Nissan Leaf : Battery lasts 12 years longer than the car itself
The average period a car is used is about 10 years, but the battery pack of an electric vehicle could last up to 22 years, which is no less than 12 years more than the car it was first used in.
This information was made public by Francisco Carranza, managing director of Renault-Nissan Energy Services and published by Automotive News recently.
Since its first launch in 2011, more than 400,000 Nissan Leaf have been sold throughout Europe, so Nissan has a lot of data concerning battery degradation and wear. Analysis of those data have shown that the battery packs have a much higher life expectancy than the cars they were put in, which means that they could get a “second life” after the car itself has been recycled.
Profitability
Economically speaking, the re-use of EV-car batteries is an interesting way of making the electric car-production profitable for car makers, since EV’s need less servicing than cars with internal combustion engines and put pressure on the after sales department’s profitability. If the recycled batteries can be re-used the business model could be very interesting for the car makers.
Re-use of car battery packs
Today already, different projects based on used car battery packs are put in place. Audi, for example, has opened Germany’s largest multifunctional power storage facility at the EUREF campus in Berlin, totalling 1,9 MWH of capacity and made of used lithium-ion batteries coming from test cars used by the brand.
Nissan itself has an even bigger facility in The Netherlands. Last year, a 3 MWH storage facility has been opened in the Amsterdam ArenA, to be used as an energy buffer for the stadium complex, the visitors, the surrounding neighbourhood and the electricity grid. The equivalent of 148 Leaf-batteries is used to store the energy that is produced by the 4,200 solar panels on the roof of the ArenA.
Nissan also promotes solar panels and battery storage for individual households under the name Nissan Energy Solar, an initiative that can be compared to Tesla’s programme with the home battery.
The idea behind large capacity electrical power storage in used car batteries is that this electricity could be used as a back-up for the electric grid, in a bi-directional way. Excess power on the grid could than be stored in the batteries, that could put that power back onto the grid whenever needed, for example when fluctuations in solar energy power production or wind turbine energy would make it difficult to respond to the demand for electricity at peak moments.
Source: Nissan and Automotive News
Photo: Nissan Press Site
