The LEAF will go down as a classic and historic car. I go back to 2013 when the production of the LEAF was transfered to Sunderland. I took up my local dealers offer of a 48 hour test drive of the new UK model and was convinced within an hour that this is the future and haven't looked back since. I have now owned EV's for over 10 years and driven many EV's probably near 200k electric miles. I have loved owning my 3 LEAF's that I have owned and still driving one to this day. Thank you very much Andy for being a big part of this car and for being a big part of the shift to the EV revolution. 👍
I have a Nissan Leaf 2021, i wilö sell it soon with very little loss ober 36 months, thanks nissan, i go now a smart brabus, and my wife wilö switch to a Nissan Arya soon, the price point is still little to high in germany! and one daugther a Fiat 500e, the other one lives in bigger City, and the boy will surely go electic as soon as possible, i commited to pay him solar power from our roof top😂😂😂 we are absolutely happy living in a house and solar rooftop although i must admit it is not for everybody fitting 2024 in europe germany, but it is getting better and better every day! ☀️💨🔋🏎️ and circular economy! is the key but although some glue to the street we are moving on, doing our best so what... but there are some strange movements who worry me they are doing huge Propaganda against us, often mixes with Trump Trolls, far left, far right, conspiracy theories, nuclear mafia, pretty obvious what is goong on, fight east vs west and old energy and car economy vs new, although some old economy guys are also shifting and start to upscale their renewable Potentials, where are the Forums to discuss this energy politics chess? Mr Liebreich?
Interesting discussion. One point Andy made that is demonstrably incorrect is that markets will make the right decisions. Without government intervention, it's doubtful EVs ever would have achieved dominance. Government subsidies, government intervention (particularly in China) and government mandates have pushed it along It's clear that traditional automakers hate EVs because it's tipping over their profit model. Toyota pushed hydrogen because hydrogen is complex and complexity makes things expensive which protects barriers to entry and that preserves profit margins.
@@ChrisR-xs9wpHydrogen provides quicker refueling times… it’s all about consumers need for efficiency. Battery and grid infrastructure technology need to advance quickly to make BEV’s more viable. I suspect in another 15 or so years
@@cmnhl1329 No, it's not quicker because there are very few hydrogen fueling stations anywhere and there's not going to be any. For consumer uses, the technology is DOA. It's too expensive, too inefficient, and too complex.
@@ChrisR-xs9wp What? Hydrogen is not faster? So all of those people refuelling their car for under 5mins are lying? Last time I checked the dictionary, “fast” had nothing to do with viability. Need to relearn what the term “fast” means. Back to kinder I guess.
Nice podcast. I have an 2014 Tekna Leaf, with now 240.000km, still going strong and with no hiccups. Well back in 2010, when I started following the EV scene, my decision was never due to climate or CO2. It was all about cost and efficiency.
I am a recent listener to your podcast. I found through the Everything Electric show in Vancouver, Canada, which compliments that show. Thanks again for your great topics.
I'm also pleasantly surprised on how well the batteries hold up. Currently driving a 4year old small ev with 75.000 km and i do not see any reduction in range in everyday driving so far.
Thanks for such a great discussion of EVs with Dr Andy Palmer. Rarely do you hear from someone who combines such in depth knowledge of the industry, with practical experience of pioneering electric transportation.
Love Andy's honesty... left Nissan too early because he wanted to be a car company CEO. Another fantastic guest on this show... one of the best sources of energy transition content on YT.
Always interested to hear your views on EVs. Like you I have requirements (towing a large caravan) that make EV ownership unrealistic for me at the moment but things will change over time I have no doubt. I would very much welcome hearing some discussion on the issues surrounding both Lithium battery production and their end of life scenarios as these topics are seldom addressed as we concentrate on hurtling headlong towards electric everything! As to pricing I hear the argument that EV’s are simpler with fewer moving parts. I appreciate there is still the cost of adding a battery but we have also lost the cost of making an internal combustion engine complete with fuel delivery and ignition system, an exhaust system which contains expensive catalysts and a gearbox/transmission system! Surely all of this offsets most of the battery cost so why are they really so expensive compared to an ICE alternative? Keep up the good work.
They're both wrong about autonomous driving. It's pretty much a solved problem now. It'll be some time to scale it up, but the Waymo Driver is pretty much at a Level 5 ability.
