Nissan Murano Car Price, Engine, Features, Specification

Nissan Murano Car Price,Engine,features,Specification - Upcoming Car in India 2010

Nissan Murano
Expected in Mid 2010
Estimated price: Rs 35-40 lakh
The name ‘Murano’ originates from the region of Venice, Italy which is known for hand blown glass production. The Murano was nominated for the North American Truck of the Year award for 2003 and even named the best premium mid-size SUV by AutoPacific.

The Murano, when launched, will be one of the most unique crossover designs ever sold in India. The Murano has a powerful 3.5litre V6 engine that produces a potent 245bhp. The car is a front wheel drive (FWD) vehicle and is available with all wheel drive as an option. The  Murano is the largest vehicle to have a CVT (Continuously variable transmission).


Specification (Speculated)
Engine: 3.5l, 245hp V6
Transmission: CVT
Length: 4770mm
Width: 1880mm
Height: 1709mm

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Upcoming new Nissan Leaf electric car in 2011 - Nissan

The world's first mass-market electric car, the Nissan Leaf, will cost nearly £10,000 more than its equivalent petrol and diesel rivals.

Nissan, which announced the European pricing for the fully electric Leaf today, said that the five-door car would set consumers back £28,350, dropping to £23,350 when a UK government grant is included.

                                                 New Nissan Leaf electric car Photo

The Leaf hopes to change the eccentric image of electric cars, which have been dogged by safety fears and a lack of recharging points. Similar-sized conventional cars such as the Ford Focus cost just under £19,000, and the Leaf's obvious direct rival, the Prius electric-petrol hybrid, costs £19,500-22,500.

"At first sight it looks expensive," said Edmund King, president of the AA, "but we estimate a Ford Focus or similar car in that category would cost about 14p a mile, where the Leaf would cost something like 0.3p per mile depending on your electricity tariff. If you do 10,000 miles you save around £1,500 a year. Over three years you almost make your money back on the premium." The car is also exempt from vehicle excise duty and London's congestion charge.

With a range of 100 miles, the Leaf will be able to go without the plug socket for more than double what first generations of the iconic G-Wiz electric car managed and should avoid drivers being worried they will become stranded after running out of power.

"This is the first proper electric car on the market, and 100 miles is the minimum that serious drivers will be looking for," said King.

The first 50,000 cars, which go on sale in the UK in February next year, will be made in Japan, but when a Nissan factory in Sunderland opens in 2013 it will be one of the first major electric cars made in the UK. Nissan said even with today's relatively dirty energy mix it represents a 60% improvement in CO2 emissions against conventional petrol and diesel cars.

But there could be bumps on the road ahead, with a question mark hanging over the last government's plans to pay car buyers up to £5,000 towards the asking price of a new electric car from 2011. A Department for Transport spokesperson said they couldn't confirm if the grant would be retained until the government publishes its 'final coalition agreement'.

A commitment to the grant was conspicuously lacking from the otherwise relatively detailed environment section of the coalition agreement published last week, which talks of "mandating" a network of electric recharging points. There are currently only a few hundred such points in the UK, mostly in London.

Nissan projects that by 2020 one in ten new cars will be electric. But it is not yet clear how strong consumer demand will be. An Auto Trader online survey earlier this year suggested that, while nearly two-thirds of people have environmental impact in mind when buying a new car, only 8% ranked it as a key factor, making it the least important, below five other factors such as reliability and aesthetics.

Ben Lane, editor of What Green Car, said Nissan would likely be losing money on the first sales of the Leaf but said, "It could do for electric cars what the Toyota Prius did for hybrids." Toyota has sold over 1m units of the Prius since it launched in 1999.
   

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Nissan say Leaf EV Battery Pack Cost Only $375 per kWh

Over the past month almost 12,000 people in the US and Japan have made online reservations for the upcoming Nissan Leaf EV. The $33,000 vehicle, set to be released later this year, is the first affordable all-electric vehicle from a major auto manufacturer. It's an early adopter's dream. Now Nissan has revealed the secret behind the Leaf's reasonable price: a reasonably priced battery pack.

While we've seen published 'opinion' from the likes of Vinod Khosla, Boston consulting and engineering undergrads at Carnegie Mellon all predicted doom for EVs based on a lithium-ion batteries cost around $1000 to $1,200 per kWh, the Leaf's 24 kWh battery pack costs just $9,000 to produce, or $375 per kWh, according to a report in the Times of London. In comparison, the Chevy Volt battery pack reportedly costs $600 per kWh, and even the U.S. Advanced Battery Consortium only has a goal of producing batteries at $400 per kWh by mid-decade.

To those with ANY knowledge of the market Nissan's price comes as no great surprise. The wholesale price for small format Li-ion cells has been around that level for several years. 18650 li-ion batteries have been sold on eBay at the price since at least 2006. The battery pack in the Tesla Roadster reportedly costs around $20,000 which for 53 kWh is around the same price per kWh as the Nissan battery.

Nissan say they have been working on EV batteries for the past 18 years and are currently working on a lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide cathode based battery that they expect to be fitting to Leaf EVs by 2015. With double the energy density of current cells, they will give the Leaf 200 miles range on a single charge.

Nissan expect this range combined with the money savings on EV running costs will 'tip' the market the same way the European market for Diesel cars 'tipped' 15 years ago. (46% of new cars sold in EU are Diesel, as high as 77.3% in France - caused by long term Fuel costs around the US$8 a gallon mark)

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