“Nissan and GE have completed their investigation into the instances of Nissan LEAFs experiencing on-board charging (OBC) issues when using certain EV chargers. Nissan has traced the root cause of the issue to the LEAFs OBC software that can allow damage to occur to its OBC components while using certain chargers and in certain instances, such as when a brief under voltage or blackout condition occurs. Nissan is working to address this issue as quickly as possible, and in the meantime is advising customers to avoid charging during times when brownouts or momentary power dips may be likely, such as during electrical storms or high power usage on the grid.”
h/t Xiat
Obviously, the answer is for each Leaf owner to buy a 10kW gasoline-powered generator to use exclusively for charging the battery, thus eliminating the risk of the charger being glitched by unreliable grid power.
Every time I think, what the hell, I’ll check this blog again, one more time, maybe there’s something intelligent, I am disappointed.
gordinkneehill-
Better yet, they could just put the generator in the trunk, wire it into the car’s motor, to make the world’s first electric car with unlimited range!
Owning a plug-in EV that you can’t plug-in is akin to seeking intelligent discourse when you lack intelligence…disappointing for sure.
Hummmmmm….small c and gord….one teeny problem.I know you know what it is,but for idjits like anon…what do they use to power this generator? Gas? Oh wait. Maybe it’s that new fangled,greenie fuel….pixie dust and unicorn farts,provided by The Zero and his economy,seeing as nobody else except him and gubermint can do it!
@anon- And we regular readers of SDA find something unintelligent whenever you show up to comment, which is also greatly disappointing, odd coincidence isn’t it?
The Electric car is insane for canada’s weather because we need power for the Heaters in the Winter along with ample of jucie in a snow storm when we spin out wheels for 15 minutes .
Plus we have the trafic jams to eat up power to suck the battery dry with no hope of a solar powered charge while sitting still.
Imagine being straded on the shoulder in snow and vene when someone tows you out your car power is DEAD, at least with gas the Tow truck can bring a canister of fuel to get you to s gas station.
The Government makes monet selling Power , and they will NEVER allow cheap power for gasless cars when they alos have that gas-tax monkey on their back to fund Welfare and health care.
Justthinkin – you spoiled the surprise!
It is understandable that these early electric cars are having some issues. No doubt internal combustion engines had similar development issues.
The problem is that unlike when IC engines were becoming commercialized, the electric car has some very fierce – currently overwhelming – competition namely IC powered cars that have power trains that have over a century of commercial development behind them.
Nobody wants those ugly pug nosed,cars with no power. How pathetic have consumers become when they do not demand sleek, powerful, beautiful chrome plated vehicles with fine grained leather seats, interior lights in all ashtrays, in all corners and on the dash (good interior lights not crappy loud bare bulbs), lots of leg room, lots of trunk space, big gorgeous windows, solid doors that close with quiet authority; a vehicle that thunders with power when the driver steps on the gas and purrs when idle or in traffic…when a person drives such a dream and then dips into the 40,000 dollar tin cans that pass for transportation today; that person must shake his/her head and wondered how stupid the consumer has become.
‘Build a vehicle that people like and they will buy’…paraphrased from Field of Dreams.
There is only one major problem with electric cars: The Energy Density of batteries stinks.
Unless we have a revolution in that world that’s the issue in a nutshell.
Once a gas tank sized battery deliveries the energy density of gasoline all will be well.
that being said:
I’d buy one of the hybrids ( aka Prius) if I could get a 20AMP 120V AC plug (or three) on one. That when when I lose power at home I can start my car on close to idle and power up a couple of circuits. I mean heck, it’s got the genset, it’s got a big battery to help even things out, all it needs is a decent DC to AC sine wave generator and you have instant on-demand power from the fuel efficient , environmentally well designed, quiet unit. The gas is always fresh. Maintenance is already scheduled.
Of course some ass would wire the car into the house circuit and forget to switch over the interlock to the grid and you can just see the Prius explode now when the grid power came back on. I’ve seen the you tube of what happens to 10 kw genset and the grid fight it out. ( hint :the genset lost)
The world of theory has yet to met the real world.. The Loading/unloading effects of Smart Meters will smoke most devices…Loading Spikes happen every day (damage can occur), but we just don’t connect the dots…The REAL Grid is not a nice pure sine wave with leading and lagging current….
Let the greenies learn by paying the troll for playing in the stupid Sand box
I just want better Golf Cart Batteries…
I like the idea of electric cars. I think they’ll be commonplace in about 10 years. Hybrids were pretty shaky too at first, but the technology works really well now… no reason that the same thing won’t happen with electric.
“Hybrids were pretty shaky too at first, but the technology works really well now… no reason that the same thing won’t happen with electric.”
~mister curious
For the sake of argument I’ll stipulate that hybrid technology is OK.
That said, there IS a reason electric won’t work well.
Fred2 @ 3:57 PM already explained the reason.
@mister curious at 4:35pm
People were probably saying the same thing about technology improving for the Stanley Steamer and the electric cars back in 1912.
mistercurious, the problem with electric cars is primarily in battery life, capacity and charging. For reasons of basic physics, there’s no solving any of them, ever.
“…avoid charging during times when brownouts or momentary power dips may be likely, such as during electrical storms or high power usage on the grid.”
Or in Ontario, when the wind drops a bit.
I actually saw a Chevy Volt when I was in Boston. Going down the highway at 65mph, it looked like every other little wee Chevy Cavalier. It was being brutally tailgated by a busted old pickup truck because its wheezy little hybrid Mickey Mouse watch motor couldn’t keep up with the traffic. Or possibly the idiot driving it was trying to Save The Planet by driving slow. Genius!
“…is advising customers to avoid charging during times when brownouts or momentary power dips may be likely, such as during electrical storms or high power usage on the grid.”
It is my experience in Regina, that the power distribution is quite “dirty”, there are frequent power dips that mess up electrical components. Also, If my house is any indication of the condition of the housing stock in Regina, there would have to be a massive electrical renovation in order to charge these cars. It is a bad assumption that magic, pure, pristine, never varying electricity comes out of outlets, and it looks like the engineers forgot this.
It’s probably a good thing that cars like the Volt and Leaf sell in such small numbers, since the same people who want us driving them are happily destroying our power generating capacity:
http://dailycaller.com/2012/07/28/record-number-of-coal-fired-generators-to-be-shut-down-in-2012/
I drive about 50 kmh. a day.
An electric car would be dandy. Unless.I wanted to go across town after work,or visit a buddy,or got stuck in a traffic jam,or just about did anything that varied from my routine.
In the winter,…..
I just finished First Aid training.
One instruction I received was that when responding to an accident involving an electric car, that before going to help, I was to disconnect the battery, even if it means making the injured person wait for first aid.
Make of that as you will.
I’ve only seen one chevy volt ever. It was parked (and plugged in)in the drive way of a $750000 house around the corner from where i lived in Ontario. Witkh the ridiculously high cost of electricity in Ontario i somehow doubt there will be many middle class, or lower, people wanting to fork over $40000 for a POS greentard car that they can’t afford to plug in for 12 hours. And when its fully charged they will still only get 40 kms of range before they run out of power and have to switch to gas power. Simple economics, and the liberal tendency to disrupt and sabotage the energy sector, makes these cars unaffordable and unrealistic.
An electric car with a battery the size of a gas
tank with equivalent energy density to gasoline
could also be called an electric bomb.
.