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Nissan Hopes to Cash In on Electric Batteries

nissan-leafNissan hopes to accelerate the production of electric batteries even without government support, offering a timeline of three years before the cost-cutting effort showed results noticeable to auto buyers.

However, Nissan and Renault plan to offer its new electric battery technology in countries that have state subsidies available for consumers.

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“We have the loans, we have the agreements with different governments and we are engaging 500,000 batteries,” according to Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn. “I will not sell an electric car that is 25 percent more expensive than a gasoline powered one.”

Although Nissan would like to reach the 500K platform, it’s unknown when the company expects to be able to do so.

In the future, technological improvements and better agreements with governments will allow the electric batteries to become available for a lower price. Nissan hopes to become the leader in electric vehicles, planning to launch battery-run cars in the next three years. The Japanese automaker will release its Leaf battery-powered vehicle sometime next year in the United States, Japan and parts of Europe.

Until the electric battery market matures, Nissan hopes to price Leaf towards compact gas-powered vehicles, according to press reports. If the price of gasoline remains high over the coming quarters, according to Nissan, the demand for electric vehicles could greatly increase as consumers look for more environmentally friendly cars.

Dena Cassella
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Haole built. O'ahu grown
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The big promise of electric cars is that they’ll radically cut down on carbon emissions, helping fight climate change. And at first glance, they do so — after all, you don’t have to fill the tank with fossil fuels every few days, and there are no emissions from the car itself.

But the truth is a little murkier. Electric cars may not produce emissions themselves, but they have much bigger batteries requiring exotic metals, potentially creating a whole different environmental issue when those batteries near the end of their life span.

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Two Electrify America Charging Stations.

Electric cars are often hailed as being cheaper to operate and repair than gas-powered cars. It makes sense — on the operation side, you only need to pay for electricity (not gasoline), and on the repair side, there’s no motor or transmission to deal with.

But electric cars have other costly repairs, and while in total they do generally cost less than repairs for gasoline cars, it’s worth knowing about the potential costs ahead of time. Perhaps the most obvious, and one of the most costly, has to do with an electric car’s battery. After all, while all cars have batteries, those in electric cars are far bigger and more advanced — and thus can cost quite a bit to replace.
How much does an electric car battery cost?

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Nissan wants the 2023 Ariya to be its comeback EV, but the bar has been raised
Front view of the 2023 Nissan Ariya.

Nissan played an understated role in the modern era of electric cars. While Tesla gets most of the attention, the Nissan Leaf became the first modern mass-market EV when it launched in December 2010. But Nissan has squandered that early lead. The Leaf remains a decent car, but Nissan needed to follow it up with another model, specifically an SUV, that would appeal to more car shoppers. That’s where the 2023 Nissan Ariya comes in.
The Ariya is the long-awaited sequel to the Leaf, boosting updated tech, better performance, and an SUV body style to match current trends. But during the Ariya’s long gestation (it was originally supposed to launch in 2021), other automakers have come up with electric SUVs of their own. So while it was once a leader, Nissan must now follow the Ford Mustang Mach-E, Hyundai Ioniq 5, and Kia EV6, among others.
Pricing starts at $44,485 (with destination) for the base Ariya Engage trim level with front-wheel drive and the smaller 65-kilowatt-hour (63-kWh usable capacity) battery pack. Pricing rises to $61,485 for the top Platinum+ model with all-wheel drive and a 91-kWh (87-kWh usable capacity) pack, but all-wheel drive models won’t arrive until after the front-wheel drive models. Nissan hasn’t discussed plans to assemble the Ariya in the U.S., so it likely won’t qualify for the revised federal EV tax credit.

Design and interior
If it had launched even two years ago, the Ariya would have looked cutting-edge. Its rounded exterior surfaces make a nod to aerodynamics while still preserving the SUV look buyers love. It’s a nice-looking vehicle too, but so are the Ford Mustang Mach-E, Hyundai Ioniq 5, and Kia EV6, all of which have gone on sale since the Ariya was announced in 2020. Nissan is no longer a trendsetter, but the Ariya can at least claim a more SUV-like feel than those other EVs, in both its tall profile and high-and-mighty driving position.
More significant than the styling, though, is that the Ariya rides on a new EV-specific platform. In contrast to the Leaf, which shares some of its structure with gasoline cars, engineers could take full advantage of the efficiencies of an electric powertrain and maximize interior space. Like certain other automakers, Nissan also opted out of a frunk in order to maximize passenger space, moving components like the air conditioner under the hood to make more room in the cabin.
Rounded surfaces nod to aerodynamics while still preserving the SUV look buyers love.

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