Jump to content
  • Welcome to AutoLanka

    :action-smiley-028: We found you speeding on AutoLanka Forums without any registration! If you want the best experience, please sign in. Safe driving! 

Nissan Leaf And Future Of Electric Vehicles In Sri Lanka


zee boy

Recommended Posts

Guys,

Few questions on Leaf usage:

01) What is the cost per KM ?

I have heard its 5Rs per 1 KM, but is it true?

02) What is the average mileage you can drive in a full charge?

I have heard its around 100Km in city limit..is it true?

03) What is the life time of the battery?

04) How much will it cost to replace the battery?

05) Will electric cars survive in Sri lanka? The doubt I have is,

There is not much selection in the market at the moment and future is also not looking promising for middle class users as there is not much electric cars in the making in next couple of years..it was different for Hybrid where there were many options like hatchbacks/sedans/suv/jeep/etc were available but I do not see much variation in electric vehicles so far…

You cant make the electric vehicle trend in SL only by Nissan leaf, if there is no trend towards electric vehicles then GOV also will not be bothered to create and support the infrastructure which electric users required.

Any thoughts?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Quoting from the dailymirror article- "Power and Energy Minister Champika Ranawaka is also attempting to drive the purchase of electric cars by setting the consumer’s mind at ease, as he has set an ambitious goal of having 1 million electric cars in the country in the coming few years."-

1 million electric car is something not practical to achieve at this stage IMHO, the primary reason is people do not have a wide selection, also SL people are more in to Toyota and then Honda but both of them are not yet in to electric vehicles..

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sumanadasa is not a member of this forum. So no one here will answer stupid questions like:

03) What is the life time of the battery?

05) Will electric cars survive in Sri lanka?

and as far as I know, not a single regular forum member owns a Nissan Leaf (most of us, being car enthusiasts, drive big engined petrols or diesels)

So no one can accurately answer first two questions either.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Rumesh88 - The questions I have here is different from all the previous Leaf posts

Not quite. Your questions 1 and 2 have been discussed in those threads but as you can realize from the responses the information is not from first hand experiences. Also the things like mileage depends on subjective parameters like "the Colombo traffic". Then the cost of electricity depends to a very large extent depending on whether your supply is a domestic one or a general purpose one. In fact the cost may even differ by as much as 100% depending on whether you are on the higher end of domestic tariff of Rs. 45 a unit or on the general purpose tariff of Rs. 22.85. As for the cost of the battery, you need to ask that from the agent cos' most, if not all, Leaf cars in Sri Lanka should still be under OEM warranty and hence, the owners would not bother about the battery price at least for now. I'm afraid I have to agree with Crosswind on the remaining two questions.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Dude, you need sumanadasa to discuss about future of electric cars?

You dont need to have a PHD to predict the future of something you are aware about,all you need is some historical data and some basic mathematical skills/logic and you are there..

Are you a admin or pro member here? cause I do not normally argue with most of the admins here, what i believe is-

'Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.'

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What I personally feel is at the moment electric vehicles are burden on the head. I know a person who has bought a Leaf and uses it to frequently travel fro Banadaragama to Colombo. A full charge can sustain his planned journey however an deviations he will be in big trouble. Regarding the charging stations available in Colombo most of the stations takes around 40min for a full charge and keep in mind there's on average about 4 cars waiting to get a charge. Apart from that during thunder storms (very frequent in my area) car cannot be connected to the main grid due to the risk of lighting.

Edited by peugeot407
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Dude, you need sumanadasa to discuss about future of electric cars?

You dont need to have a PHD to predict the future of something you are aware about,all you need is some historical data and some basic mathematical skills/logic and you are there..

Are you a admin or pro member here? cause I do not normally argue with most of the admins here, what i believe is-

'Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.'

So, why the hell you came here? Go to the Ela---- and you will get the welcome you expect.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What I personally feel is at the moment electric vehicles are burden on the head. I know a person who has bought a Leaf and uses it to frequently travel fro Banadaragama to Colombo. A full charge can sustain his planned journey however an deviations he will be in big trouble. Regarding the charging stations available in Colombo most of the stations takes around 40min for a full charge and keep in mind there's on average about 4 cars waiting to get a charge. Apart from that during thunder storms (very frequent in my area) car cannot be connected to the main grid due to the risk of lighting.

Excellent point! Lightnings are not limited a particular area in the country. In fact in terms of worldwide lightning density Sri Lanka is second only to Central Africa and on the account of lightning bolts per year we are the highest. BTW Sumanadasa's services will be in demand again to determine when and where a lightning would strike :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

it was different for Hybrid where there were many options like hatchbacks/sedans/suv/jeep/etc were available but I do not see much variation in electric vehicles so far…

Might wanna look up this company called Tesla.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My friend has an Nissan Leaf.

The car looks great and works just like a hybrid in silent mode.

However charging it is such an hassle.

He sometimes has to make short trips between, and he tried to charge it for 1.30 mins, but it only could give him 5-10KM of distance, in the end we took the TUK. (he has a charge station at home, and needs to charge it for 7-8 Hours to gain 110-130KM of running power)

Additionally when we sometimes get to the charging station (Not many) there might be 2-3 cars, and we would have to wait an hour, the earliest time we got out once was when there wasn't any cars, but still took 35Mins to pump juice into it.

I think it's better to stay clear right now, Unless you rarely take your car out, and travel 10-15km a day, and you could charge it every 3-4 day's without having the hassle to keeping it always on charge.

