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Nichicon Corporation announces the latest in its lineup of alternative energy products with the introduction of the world’s smallest and lightest quick chargers for electric vehicle charging. Nichicon has developed advanced technology which utilizes standardization of the main components in order to achieve 50% space and 66% weight savings compared to the existing model while still meeting the CHAdeMO standards.
...The presidency of CHAdeMO was in the hands of Tsunehisa Katsumata, a former TEPCO President who is still chairman of TEPCO and who holds the dubious title of Chairman of TEPCO’s Corporate Ethics Committee. Someone pulled the plug on Katsumata. In a terse statement, TEPCO announced that Katsumata will resign “in order to focus on the restoration efforts connected to the nuclear accident at Fukushima 1 nuclear power plant.” (Rub it in, boys.) The CHAdeMO helm will be taken by Toshiyuki Shiga, COO of Nissan and Chairman of Japan’s influential auto manufacturers association JAMA. Shiga’s company probably is the largest customer of CHAdeMO plugs...
YOKOHAMA, Japan - September 12, 2011 - Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. today revealed its new quick charger to the public and announced plans for this proprietary technology to go on sale in November 2011 at Nissan parts companies throughout Japan...
Competitive pricing
Thanks to the adoption of new electric circuit technology and by harnessing technology used in Nissan manufacturing and R&D, the new unit features a simple and efficient design that enables a low price...
According to an emailed statement by Nissan, “the newly-developed quick charging unit retains the high performance of the current quick charger manufactured by Nissan,” but will “take up less space and enable easier installation.” A final price is not set. However, Nissan says that the unit will “cost significantly less than one million yen,” and “the base specification unit will cost only below one half the price of the current unit.” That would be around $8.500 – in Japan, including tax.
The U.S. and Europe will get the charger at some point. Given high enough quantities, the price can drop considerably . A DC welder with similar ratings can be had for less that $1,000.
Palmer claims that Nissan's in-house quick-charger – when it launches in a couple of years – could take the industry by storm at a price of $3,000 to $4,000, down from the $40,000 that most quick-charge stations sell for today. At that sub-$4,000 price point, Palmer says Nissan's quick-charge unit could change the plug-in vehicle paradigm completely. The just-announced sub-$10,000 quick charger is a good start.
Nissan VP: Electric vehicle infrastructure is not as simple as
Sub-$4,000 will be huge.
...ROLLE, Switzerland (20 September, 2011) - Nissan has teamed up with leading European utility and electrical vehicle supply equipment companies to speed development of cheaper, smaller, quick chargers for electric vehicle batteries, and accelerate the installation of publicly-available Quick Charge (QC) points across Europe.
This agreement between Nissan, Circutor, DBT, Efacec, Endesa and Siemens is expected to result in a dramatic reduction in the price of the units- by over half to under €10K- paving the way for businesses such as service stations, car park operators and retail outlets to install quick chargers and run them profitably as a commercial enterprise. This will mean Nissan LEAF drivers, and other quick charge enabled vehicles, could use their car for longer journeys and recharge the car's battery to 80% capacity in less that half an hour.
As a result, it is expected that there will now be thousands of QCs across Europe by the end of 2012, and tens of thousands by 2015. This infrastructure will open up Nissan LEAF ownership to a whole new spectrum of buyers who occasionally need to do longer journeys...
Compliant with charging policies of European countries, the QCs are also AC quick charge ready to support the arrival of AC quick charging cars.
...Ecotality, the E.V. infrastructure company, would begin next month rolling out roughly 200 fast-charge units across California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Texas, Tennessee and Washington, D.C. The units feed 480 volts into a battery pack, giving cars like the Nissan Leaf an 80-percent charge level in less than 30 minutes...
(Funny that they mention "for Leaf only", then show a picture of an i-MiEV...)[/I]
The trick is that the Nissan E.V. is the only mass-produced plug-in vehicle on the North American market that can accept the charge, because it is the only plug-in vehicle that currently conforms to an esoteric standard called Chademo.