The system Tesla trains does not have 'permutations', it works very similar to a human brain, it learns how to drive by 'watching' various people driving. The only challenge is for it to 'see' lots of videos, and the 'brain' to fit digitally in a car computer and achieve the inference with not too much energy needed. Money (training power) seems to be solving it, the progress is...mind blowing :) I was driven in an uber a few days ago, I had no idea the driver was on self driving all the time.
I agree, there are too many edge cases and I think they're right that it can't be rolled out until it can deliver almost zero fatalities. It is not an easy problem, driving is not like chess where it has a clear set of formal rules, while there are rules there an almost infinite amount of variables and it is an activity that relies upon most aspects of human cognition.
@@charliedoyle7824Waymo will use their cars on roads that Waymo are confident that the car can handle. I think that if you took a Waymo to New York or London that it would not be a safe car to be in. Waymo would not use them in situations where there is falling snow or heavy rain as the sensors will be blind. A good driver can anticipate what is about to happen before it does, an autonomous vehicle can’t do that. Lots of reasons why level 5 won’t work in the real world.
Tesla FSD is almost as good as needed. It can drive you around for most journeys most of the time in America. Tesla FSD is basically lv4 right now. I predict all cars will be using this tech in the future licensed from Tesla. It's safer now imo than me in more than not. If you haven't tried FSD 2024.5.4 I urge u to to see for yourself how astonishing it is. I guess u would have to come to Canada or USA at the moment. I am no Musk fan boy but I can't believe you didn't utter the word Tesla in this conversation being so critical in pushing the EV & battery transition.
Electric buses make complete sense, also dustbin lorry's/refuse collection vehicles, like buses they do a fixed route and do lots of starting and stopping.
With regard to the perceived implausibility of safe fully autonomous vehicles you discussed: I agree with Dr Andy Palmer when he said he hopes he is wrong. It would criminal for legislators to ignore the possibility of any technology proven to be capable of ‘REDUCING ANY PERCENTAGE’ of the following human driver carnage statistics: 1,711 UK road fatalities, 135,480 casualties of all severities in 2022. More than one in three collisions in Great Britain were caused by drivers not looking properly. UK Gov Chart 14: Top 10 percentage of contributory factors attributed in reported road fatalities in Great Britain, 2022 RAS0701 Loss of control Failed to look properly Reckless or in a hurry Speeding Miss judged persons/vehicle path or speed Alcohol/drug impaired Poor manoeuvre/turning Too fast for conditions Aggressive driving Illness/disability The once deemed impossible technologies are now common, does that make sense?
I don't think either Andy or I were saying that the technologies to reduce those causes of accidents were not developing rapidly and should not be rolled out universally as driver aids. It's the jump to driverless that we are less bullish about.
I'd like to thank Mr. Palmer to have introduced by means of the Nissan Leaf the idea of VTH or ultimately VTG. It doesn't really work in the country I live for various reasons, but that's not the point. The point is that it has been proven it fundamentally works. So some time in the future we will have it.
Kudos to you Andy I simply love my e-NV200 its the best van I ever had. I regularly rent it out at present 127 times. Everybody without exception loves it specifically how nice it is to drive. A shame Nissan seems to have lost their way after you left. For a first off van the e-NV200 has proved to be super reliable. Since I purchased it in 2019 I have had one service done for €634,- including a front tire change.
I agree that the consumer will decide, but I am also very confident that 3% will choose diesel for towing and that 96% will choose battery electric due to cost and driving characteristics. Untimately, companies that continue to pursue hybrid, ICE or hydrogen will find they lost time and capital pursuing these interests.
An interesting thing about the rowan atkinson piece about ev's is that is that shortly after he drove a hydrogen powered Toyota at Goodwood Festival of speed. The timing seems suspicious and almost in line with a toyota pr campaign. It wouldn't surprise me if toyota wrote the article and wanted Rowan Atkinson to put his name to it. I wonder if there was payment from toyota for driving the car and potentially the article.
Rowan what is an electrical engineer With a masters of science degree in control systems. He was enthusiastic about electric cars from the very beginning, bought one of the first and then later bought a tesla. But go ahead and make things up.Based on nothing, but your own speculation.I've come to expect that from battery heads
@@davidwestwater2219The real problem with Rowan’s article is not really the points that Rowan makes. The problem is it has been used to support anti EV talking points that Rowan never said. EVs are indeed not as good a solution as a mass adoption of public transport. It is true that decarbonising the grid is a really important step, EVs alone are not good enough. The trend over the last few years, for car companies to prioritise big electric SUVs and luxury high price tag cars is not good for the environment either. Car sharing and down sizing should be being encouraged. But, all of those points don’t change the premise that sticking with petrol and diesel powered vehicles is a really bad idea.
