Here's a review from the Toronto Star on wheels.ca:

http://www.wheels.ca/article/28497

The author states (last paragraph) that Nissan claims the battery range can do 25KM which is over 15 miles. That must be all downhill.

I suspect the decimal point was lost. Try a range of 2.5 KM or 1.5 miles.

Now if I'm coasting down from the mountains, 25KM sounds possible.

I agree. I'm only able to go just about 2 miles at the MOST before my battery is completely drained and the engine kicks in. Of course, I also can never get the battery to fully charge either, no matter what I do.

DITTO! The closest I come to a full charge is after a VERY long down hill run.

Tom
San Diego, California
2007 Nissan Altima Hybrid
Radiant Silver - Black Leather
Technology Package
Purchased 5/26/2007

There's a link for the author on wheels.ca so I sent an email to Jil McIntosh.

Her reply:

Thanks for writing!

They told me 25 km, not 2.5. I would imagine that a full 25 km would have to be with the battery pack fully charged. I did drive it quite a bit solely on the battery, but I didn't get that far.

Jil

If the Nissan system is HSD (like the current (3rd) gen Prius), then a fully charged battery is a no-no...unless you like a shorter battery life. Also a fully depleted battery is bad...that's where the computer(s) come in to save our butts and NOT do the full charge/discharge. It keeps the charge between 40-80% in the Prius HSD. I suspect the Nissan is the similar. Finally a smart car that knows better than us humans!

'04 Seaside Pearl #7. Fumoto oil drain, mudflaps, rear bumper scuff protector & rear warn system, compass mirror, EV mode button, 8" subwoofer in right rear cubby & 6" subs under seats, power lumbar in the front seats, Coastaletech hitch w/ Aspen bike/snowboard rack. iPod2car, 2 amps, Alpine component speakers, and DVD video, solid 47 MPG @ 70000 miles.

Though this 40%-80% (or 30%-70%) is true, I think the battery charge
indicator just displays this limited range. So a 80% charge is actually
shown as full charge by the charge meter and a 40% charge is shown as
zero charge.

Thus there is no reason to not show 100% charge in the charge meter.

25 km (16 miles) on this limited capacity battery is impossible on flat road.
The battery capacity is of the order of 1.6 kWh. So less than 1 KwH
is available from full charge. A 3500 lb car cannot run 16 miles
on a flat road on just 1KWh of energy at 20-30 miles per hour.

The rule of the thumb is 2 -3 miles per KWH at those speeds for this
size car.

If what Nissan Canada told the reporter is true - might have been some misunderstanding there - then there might be some way this could be accomplished. The only way I can think of is if the entire 25 km run was on a downgrade. Then the ability to keep the vehicle in the EV mode is more a function of the computer needing to start the engine to keep the coolant and/or the emission system up to temperature than the SOC in the battery. Going downgrade the whole way would probably actually increase the battery charge, if needed, through regenerative braking. Doing the math, if a car were going the fastest speed in could in the EV mode - about 42mph - then it would take about 22 minutes to go about 25km. Maybe with a fairly warm ambient outside temperature the engine could stay in the EV mode for that long before needing to start again - but this wouldn't really be about how far the battery could drive the car.

Edit - thinking some more about it, the entire run wouldn't have to be all downhill - just enough of it to keep the battery SOC high enough to make up for level areas or mild upgrades.

I think the scientific response to this is "No freaking way!"

I play "Let's drive EV to the grocery store" and it is tough to get half a mile in pure EV. I don't think we've ever gone over a mile and a half tops.

I'm always amazed at how things change between what is possible on paper and in the real world.

My guess is that it was meant to say 1.5 mi or 2.5 km, not 15/25. I can see how this could happen...Engineers talk to PR people who then talk to News people, possibly not in their native languages, a little dot gets lost in translation or someone's notes, and poof! We have a perptual motion machine!