With all this talk about banning ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) cars and such, it’s easy to forget that since the goal is CO reduction, there’s other ways to make serious progress on that front. And one of the more impressive bits of ICE news is that Nissan announced on Friday that its engineers are able to achieve a 50% thermal efficiency with a future iteration of its new e-Power hybrid system that has just gone into production in Japan in December, which already claims to be up to 40% efficient. That’s already a superb number, but 50% is astounding, roughly equal to the most efficient giant diesel engines powering large ships.
How is this possible?
All the exact technical details were not provided, but it’s pretty easy to work out the basic aspects. The key element is that the e-Power system is a serial hybrid, which means the gas engine only ever runs to provide power to the generator, as propulsion is 100% electric. Operating as a generator allows the engine to be set up undoubtedly to run at one fixed speed, allowing the induction/combustion process and related elements to be highly optimized for that particular speed.
“It took 50 years to increase thermal efficiency (of conventional engines) from 30 percent to 40 percent,” Hirai said.
Nissan has already received over 20,000 orders for its Note e-Power in Japan.
And in Europe, Nissan is introducing the new Qashqai CUV only with e-Power, without a plug-in variant because its stellar efficiency allows it to meet the EU’s very strict CO regulations. Adding the additional battery capacity for plug-in operation would increase costs beyond what will be of greatest benefit to the consumer, according to Nissan.
In Europe, the very restrictive CO regulations have forced manufacturers to either build and sell EVs or plug-in hybrids, although Toyota is still selling plenty of its non plug-in parallel hybrids, at least for now. Nissan will also be selling its new Ariya EV crossover soon.
No word yet on when the 50% efficiency version of e-Power arrives as well as plans for e-Power in the US.
It’s amazing how a little government intervention or rule setting has all of a sudden made the seemingly impossible happen yet again. Half a decade ago the continent was pretty much stagnant and behind in terms of Hybrid and EV tech, now magically every manufacturer is debuting and/or announcing numerous contenders. Nissan’s not a European company (well, besides Renault of course), but where there’s a market, there’ll be a producer.
“a little”?
Just enough for the greater good of an enlightened society in the long term. Sometimes that ends up affecting some individuals negatively in the short term.
It does seem to work this way more or less every time. When a new or stricter automotive regulation comes into force there are sometimes early stumbles and staggers as industry figures out how to comply cost-effectively (i.e., well and affordably at the same time), but the long-run net result is usually a substantially better car. Today’s cars put out a tiny fraction of older models’ toxic pollution (and they immediately start and run smoothly in any weather) because of emissions regulations that said, “Your cars shall be at least [specification] clean or else you may not offer them for sale”. That’s just one of numerous historical examples, and this news from Nissan strikes me as being in a similar vein.
There’s a term for it: “technology forcing”. Pretty good explainer (and contrast with the opposite “technology following” regulatory strategy) here.
In another sphere, namely COVID, “a little government intervention” has actually been a lot of research grant funding and the result is multiple vaccines based on a new technologies in 12 months, a quite remarkable (and thankful) situation.
Engineers and scientists rise to challenges, and devise solutions. Just beware, getting there may have a cost
As Soichiro Honda once said “when new regulations are imposed, we bring 50 engineers and GM brings 50 lawyers”.
So it sounds more or less like how the Chevy Volt worked when it was running on the ICE, if I understand correctly. Which makes me wonder if a car with the e-Power system could drive short distances on battery power alone, like the Volt.
I’m speculating here, but some overall vehicle efficiency may be achievable without the weight of a large battery (a small battery is still presumably needed to store some energy and buffer supply/demand). Admittedly this doesn’t provide the means to operate for any distance electric-only, which of course has lots of other benefits, especially if trips are short and charging is from clean or renewable energy sources. But electric motor torque and 50% thermal efficiency from the generator, plus presumably state-of-the-art volumetric efficiency and emissions controls, sounds like a pretty combo to me. The problem with regulatory restrictions on ICE powerplants is of course that they control the means, not the end, which is CO emissions reduction and perhaps reduced dependence on petroleum which has it’s own environmental and sociopolitical impacts.
