for most of it to keep powering the motors over the long distance...."

e-Power: Nissan's Idea of a Hybrid Future - DriveLife
Do we know that it is noisy? I had an I3 Rex visit my chargepoint and it was running the driver assured me. Sounded no louder than the cooling fan on my E-nv200. Not sure what it isw like inside the car. My experience is that intermittent noise is less well tolerated than continuous. I had some cooling units at work that cut in and out, had complaints, made the fans run continous, no more complaints.
 
#16 · (Edited)
From other accounts of people driving it I've read/listened to, suggests that it is a noticeable droning sound that kicks in and out, as and when required. As you say, it may be the switching in and out that could be irritating to some.

I don't think that the sound of the engine will be the main issue for buyers, or at least it shouldn't be. The main issue should be its lack of green credentials.
 
#15 ·
How much is that petrol engine going to be able to generate?

Cruising at 70mph takes about 20kW, more going up hill. If I drive up a hill for 15 miles, is that petrol engine going to be able to maintain the charge? 1.5kWh is a tiny battery.....

IIRC, when low on battery and running on REx, i3 will operate in reduced power mode due to insufficient power being generated by the ICE.
 
#17 ·
I don't know. Are theses figures sufficient to be able to answer those questions...

"Under the bonnet is a three-cylinder 1.2 litre engine that is rated at 58kW and 103Nm. As it doesn't propel the car at all its outputs are of little significance. Instead the 80kW electric motor with a 254Nm output is the more comparable set of figures."
2017 Nissan Note e-Power first drive review - Nissan's latest hybrid reviewed
 
#20 ·
I doubt they do. I assume as soon as you give it some welly the ICE fires up.

The other fact someone quoted was annual mileage is low in Japan, so battery life is perhaps OK there, but be less so in USA. Don't know if true about mileage?
 
#21 ·
The irony with the series hybrid/rex is that it is despised by both petrol-heads and ev purist alike.
The petrol-heads because it spells the demise of the ice having it relegated to generator duties and the ev purist because they see it as holding on to the past by delaying the ice demise.
The success of the e-Note is an eye opener to us all and should allow Nissan to move with confidence to electrify the whole range of their vehicles well ahead of the competition.
 
#22 ·
With the governments random idea of all hybrids needing to do 50 miles on pure electric by some arbitrary date then you'd hope manufacturers would be developing and releasing cars as soon as possible so they recoup their investment before everyone else is making a similar product.
2040 is the target last I heard. Like most environmental targets it's set so far in the future that most of the politicians involved will be comfortably retired or dead by then.
 
#23 · (Edited)
Series Hybrids (which is what the Nissan e-Note is one of) deserve to be thought of,as entry-level EV.
Nissan could and should have sold the e-Note here in the UK but perhaps they did not anticipate just how successful it was going to be. However the "all new" Nissan Micra should have been switched to a series hybrid as soon as they had a inkling of how good the e-Note was selling.
 
#28 ·
I know very little about the theoretical aspects of power delivery from a battery ( or care). But I do understand basic engineering principles and can grasp simple concepts when explained to me. The e-power system was described to me as a powerful clockwork spring ( battery) that could launch a car from rest quite quickly but ran out of steam within a few hundred yards just as the car reached its cruising speed. The generator could then not only supply enough power to maintain that cruise but also replace the lost energy in the battery caused by the rapid launch demand on it.

Pretty soon the battery would be back up to usable level and ready for the next launch at the next traffic halt. Or if the car was still in cruise mode the engine just maintained its optimum rev range at that much lower demand of power level.

If a 22kW demand could be maintained for 4 minutes then surely even a very fast launch of 10 seconds or so wouldn't stress it too much. Especially if the generator was also running to replace much of that drain in real time. The system is just a clever buffer to even out peak demands and allows the ICE to run at its most efficient optimum revs to achieve great mpg figures.

It could well be that Nissan realises that such a system will only work if driven sensibly and in congested traffic. Which is why they only sell it in Japan in its present form. They know that UK drivers would rag it up a Motorway from rest and complain that it became lethargic after 3 miles. It's the old 'tool selection' argument again.
 
#30 ·
The system is just a clever buffer to even out peak demands and allows the ICE to run at its most efficient optimum revs to achieve great mpg figures.
Around town maybe, but (as you imply later) on highway I suspect not. GM didn't equip the Volt 2 with even more capability of driving the wheels from the ICE because they were bored, it was to improve MPG on freeway.

I am getting increasingly annoyed by it being referred to as "range extender" - it doesn't have any range to extend. It is a 100% petrol car! Grrrr :mad:
 
#29 ·
We are a group of people that want EVs to work for us, don't forget. So we put our usage into the area of operation that gives us that outcome.

There are some people who don't care and just drive, and have expectations of certain performance levels. These people will notice that EVs don't always do what they want/expected.

Finally there are people who will set out to only use a thing beyond its operating envelope just to prove it can't as a means to argue to stick to what they know.

IMHO there is far too much emphasis on satiating idiots in that latter category.
 
#34 ·
Because ePower won't work well in Europe. Even Nissan know this.
Europe’s higher average speeds would hurt ePower’s efficiency in its current format and make it harder for the engine to recharge the battery, Pandikuthira said.
Serial hybrids are good for city and urban, but not so good on highway. The Volt 2 drives the wheels directly more than the first one to get better highway MPG.
 
#35 ·
Because ePower won't work well in Europe. Even Nissan know this.


Serial hybrids are good for city and urban, but not so good on highway. The Volt 2 drives the wheels directly more than the first one to get better highway MPG.
Yes I noted that but it feels like an excuse to not upset the market. I feel electric drivetrains alter the way we drive, we are part of this evolution. So I ask again what is wrong with letting UK drivers decide for themselves?
 
#42 ·
Got bored and irritated by that video within 30 seconds! Are there any professional reviews?

I am still struggling to understand the euphoria around this? It isn't going to reduce emissions any more than a hybrid such as Prius and at Europe motorway speeds it will emit more CO2 due to lack of efficiency.

Of course I would prefer people to buy a "hybrid" such as ePower vs. a diesel, but it is a petrol car. That is the only fuel it uses. You can't fuel it with renewable electric.
 
#44 ·
It isn't going to reduce emissions any more than a hybrid such as Prius and at Europe motorway speeds it will emit more CO2 due to lack of efficiency
Sorry to hear that your threshold of boredom is only 30 seconds.

Of course it only moves by petrol. And as such will emit like a petrol car. But to go on to claim that it will be inefficient at motorway speeds is to ignore the fact that it is designed as a town car. And it is highly efficient in that role. It will drive like an EV because the engine is only a generator. That generator is designed to run at optimum efficiency and as it isn't ramped up and down by a drivers foot it is excellent at that. Most braking is by regen. The energy gained by that is used to accelerate again so that the next cruise phase is reached with minimal energy loss. This is a highly efficient system that gives most of the pleasure of an EV without any range anxiety at all. To focus on it possibly not delivering massive mpg if thrashed along a motorway misses the point of this car.
 
#43 ·
This should give folks their first taste of a seamless transmission, the electric drive we all like. Once bitten few go back to box of noisy cogs.
The edrive should be the forerunner of a raft of larger battery plug in varients at least I hope so bringing phevs and BEV's down to affordable levels.

My 2pence