Nissan says its new electric car, the Leaf, gets 367 miles per gallon
By Laura June 
posted August 15th 2009 8:02AM
posted August 15th 2009 8:02AM
Nissan's gotten into a bit of a bragging contest on Twitter -- possibly fueled by Chevrolet's recent, shaky claim that the Volt will get 230 miles per gallon. The company is now saying that its new electric car, the Leaf, will get an astonishing 367 miles per gallon... even though it's a 100 percent electric car, and runs on absolutely no fuel. So, isn't that zero miles per gallon? Well, yes and no: all these massive numbers are based on both the Department of Energy and the EPA's calculations for estimating equivalencies in electric cars. Why? Well, it seems that car companies are still giving us -- the prospective buying public -- MPG figures because they think that's what we understand best. Tony Posawatz, vehicle line director for Chevy's Volt recently admitted to the New York Times that the miles per gallon matrix is "probably not the best measure of goodness" for a car that uses no gallons at all, but that it's "what people are accustomed to." We agree -- he's got a point -- but people were also accustomed to the hi-fi, the corded landline, and the steam engine. We assure you: people understand that a car that runs on zero gas (and therefore gets an astonishingly low amount of miles per gallon) is really, really awesome. So the MPG matrix is useless when talking about electric cars -- we'll adjust! Read - Nissan claims 367 miles per gallon for electric Leaf
Read - The Chevy Volt: mileage numerology
How about "Miles per Wh"?
I understand why they do this: it's easier for most people to understand how much it will cost as most people know the cost of a gallon (at least in the US, we metric people still haven't really got a clue as to how much a gallon/mile/stone/whatever is LOL).
It's easier for people to understand that they'll pay they same for 367 miles per gallon as compared to their current car which will get like 20 miles per gallon, so they know they can drive like 18 times further with the same price per gallon.
ofcourse it would be much easier if you americans and english just switched to the metric system :p
F...k that "mpg, k/l" mumbo jumbo. I want to know how many trees per mile.
You know the formula: x trees=x tons of coal=x kW. They telling me for years now how many trees it
takes to make a roll of toilet paper (which I stopped using ;) ). In the end we are talking about our
Mother Earth.
;)
Remind me never to shake hands with you or hug the tree you just got done fondling.
Ahhh.. MPG.... the best senseless race since the CPU MHZ era...
If you drove your car off the edge of the Grand Canyon, It would go 1 mile....without using any gas along the way!!
I wonder what it would rate in MPK (Miles Per Kilowatt) or depending on how how much energy it actually takes, KPM (Kilowatts per Mile)
I love the idea of vehicles that are primarily electric, 6 days a week I do drive less than 4 miles a day, but one day a week I routinely drive 80 miles and a few times a year I take 1000+ mile road trips. I'd love a car like the Volt or the Aptera Hybrid where the gas engine kicks in for extended range, but a pure-electric simply wouldn't be practical for use in the US for anyone other than a city dweller.
What you want is miles per kilowatt-hour or miles per megajoule. A watt is a unit of power, i.e. the rate that energy is consumed. A joule is a unit of work or energy.
A gallon of gasoline contains about 121 MJ or 36.6 kW-h.
"and therefore, an astonishingly low amount of miles per gallon is awesome" ???!!!! what? what you mean is "high amount of miles" .. correct it
If anything it's "unlimited" mpg. I hate when they do this shit. Electric cars don't use gas, you can't compare them like that.
The only number we need to worry about is CO2 emissions per mile; if we do not get our consumer consumption under control, Earth will be a hot house worse than Venus!! MPG etc. should be outlawed, and only CO2/mile reported.
Those who have high carbon emissions should be taxed/fined or re-educated in a FEMA camp. This is serious folks!! Do you want your grandkids living in a dessert? Thank God for the Carbon Trading plan - only this massive hidden tax will reduce consumption and the American unsustainable way of life.
Because you are not Bill Can't Fart (http://www.engadget.com/profile/2094773/), I hereby demand that you start paying us all for your methane emissions, and perhaps the expulsion of hot air. They offend me much worse than anyone's carbon footprint.
In all seriousness, paying for my "excessive emissions" doesn't help the environment, it just gives money to the government. Using fossil fuels and excessive power ALREADY COSTS MONEY. The lights in my house are off right now. Why? Because it's bright outside, the curtains are open, and my power bill is cheaper because of it. Not because of some government tax on my "emissions". Besides, I'd rather spend my own money than invent reasons for the government to take it, and inefficient government programs to spend it on me.
Yah and from what I understand the fastest it can go is something like 80-85. That means acceleration is _most likely_ going to be for less then shit. I had to get onto a shortened on ramp last night due to construction. My money is that with traffic the Leaf would have NEVER gotten up to speed before it had to merge and would have become a hazard as it forced everyone to go around in narrow lanes. My car is a Prius so I'm not expecting a race car that can do 200. But a car needs some basic specs to avoid being a hazard on the road. 367 is all well and fine. If you are a hazard well I think not.
You can't derive acceleration from top speed in the first place, let alone when mixing motor types.
