Posts tagged nissan

Nissan working on solar-powered Leaf charging stations

Electric vehicles are just the beginning: Nissan is thinking ahead, working on ways charge its lithium-ion batteries with the sun’s rays:

In the new charging system, demonstrated to reporters Monday, electricity is generated through 488 solar cells installed on the roof of the Nissan headquarters building in Yokohama, southwest of Tokyo.

Four batteries from the Leaf had been placed in a box in a cellar-like part of the building, and store the electricity generated from the solar cells, which is enough to fully charge 1,800 Leaf vehicles a year, according to Nissan.

The future applications of such a charging system are enormous. Electric vehicle batteries long outlive the cars they’re housed in. Figuring out how to use them past their useful lives could be a huge sustainable energy boon:

Even after a Leaf is ready to be scrapped, its battery is likely to have 80 percent of its capacity. On the plus side, the Leaf with its high-capacity battery can store the equivalent of two days of household electricity use, Nissan said.