The battery is quite small, at 1.57 kWh so its pure electric range is quite limited, but I can’t find a number. That’s twice the capacity of the Prius, so some limited city driving, maybe a couple of miles. The Volt had a much larger battery.
This Nissan system should be seen as an analogue of the traditional hybrids, like Toyota’s.
This always seemed like a logical solution to the range anxious buyers and rural areas. Works well for locomotives.
Locomotives have no battery, so it’s not quite the same. They are diesel-electric; this is a classic serial hybrid, where the electric motor gets its juice from the battery, which is replenished as needed fro the genset.
Mazda have been putting wizard-hats (i.e., spending money) on their engineers along this line, as well, to come up with what looks like a super extra nifty solution described here and here, and explained by a dude at a whiteboard here.
The first “here” you linked, from Mazda.com, sure pulled the right strings: torque of a turbo diesel, revs like a gasoline engine, beautiful and bountiful earth, etc. the page may be titled “We are Engineers” but they sure are wearing good marketing hats as well as wizard hats … and pocket protectors. And, it mentioned the availability of manual transmissions 😀
Still not 40 or 50% efficient. Maybe getting close to 40%. The ability to run in a narrow rpm range is the key to optimizing ICE efficiency.
This is excellent progress. It would take decades to convert the various US power grids to non-thermal generation. This technology takes the pressure off.
Since EVs are invariably charged at night (with rare exceptions), the current grid has plenty of capacity to handle a very large number of EVs. In fact, they’re thrilled at the prospect, as night time electric use plummets, making it more difficult to manage the grid.
My father spent the first thirty-five years of his career working first in powerhouses and then as area dispatcher. I learned a lot about electricity from him.
In Canada, peak load is on winter nights so there is plenty of excess capacity to cover any eventuality. When this is not needed, it’s exported to the USA. Conversely, the USA has its peaks in the summer due to air-conditioning. Commercial customers such as pulp mills and smelters dwarf any of them.
The point here is there is plenty of capacity in the system if the grid is up to a reasonable standard. When compared to the electric home heating that is common in Canada, a 50 kw charge isn’t going to put a lot of stress on the system. The same could be said about charging an EV in Arizona. The 50 kw that charged the car would be dwarfed by a/c bills.
This is doubly true in places like Ontario, with large nuclear capacity. A nuke plant runs full blast, or any thermal plant for that matter. That means there is always plenty of power available after 11:00 PM or so. Time of use billing encourages charging late at night.
Canada still has huge hydro power and Hydro Quebec supplies something like 20% of the power to New England and even more to New York. They have huge capacity for any US utility wanting to buy. The cost of generation in Quebec is C$0.02 kw/h. Pretty cheap green power. Where I live in British Columbia a new dam is being built to all for future EV capacity.
When renewables like wind and solar are added into the grid, other methods can be held in reserve.
Economies have a way of changing quickly if there is a better idea. The switch from horses to cars comes to mind.
The problem is electricity distribution to where they are mostly needed and from where they are abundantly generated. Case in point: Germany and “Energiewende” (Energy Change project passed in 2000).
Germany has large wind farms in the north where they are most useful due to the perpetually windy condition. However, the wind farms aren’t as abundant in the south as they are in the north. So, sending the electricity from north to south should be no-brainer, right? Not so easy. That requires the significant investments in building the high-voltage lines and the huge cable towers, connecting the north and south. What’s wrong with that?