It's like my phone, needs charging everyday in the night, and takes 2 hours, and it frequently needs juice, sometimes having an dead battery in the middle of the day is such an hassle.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We do not have historical data for electric cars of this nature in Sri Lanka. The Leaf is indeed the first electric car from a major manufacturer to be marketed directly at consumers. There were consumer electric cars before the Leaf like the Reva G-Wiz but none of them really got strong market penetration.

The key issue for the Leaf is lack of infrastructure. I do not think there are many quick charge stations available in the country, so you are reliant upon your own electricity for charging which takes quite a few hours.

So we are unable to predict the future, hence why Sumandasa's services are required. We also cannot implement infrastructure as this needs to happen at a national level either through public funding or private investors. There was talk of A*W getting into that business.

At the moment on domestic tariffs the cost of running is too high for the car to be cost effective. So that requires a change of policy by government to make it practical.

Last we do not know how well the leaf will last in the long term. Its electronics are probably not as complicated as a full hybrid but its complicated nevertheless and they have not been around long enough to see how resilient the battery is to local conditions.

So at this point Sumandasa's point of view is as good as anybodys :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The most serious problem this country has is not all that. We have a power crisis. This country barely meets its power requirements and for about 6 months every year, the government needs to buy electricity from privately run mini diesel power stations to keep our lights switched on in the night. We don't have money to build new large power plants. The last time we tried to build one, we failed miserably,

Now imagine the situation when we have 100,000 Nissan Leafs (or similar) in the country. A Nissan leaf with a 3300W charger takes all night (8 hours) to do a full charge (off Wikipedia). So lets assume a car is charged once in 4 days. 100,000 leafs x 1/4 x 3300 = 82.5MW. That's almost the capacity of Laxapana power plant - one of the biggest in the country!

When these leeches with their electric cars aggravate our power crisis and if power cuts come in, who is going to pay for it? The poor kids who use one light bulb to study for their O/Ls and A/Ls. Its a pity that the power and energy minister, who is an electrical engineer, hasnt even thought about this.

This country is not ready for electric cars. Not yet.

And don't get me started about solar net metering. Even if you cover a 10-perch land with Solar panels, you won't be able to generate enough power to charge a Leaf.

Wow.. thats some serious thinking.. I believe this is THE best post ive read about electric cars in Sri Lanka ever!

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It’s true we do not have sufficient electricity to cater all the consumers during peak hours, but generators that the CEB uses to provide the Peak demand are operated only for a few hours of the day, after the night peak, the generators which generate the peak demand shutdown until people begin to work next day. Next day again these generators need to restart which ingests quite a lot of money as a huge energy level is required for a fresh start, so I think what Champika’s plan is to introduce a new calculation and special tariff between the hours of 2200 and 0400 for charging cars so they do not need to shut down the generators every night which eventually saves lot of money for CEB.

Pros

  1. If you can get 2 electricity connections at your home then the monthly cost for home usage and vehicle charge will not exceed 4000/=Rs. (Considering you fully charge the vehicle 9 times a month and your home usage is below 140 units)
  2. Other option is if you can go for a solar system it will save around 25000/= per month (Considering my petrol cost is 18k and electricity bill is 5k per month) but again it will be an investment of at least 0.6 million.
  3. Lower maintenance cost

Cons

  1. Limited range - You can’t drive long distance
  2. Charging limitations in SL -Car cannot be charged during rainy days (half of the year in SL)
  3. Long recharging time - If you go for charging station you will need to wait in the Q for an hour or so and then charge it for 40 mins. Even if more station exposed it will be proportionally same with the higher numbers of vehicle.
  4. Lack of choice- There are very few models in the market for next few years.
  5. You can’t use the vehicle in urgent situation if the battery is in lower end
  6. Replacement battery packs can be costly
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It’s true we do not have sufficient electricity to cater all the consumers during peak hours, but generators that the CEB uses to provide the Peak demand are operated only for a few hours of the day, after the night peak, the generators which generate the peak demand shutdown until people begin to work next day. Next day again these generators need to restart which ingests quite a lot of money as a huge energy level is required for a fresh start, so I think what Champika’s plan is to introduce a new calculation and special tariff between the hours of 2200 and 0400 for charging cars so they do not need to shut down the generators every night which eventually saves lot of money for CEB.

Pros

  1. If you can get 2 electricity connections at your home then the monthly cost for home usage and vehicle charge will not exceed 4000/=Rs. (Considering you fully charge the vehicle 9 times a month and your home usage is below 140 units)
  2. Other option is if you can go for a solar system it will save around 25000/= per month (Considering my petrol cost is 18k and electricity bill is 5k per month) but again it will be an investment of at least 0.6 million.
  3. Lower maintenance cost

Cons

  1. Limited range - You can’t drive long distance
  2. Charging limitations in SL -Car cannot be charged during rainy days (half of the year in SL)
  3. Long recharging time - If you go for charging station you will need to wait in the Q for an hour or so and then charge it for 40 mins. Even if more station exposed it will be proportionally same with the higher numbers of vehicle.
  4. Lack of choice- There are very few models in the market for next few years.
  5. You can’t use the vehicle in urgent situation if the battery is in lower end
  6. Replacement battery packs can be costly

You are right about the peak demand and CEB wanting to keep it flat as far as practically possible. However, you are not allowed to get two connections (ie each with different tariff) to your home. This is because the domestic tariff is heavily subsidized at the lower end of usage (below 30 units) and heavily penalized at the upper end (above 180 units). With all these complications I do not believe SL is ready for EVs yet.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.


AutoLanka Cars For Sale

Post Your Ad Free [Click Here]



×
×
  • Create New...