Much of Mr Atkinson's article regarding EVs was based on a 45 page report on the industry published by Volvo. The report concluded that EVs were potentially as toxic as fossil fuel vehicles. Much of their argument focussed on battery production, and the source of the energy required to power EVs. The report failed to properly factor in the continuing decarbonisation of the grid, and massive improvements in battery production and recycling. I took the time to read the material and was gratified to learn that subsequently Volvo published amendments. Mr Atkinson's was/is in favour of EVs but after reading the report he somehow felt he had been lied to by the EV lobby. The anti EV media groups then cherry-picked his comments to create their usual vitriolic clickbait and the story went a bit postal (as opposed to viral). All water under the bridge now and pretty irrelevant.
One important aspect of the future of cars that almost everyone overlooks is that electrics scale *much* better gasoline motors. The consequence is that a 'electric car' about the size of a Smart Car cut in half lengthwise will be a very practical single occupancy vehicle in the cities with a proportionally cheaper cost. The reason that hasn't happened so far is because internal combustion engines just don't scale down very well compared to electric motors. With electric single occupancy vehicles costing around $7k taking up half the width of current lanes mini cars will become very popular. Large EV cars for long distance driving will still be available but large cars in city centres with single occupancy will begin to be heavily charged and large petrol cars will be banned almost entirely by about 2035. The future of EV's is mini not maxi.
Crazy to say you need to have zero fatalities with autonomous vehicles. Do you know how many people die every year, due to human error when operating a vehicle ? Even if you could halve that number, the effect would be saving millions of lives over years, not to mention all of the horrific injuries sustained in vehicle accidents, caused by human failures, that could also be minimised. You both will definitely witness autonomous vehicles in your lifetimes
Society does not have the same safety expectations across different activities. We tolerate vast road, drug and - in the US - gun deaths; we tolerate no aviation, train, tram or fire deaths. Interestingly, we tolerate quite a bit of bus death (pedestrians and cyclists, not passengers), particularly in London (the least bus-safe city in Europe in case anyone cares). When we switch to autonomous vehicles, society will have no tolerance for their failure. Media will react very differently to "human falls asleep and kills family" than to "software messes up and kills family". Don't get angry with me, I'm just telling you how it is, as a former board member and safety panel chair of one of the world's largest transit authorities.
Completely agree to let the consumer (the market) determine the best solution. But that only works if governments stop picking winners and vested interest is stopped distorting the market. Gas companies encouraging FCEVs for example, knowing there is (or would be) insufficient green hydrogen available. And what is available should be directed to industries where there is little or no alternative to cleaning up their act (fertilizer, steel, refining...).
Yes. Free market is a fitment of our imagination. Power & money biased the system always. There is just fog not transparency. It's part of the democratic plutocracy we have. Clearly from the 60s the oil, gas, coal & car industry word hard to bias & control the market so they could sell their product.
Just sold our 20011 leaf, range was less than 20 miles, was remarkably reliable, handbrake servo replacement would have been twice the value of the car. The BMW i3 we’ve had for 9 years shows little loss of range. Leaf shared a lot of Verso parts
Should have a little bit more compliment to the Norway and China. Norway took about 12 years to reach 85%+ new registration in EV/Hybrid in 2023 and China as of 2024 is reaching 50%+ NEV from
Unpopular opinion: the Nissan Leaf actually set the electric car market back by a number of years. Its too small battery and its lack of thermal management meant that it rapidly gained a reputation for short battery life which plauged the EV market ever since....
@@Biggest-dh1vrbut that’s completely missing the point. People don’t want to make an investment of many thousands of pounds for something that doesn’t manage what their current car manages. I.e. any length of trip you want. The Leaf HAS made people painfully aware of the potential weakness of battery power, and Nissan haven’t helped by not addressing the issue immediately, and not having a free upgrade policy to batteries with thermal management.
@@dominicgoodwin1147 the ability to cover 94% of use in a green manner was superior to their current car. More than made up for the caveats in my opinion.