The reason is surprisingly powerful NIMBY attitude amongst the Germans: something that the green politicians and movement don’t always factor that in their idealised goal of “clean energy”. Germans don’t want to see the massive towers, sticking out like the sore thumbs, ruining their views from their homes. Same with the windmills. Germans don’t want to put up with construction din and hassle for a few years or so. Germans don’t want billions of euros earmarked for the large-scale projects that have seen the cost escalation more than twofolds (Berlin-Brandburg International Airport, high-speed train route upgrade and reconstruction of Stuttgart central train station in Baden-Württemberg, Hamburg Philharmonie, etc.). They don’t trust the politicians to keep the cost down…
Germans have discovered how useful the laws can be in their favour. The laws make it harder and lengthier for the government to clear the land for large-scale public projects. For instance, planning and building a new Autobahn route can take twenty to thirty years from the idea to the completion. Building a new high-speed train route between Munich and Berlin took about 25 years. That is something the green movement doesn’t always anticipate or have patience.
The people who live in the Alps regions don’t want the wind farms near the mountains where they are very useful because they ruin the gorgeous view. Same with the solar panels, too, where they are dependent on the weather condition: giving up the farmable or grazing land for the solar panel arrays isn’t good for the sustainable food production.
The biggest issue with wind farms in the south is inconsistent wind pattern. Sometimes, the wind isn’t strong enough to make them useful most of the time. It’s really bad during the colder days when the windmills don’t spin much, and the ice sheets accumulate on the blades. When that happens, the areas surrounding the windmills must be cordoned off in case the ice sheets slide off and fall down. Sometimes, the windmill suddenly spins, tossing the ice sheets off to where they cause damage. That happens too often…
With strong push from the green movement to shut down the nuclear and clean coal power plants in the south, south Germany ends up importing the electricity from France, which is generated by the nuclear power plants (!), and from Switzerland.
What the “Energiewende” planners during the late 1990s did not anticipate how the life would be in 2020 and beyond. The planners did not factor in their planning the massive transformation of technology and lifestyle down the road and incorporate them in the “Energiewende” accordingly. For instance, the planners did not anticipate the explosive growth of affordable mobile phones, smartphones, tablets, smart watches, notebook computers, printers, DSL modems, WLAN routers, etc. That includes installing more cellular towers that consume lot of electricity to keep up with the demand.
Another thing was the broadcasting licence fee reform in 2010. In the past, the fee was for each TV set and radio, which was quite expensive for Germans. After the reform, the flat-rate fee was for each household, regardless of how many TV sets and radios the household has. That led to Germans buying more than one TV set and installing them in their homes (and “Schrergarten” huts, too).
To put more strain on the electricity production and distribution is the critical mass of electric vehicles already reached. The planners didn’t consider the popular electric scooters and bicycles as well.
As a German living in Munich in the last fifteen years, I don’t appreciate the “armchair advocates and proponents” pointing at Germany and claiming that country as the “wonder child” for the “clean energy” movement. They don’t always consider the higher cost that Germans, especially in the south, have to pay for “clean energy”.
I get frustrated every time I get the letter from SWM (city utility company in Munich) about the annual fee increase along with long and flaccid explanations, regarding the continued investments in “clean energy” projects. One of ridiculous explanations was installation of charging points for EV, and the cost comes from our pockets regardless of whether we own EV or not.
The question is: how much longer must we endure the cost? It feels like we don’t have choices or alternatives about the electricity production and distribution.
Utilities do want to buy, but not easy to connect. Existing transmission is congested in the Pac NW and it’s damn near impossible to build transmission- even for a Federal agency like BPA whom can subvert state siting and permitting regs.
Well, maybe not in Texas. At least not quite right now.
C’mon, Paul. Even this guy says we’ll need to double our grid output to power EVs:
Die meisten Leute werden zu Hause laden, über Nacht. Das funktioniert gut, heute schon. Aber nicht jeder kann das. Deshalb braucht man Supercharging Stations, auf dem Weg, bei der Arbeit. Wir werden doppelt so viel Strom wie heute brauchen.
Elon Musk, Bild, Dec 2020
He says it’s fine currently. You left out the part where he said it would be needed two decades from now.
If he is correct, what is stopping that from happening? I’d guess that within the next twenty years I would install a solar system that would completely fulfill my own electric needs including the power needed for my EV, especially if for whatever reason the public utility that seems to have so much power that they give it away for dirt cheap around here seems to have trouble with supply. That takes one person off the map, or stated another way doubles the available power to my neighbor. If there is demand, there will be supply, providing/selling electricity is a profit center for utility companies.