Peak torque for an electric motor is just before stall, whereas for an IC motor the power curver peaks when turning. The lower your initial speed the better the electric motor will look as compared to gas
This MPG rating for both the Volt and this is rediculous, you are using apples to describe oranges, IT DOES NOT WORK. List the range of the batteries and nothing else matters AT ALL
There's only really a couple of things I want to know about an electric vehicle aside from standard things like price. How far it goes in one charge is still my primary concern, mostly because most electric cars will be relatively cheap, but most will also not go as far as I need to go on occasion (sans charging stations, when is that going to happen? Ever? And who really wants to stop their trip for two hours to charge up their car?). Then I need to know what the efficiency is, in kW/mile (or km, whatever), mostly so I can quickly calculate how much it will cost me to use the car based on my power rates and average distance traveled every day, not to decide how big my carbon footprint is. I really don't see a way to combine those two without making more work for me comparing cars and calculating cost. Especially with some crazy MPG figure, which regardless of the outcome of the recurring mathematical argument, still doesn't make sense.
Changed my mind, I'm all for the metric system here. It's fun that kW/km is the same as W/m.
Dumbest thing I've ever heard. How about hiring some designers for these electric cars, instead of wasting money on figuring out ways how to make customers feel dumber. Other than Tesla and one other car (also of the super expensive kind) I've yet to see an electric car that didn't make me want to vomit. Heck, even a Sentra would look better than that blue abomination.
Try taking any of these cross country. At least you can dump some gas into the Volt once in a while and keep a couple of cans of the stuff in the back.
If I put a gallon of gas in the back of an electric car, then it would get INFINITY MILES TO THE GALLON.
MPC = Miles per charge. Just use that! It sounds exactly like "xx miles per gallon" until the last word, and when anyone hears a large number like 320 and the word "charge" at the end, they'll get it. It eases consumers' main concern: how far will this thing take me after an overnight charging?
The problem is that "miles per charge" is actually comparable to "mile per full tank of gas".
There are three values of interest here: 1) stored energy capacity; 2) rate of energy consumption; 3) range of travel before replenishing stored capacity. Given two you can derive the third, but that does not mean the three values are interchangeable singly.
"(an astonishingly low amount of miles per gallon) is really, really awesome"
In what way is that awesome?
Why don't they use a system like MPC (miles per charge) or something? I'm pretty stoked about these new cars, and can't wait to get my own electric or alternative fuel car in 10-15 years :)
Holy crap, I was one of the first comments and now there's like 20 of them. Sorry for the redundancy! I should start using the returning feature =P
No way, my electricity bill was already $375 last month, I will be damned if I am plugging in a car.
I think they do the tests driving DownHill.
Engadget needs some help with the maths. Again, it's infinite MPG.
This is all just Corporate wienie wagging, mine is bigger. How about a TCO based on 200K miles and a carbon footprint for 200K, then make a comparison. I expect efficient diesel cars would win. The dirty little secret is cost of replacement battery packs and recycling.
I agree up to a point. I think the carbon footprint thing is perfectly silly--the number would be completely meaningless. The newer diesels are fantastic, but they do have other serious pollution problems. But TCO for x miles would be a fantastic number for ALL cars.
Makes me think, if a gasoline-powered car gets empty it becomes lighter and uses less and less energy, an electric car stays the same weight, so a gasoline-powered car is greener in a way since you don't need to waste lugging around 'empty fuel'.
Doesn't matter if the charging power is from a renewable source, but if it's from some coal or diesel powered plant it actually does.
Actually, power plants are more efficient at extracting energy from fuels (approximately 40%), so where combustion takes place actually does matter. Add to that cleaner centralized alternatives that are being considered, like air/solar or other alternatives being explored.
What Nissan isn't telling you is that the 3 phase charger that can charge the Leaf in 30 minutes costs about $45,000, otherwise it will take 8-16 hours to charge your car. The Volt is always ready to go because of the backup engine, and is the practical transition car until electric or hydrogen infrastructure can be built out.
As MPG describes the number of miles travelled for every gallon of fuel used, shouldn't the MPG rating be infinite, due to the fact that a fully electric vehicle uses '0' gallons of fuel resulting in a division by zero?
Conversely, using the 'metric' system of reporting, i.e. the number of litres of fuel used per 100kms of travel, the answer here would be 'zero' as no fuel is used.
Does any of this make sense or am I talking foolishness?
@JustinM: bike. i'll wait for the check in the mail.
In the US we are accustomed to the MPG rating. I find the gallon per 100 miles a much easier way to gauge actual costs. Likewise, a kWh (or watt-hour) per 100 miles figure would be an easy way to calculate potential costs (since most electric bills come with the kWh cost.)
(I agree with Dan, above, that the battery pack replacement/recycling is a huge hidden cost in electrics. Oh, and never mind that no battery runs well in the cold or heat. Have fun driving your electric car in Minnesota in the winter or Phoenix in the summer.)
If you ask me, electric cars should have a "miles per charge" rating instead. Combination gas/electric cars should have three ratings: one for the electric in "miles per charge" and one for the gas engine in MPG and then a final "combined equivalent".
Actually in Canada we use litres per 100 kilometres as our rating system. I think it is easier to understand "If I drive 100km, I will consume x litres". I guess that it's possible to reverse the MPG used in the US to a GP100mi.
So 367 MPG = 100/367 roughly 100 miles per quarter gallon :-)
is it just me or is everyone forgetting how long it takes to charge a battery? sure, miles per charge would be nice to know. but so would something like : you get X miles for X hours of charge. (IMO using mpg for an electric car is really stupid)
Why don't they quote mileage in cents per mile based on average electricity costs?