@@dominicgoodwin1147For the majority of people I don’t think that it’s the Nissan Leaf that alerted them to the “limited “ life span of EV batteries. It’s the comparison to smart phones, where people have to throw them away after 10 years that people quote.
@@davidhumphreys9938 I think anyone who looks into it with the hope of finding an ev they can afford second hand, is terrified of getting stuck with a dead battery, and the Leaf is definitely a huge part of that worry. I know, I’m one of them.
I really enjoyed that conversation. Andy Palmer’s quote of only 6% of MPs have STEM qualifications was quite depressing. Margaret Thatcher had a chemistry degree. I think she was the most recent to have what is now called a STEM qualification. I wonder why UK has lost its appetite for engineering and manufacturing? Cheap Labour from the East? Possibly, but we don’t build ANYTHING anymore. Cars, ships, commercial aircraft, computers, consumer electronics, etc. we used to do all of these.
There is definitely a slowdown in EV sales here in Australia. We have been sitting on only 8% of our “fleet” being electric or hybrid for 18 months now. It hasn’t changed and hybrids sell 3 to 1 over BEVs.
my daughter have a 2016 leaf and still have 85% of life now in 2024 still working great is costing us about 20 or 30 $ monthly to keep running on monthly basis in Canada.
I actually saw a hydrogen-powered, Toyota Murai once, while on a visit to San Francisco. One of the things I liked about the car was that it looked like a typical car, nothing much pointing to how absolutely unique, how rare the car was. You can’t throw a dead cat in San Francisco without hitting a ten year old Toyota Prius hybrid, or a newer Rivian, Ford, Hyundai, etc. EV. But it was interesting to see the hydrogen car. I’ve read there are still a handful of hydrogen charging stations in the Bay Area, though many have shut down because they are unprofitable. I took a picture of Toyota’s hydrogen car. I haven’t seen one since, anywhere!
It’s always intriguing the coincidence of right people right time. Mr Palmer wanted to do an EV (Leaf). He had the support of his boss Mr Ghosn. If neither of those people or motivations in them had happened would it have changed where we are today? Would someone else have done it instead? Would it have been a Honda Leaf, or Ford Leaf? BTW, on Leaf battery repair, there was a neat episode on the Mr. EV YT channel a few days ago that showed a local garage (Essex I think) replacing a failing module in a Leaf for a few hundred pounds. It shows it’s all repairable and businesses are there to do it.
I could not disagree more with the stance expressed at 31:19 and onward. This is exactly the detracting talk of German and Austrian politicians who want to champion ICE cars and call for "Technologieoffenheit" (~ technological openness). If we didn't have a climate catastrophe to avert and only a few precious years left to fend off the most terrible consequences, I might see it differently, would also prefer to let the market decide. But politicians are still in the pockets of of powerful lobby groups, which also spread fear, uncertainty and doubt among prospective EV adopters. Established car makers will want to squeeze as much revenue from ICE car sales as they can and will only bring as many EVs onto the market as they absolutely have to. The crap about "not dismissing one technology or the other, letting them play" is playing right into the hands of those who would rather slow down EV adoption rates. "Maybe we can keep selling ICE cars; we'll fuel them all with 🌈E-FUELs🧚♀" "Maybe we should invest massively into hydrogen, and subsidize FCEVs or even H₂-ICEVs; we'll fuel them with aaall the green hydrogen that we will totally have in a few years." This is all baloney. Using green hydrogen as a fuel will never be nearly as efficient as BEVs are already today. It's a stupid idea from the get-go. The only big players who want people to believe in hydrogen for powering cars are natural gas companies. And e-fuels for cars … don't get me started. Combustion of hydrogen, COMBUSTION of hydrogen?? H₂-ICE is just the worst of all worlds combined. For cars, it's BEV for the foreseeable future. That has to be put into legislation and FAST, and it has to be communicated to industry and public. Everything else is a distraction and an attempt to slow down the cleaning up of transportation. It honestly makes me furious to hear a seemingly intelligent man say something so impractical and dangerous. Btw, while pioneering a new technology is always laudable, the Nissan Leaf is probably the worst mass market electric car ever conceived, and single-handedly responsible for most of the stereotypes levied against EVs.