To translate for the non-German speakers, here’s the quote Roader posted:
“Most people charge at home, overnight. That works well, already today. But not everyone can do that. Thus we need Supercharging stations, on people’s routes, at work. We will need twice as much electricity as we do today.”
It’s easy to generate but difficult to move, regionally. People don’t like transmission, no matter how proven it is or how safely it’s operated.
I’ve been working on permitting a 300-mile 500kv, line that would connect the Pac NW and Mtn West, since before this site was created!
Idaneck, I’m just a casual observer of powergrid performance but I stumbled upon The U.S. Energy Information Administration’s Hourly Electric Grid Monitor and find it fascinating. The graphs can be modified for different regions, time periods, and other parameters. Using he link below I created one of my grid, the Northwest region electricity generation by power source for the past year:
https://www.eia(dot)gov/beta/electricity/gridmonitor/expanded-view/electric_overview/regional/REG-NW/GenerationByEnergySource-9/edit
Hydro is the largest contributor and is neat in that it can be quickly ramped up/down, but coal and natgas had to be cranked up in the Fall, after dams were getting low. (I presume…again, I’m a grid neophyte.) Wind can and did provide lots of power at times, even exceeding coal once or twice during the year.
Yep, that’s our experience. Hydro is a great resource and wind and solar (with battery) will slowly fill in the gaps as coal and nat gas come off line in the coming decades. I’d like to see some nuclear as well…lots of regulatory challenges.
My employer, which the state of Idaho is named after, has done a great job balancing energy resources and staying relatively clean. But there is still a need to balance among the utilities and providers in the general region.
I don’t envy people in your position. You’re caught between the wants and needs of consumers, providers, and regulators. Satisfying all three must at times be a Sisyphean task.
Thanks. We put the utility in futility!
I’ve always heeded the advice not to charge things at night, while you are asleep, in case they catch fire – be they mobile phones, indoor helicopters, electric razors etc. I gather the same advice applies to certain electric cars….
So what kind of fuel? Diesel? Non-ethanol gas? CNG? Which one has the best emissions and BTU per gallon? Flex fuel capability?
I wonder if the next step would be turbines (like the Chrysler Turbine Car or the old turbo-electric drive used on ships) driving the power generator?
Marc, small turbines are not a lot cheaper than large turbines and as they decrease in size, they decrease in efficiency. They scale up well, but not down. It is extremely unlikely to be traditional common rail diesel. Maybe the newer combustion technologies, or just high compression gasoline.
I guess you didn’t read it carefully, as I specifically used the word “gas”.
Non-ethanol gas?That would violate federal standards. CNG? Why? Where you going to fill it? Diesel? Too expensive to make “clean”. Turbines? Not.
I recall some trials (Audi?) with a Wankel engine, and Jaguar did so some work using diesel powered turbines, and indeed IIRC Tata bought a turbine business, in a series hybrid
I seem to recall having read, somewhat recently, that Mazda was working on a similar idea, using a revival of the Wankel rotary engine. The gist of the article was that all the old foibles of the Wankel rotary disappear when they are designed to run in a very narrow rev range.
I recall when the EU first proposed the 100g/km standard. As per usual, the auto makers said it was impossible but if it meant they couldn’t sell cars, the made it work. Funny that.
Pretty much every improvement we’ve seen in cars is due to legislation. If it weren’t regulated, we’d still be driving in iron block V-8’s with drum brakes, with seatbelts optional. I remember the hysterics that the auto makers put on over emission regulations, airbags or anything else for that matter.
Hydrocarbons won’t go away in a decade. We’ll see a slow phase in. Where I live, anyway, hybrids are common and EVs becoming so but the ICE is still going to be with us for a while. It will be gone in Europe first. People there are serious about the environment. It’s a small place with a lot of people.
Doesn’t the latest Honda CR-V run a similar system, with the ICE not actually connecting with the wheels ?