Rayna Handelman is Nissan's point person on EV infrastructure
For the foreseeable future, the only truly affordable electric cars are likely to be those that contain relatively small batteries and have correspondingly short ranges. Making those kinds of cars appealing to a mass audience will require that people be able to easily charge those cars anywhere and everywhere in order to make up for the short range. Helping to make that infrastructure a reality is the job of Rayna Handelman. Handelman is Nissan's Global Electric Vehicle Coordinator, a role in which she works with government agencies to promote the development of charging infrastructure. This will be especially necessary for commuters and people who live in apartments where they don't have a garage to plug in the car. Most recently, Handelman has been in Australia where Nissan hopes to launch its new EV sometime after 2010. Handelman has worked in the auto industry for 25 years including a stint at GM. Handelman acknowledges that its hard to say how much progress EVs will make in the marketplace over the next decade. Cost will be the biggest hurdle, with the battery for the Nissan EV running somewhere be $5,000 and $10,000.
[Source: Drive.com.au]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
gorr 8:02PM (11/03/2008)
I think that manufacturers are following the hard path to get out of the energy price crisis. They lost billions in hydrogen researchs for nothing at all except honda that maybe will cash in 2% of their expences with some leasing of their clarity. Now battery cars that are completely different from their actual car architecture will costs many many billions before been put on sale and the success depend of the price of gas when the time come and anyway one battery car sale will mean one less sale of ice car because if battery car is a success it will be because the whole market is shrinking. No one will buy a battery car because it's faster and better and more practical, they will buy just if petrol is too high priced.
If they had adopted natural gas option instead, it will cost them 20x less money for investment because they change 5% of the car. With battery they change 75% of the car. If you buy a natural gas car you change 1% of your habits and everything stay the same price except the fuel cost 50% less and pollute 800% less.
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Andy 10:48PM (11/03/2008)
If I could get a good $10K battery for my conversion I'd bite someones hand off.
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Rich 9:31AM (11/04/2008)
It seems odd that it's taking so long to get commercially available EV's. There are plenty of backyard mechanics who have built very usable EV's on a shoe string budget. Given the fact that an electric drive train is much more simple than the complicated combustion / emissions system on todays cars, one would think that an intern should be able to come up with an EV design.
I know that there is a higher level of engineering necessary to productize an EV, but this is just silly.
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