The issue is not which drive train will win. Both Andy and I are sure it will be EVs all the way for land transport. The question is whether bans accelerate the transition or just attract political opposition and so allow it down. I have been EXTREMELY vocal about my views on hydrogen cars and synthetic fuels. What is would say is that there is a large and powerful constituency that simply doesn't care how many reports, how much analysis, and how many experts show that they are stupid ideas. The only thing that will persuade them is failure after failure. So it's better to allow and even fund fast failures, so we can all move on.
interested in all the point about, small batteries, light weight and ease of being able to charge vs charging speed. All things that seem to be solved by using an e-bike to get to a train. We have been charging our ebike from our roof top solar for years. :-)
Interesting to peel back some of the politics at Nissan at the time. Also good to challenge the Hybrid statement. Saw the Aston Electric and it was as you say an aftermarket kit; battery in the engine bay etc. The Nissan Leaf was also not a dedicated platform. It is a modified B platform; Micra, Tiida.
It's a pity the Leaf battery did so badly in hotter climates and that later models didn't add battery cooling. I think Nissan also missed an opportunity to sell 'upgrade packs' to early adopters. It would have been a point of difference and cannibalised very few later sales but it would have added confidence. Instead, the Leaf has done a disservice because too many people think a 2024 model car will lose capacity like a 2012 Leaf. What other car maker could say it offered to upgrade your car to better than new with a longer range, faster charging, improved battery chemistry and greater longevity?
Perhaps someone can clarify: if batteries now cost $70 per kWh and batteries represent 40% of the cost of a car, how come a typical average BEV with a 68 kWh battery doesn't cost around $12000? The carmakers are more likely to charge $35000 and that's some markup!
Getting back the development costs, plus profits. There are finally cheaper EVs coming out now, there will be more competition at the budget end and cars will get cheaper with time.
1) That is the cost of batteries in China, and there you can find EVs with 60kwh for around those prices 2) Batteries cost more outside China 3) Western car makers put huge mark up on EVs as they want to prolong the life of their ICEs, and position EVs as a premium product. Tariffs are an attempt to enable them to continue to do that.
Thoroughly enjoyed this. Had not really understood who Andy Palmer was, and his unique path to the top, and totally of interviewer. He’s clearly a great force for good. So the elephant in the room in this discussion has to be ‘whatever you say, don’t mention Elon or Tesla by name’. That kind of spoilt the genuine natural discussion that was emanating throughout the interview. The no BS approach was very honest. I applaud Andy for starting at the shop floor, disillusioned with School. But he needs to research neural networks, and get over what is perhaps an attitude to Tesla, and the innovation they are bringing. Hate on Elon, ok, but to have this whole discussion and literally not mention Tesla. Mind blowing.
We didn't agree beforehand not to mention Elon or Tesla, they just didn't come up. Not everyone is obsessed with Tesla, just as not everyone is convinced driverless cars are just round every corner.
A lot of pro EV people don't understand that a large percentage don't have a driveway to charge at home, also most places that offer charging are very expensive
We do understand. It is shocking that lack of charging isn't taken more seriously. Slow charging (i.e. what they call fast charging, such a stupid name), for example at work, should be incentivised and cost marginally more than home charging. But still, in the UK about 40% of households have a drive (probably more, the data is a bit messy) and yet EV sales are only 20%. How does that make sense!
Thanks to Dr Andy Palmer for joining us on Cleaning Up this week. Sign up to the Cleaning Up Newsletter to get all the latest from the podcast at cleaninguppod.substack.com
The reason I'd be hesitant to buy an EV is not the price, the range or battery degradation but in repair costs. You hear stories of an EV out of warranty that needs some part that will cost hundreds for a simple part or thousands for a larger part which could right the car off.
A great listen, my hesitancy for EV is the fact I'm located 3000" up in a mountain valley, Winter can be 6 months long with a period of -30C.today, battery degradation is real & big, when will that issue go away!
- Batteries degrade much slower in cold climates. - EVs are great in mountain because regenative braking allows you to charge up the battery when going down.
Thanks this is a really informative video. In the UK some of the negative 'stories' about EVs we see in the newspapers are laughable. Sadly many people believe their nonsense.
The problem at least here in the United States is that we'd rather dedicate 80% of each tax dollars war and weapons than industry innovation and competing with a Chinese that have really been dedicating a large percentage towards future and current growth and developing a strong middle-class. Not an advocate for the rest of their politics over there but they are in fact growing
@@ralphwindsor9113 and wtf is "adequate range"? My Corolla has ~300 highway miles of range but motorheads sneer at any EV with less than 500. My first ICE car had barely 200 miles and I lived on a farm out in the sticks. The obsession over EV range was invented by auto companies and EV haters.
The ev evolution is not quite in the Renaissance era but close -with the Chinese ahead, it's gonna take a great change to catch up. But it is possible. On this journey in situ, the path becomes clearer. A full circular system should be the ultimate goal. -Net zero power -inducing more outside gains to battery -smaĺĺer dence but cheap( ion salt 🔋) -level 4 for energy harvesting
Tesla lead followed by a small number of Chinese companies. This is why china allowed tesla to set up a factory (unpartnered), the only company allowed to do so.
The guy who lands rockets when all the experts said it was impossible, made electric transport trucks better than thought possible, made a cybertruck no one thought possible and so much more is about to reveal a robotaxi with no steering wheel Oct 10th. Tesla fsd has exponentially gotten better since AI was introduced this year. He might be a bit late with predictions like fsd but he almost always eventually comes thru and he is smart enough not to bet as much as he is on a robotaxi platform if it wasn't ready for market by production time coming soon. If he had doubts he would just be introducing the cheaper $25,000 models made with the new assembly line engineering. It will still take time to rollout and ramp up fsd robotaxis but anyone who has driven the recent fsd updates in a Tesla can clearly see it's coming soon...maybe not in India as mentioned for a while but definitely in USA and Canada and countries with similar road rules.
There was the EV1 by GM in the late 1990's. Granted, GM only leased them then took them back and destroyed them in front of their crying owners for some unknown reason.
EV being an "economic solution" to travelling can only work IF the Government does not slap everyone with a road tax based upon pence per mile. Of which the current Government is hell bent on taxing the car driver into the ground.
Once EVs are at parity/cheaper than ICE, the incentive will be to 1) price per mile so as not to lose too much revenue, but that will be for all cars, including ICEs (maybe old models will be spared, new ones not) 2) Further increase price of petrol/diesel so as to continue to make EVs cheaper and drive electrification.
You cannot turn the output shaft on an internal combustion engine by hand because it so full of crap, It takes effort even with with a long ½ inch breaker bar So much complexity, most of which has negative effect and/or is not to produce power but to overcome the inherent problems of the internal combustion engines design that cannot be engineered out * Cooling system * Oil system * Cylinder, Piston, Rings * Crankshaft * Camshaft and Lifter system * Valves & valve Springs * Ignition System * Fuel Injection system * Exhaust System * Turbocharger * Supercharger * Clutch-Torque Converter * Transmission * Dozens of Emission Systems * Dozens of Diagnostic systems You can turn an electric motor's output shaft with your bare hand The electric motor only need a handful of supporting components to function A V8 ice engine has a few power pulses during one revolution of the crankshaft but don't forget about that compression stroke, valve springs, and the internal friction sucking up that power even before it leaves the output shaft The electric motor has dozens of power pulses during one revolution of the output shaft with very little internal friction
Power to move with electricity may well be part of our transport future but not with great heavy batteries which we have now. The engineering to try and mitigate the effect cannot hide the grossly over weight with all the attendant costs.
With regenerative braking, the main concern about weight - that it wastes fuel - is dramatically reduced. Issues of road and tyre waste are clearly not real concerns, or we would never have allowed the rush to SUVs. Battery energy densities have doubled in the past decade and will continue to improve. BTW, range for range, BEVs are lighter than H2FC vehicles.
surely if a vehicle meets crash safety regs (or is the benchmark) and is the same weight as it's ice competitors, then that would make the point moot? right? If you go and check the specs on the new model 3 tesla you can see that we are already there today
How quickly you can be made wrong. This video is two months old and Tesla FSD V13 has basically achieved what Dr Palmer said would not be done in his lifetime. And on another bright note Assad's regime in Syria has fallen.
Few companies have hurt the perception of EVs as much as Nissan with their rapidly-battery degrading Leaf and Nissans clinging to ChaDeMo even at a time when it was 100% clear everything in Europe would be CCS.
Dr. Palmer and Michael are wrong about autonomy. Level 3 is not "eyes on the road" as Andy said. Within the ODD, L3 has a person in the driver's seat who has to remain alert to an audible or visual signal to transition, which is expected to last a reasonable amount of time, up to ten seconds in tests. So the L3 ADS must be able to keep the car safe without the human, with the human taking over after the transition to get it going again. There is nothing in L3 where the fallback driver has to keep eyes on the road and immediately take over for safety when the ADS fails at dynamic driving. It could require the person to immediately react if the car has a flat tire or mechanical failure, but not for dynamic driving task. Level 2 is where the person is driving at all times, eyes on road and hands at the ready, even if the ADS does all driving on a trip. Level 3 is eyes off, hands off within the ODD, in the driver's seat and not asleep, ok to be reading a book, ready to take over in a reasonable time. No company will create a Level 3 car with a wide ODD. It wouldn't make sense to assume liability for accidents when they could call it a Level 2 and blame the human driver/owner. And Michael, Waymo right now can drive itself across a city like London, or San Fran, or L.A., with only occasional fallback remote operations like people getting it out of a jam such as a blocked narrow road or at a gate with no access, or pulling into someone's driveway to turn around. And most remote ops incidents result in the team telling the car to continue without assistance. Level 5 robotaxis will still need a human staff monitoring, charging, cleaning, maintaining, dealing with accidents, doing customer service, getting cars out of jams that require a human. Level 4 may or may not have pedals and steering wheel. Level 5 is more of a business and investment problem than driving ability. It's Level 4 driving on all public roads. An L4 ADS that can drive in multiple entire metro areas and can handle rain, sun, and fog, would likely be capable of L5 driving when the investment comes to map the entire country and have access to necessary human staff. Waymo can handle London and NY now, and it's improving at a very fast rate. They'll have the driving ability to do a reasonable L5 in a few years, with the bottleneck being the huge investment job of mapping the country and buying cars and contracting for maintenance/monitoring hubs. In England and the U.S., they don't need to solve driving in Delhi to deploy everywhere. If Waymo invests in a London operation with Uber, it could be running in a few years to whisk you across London while you read your iPad in the back seat.
It's an expensive way to go autonomous. Lidars, radars and the car won't work if the road is not mapped. The longer term solution is teslas vision only fsd which is making giant strides and is being copied by the Chinese.
It shows you're a fool. Over 20% of car sales are now EV or PHEV, over 50% in China, and growing. Of course it takes time for the fleet to renew, because its average age is over ten years, and cars are scrapped at about 20 years old. So you can either get smart fast, or just wait and be proven a fool.
@@Apjooz Lol, wood and oil are compared by what? Mass, Volume, or costs? Nice that you invent some numbers... but Not helpful. Flatscreens needed just 8 years for a 50%... Smartphones we're even faster... didn't you realize how fast new technology which IS wanted, spreads?
Global warming is not a political issue but a survival issue. Big oil is the biggest obstacle but lately battery technology has improved do much that within a few years many ice laggers will go bust or sold at bargain prices to the Chinese!!!!
Apart from battery fires, high tyre wear, insurance and repair costs, EVs are viable it is the electricity supply at reasonable cost with in the UK the cost being the highest in the World four times that of the US and not sufficient to power the economy without connectors never mind charging EVs and as goes the UK so goes Europe.
Also the tech being used in 2016 for driving assist bears no similarity to the AI being used today in autonomous driving. Clearly it's been promised for years but the tech is now there - we're just waiting for the training for 99.9999999% use cases to be completed. As for Delhi - you have to train the system for Delhi. There is nothing so special about the human brain that it cannot be imitated with the advantage of no distractions.
You will be right... eventually. I'm not saying self-driving cars are impossible, I'm saying society will hold them to such a high bar that we are still quite a few years away.
If your only criterion for choosing a car is how often you have to go to a gas station, you should buy one and just live with the carbon footprint and pollution. Unless, of course you have a garage or driveway, or live near to a lamp-post, in which case buy an EV, NEVER go to a gas station, and dramatically cut your emissions and pollution. It's entirely your call - until of course eventually they start shutting gas stations because so few people are using them.
@@fredfrond6148 Anyone buying a hybrid will regret it. Twice as many things to go wrong will ultimately hurt reliability and drive up maintenance and repair costs. Shitty tradeoff for range most people never need.
@@ChrisR-xs9wp as you said it is a trade off. If your range anxiety is so great and you take long trips to areas with spotty infrastructure the shark hybrid is the way to go. If you are an urbanite that just does not leave the city then an ev is best.
@@fredfrond6148 Even for highway driving, nobody needs more than 300 miles of range. It's dangerous for you and everyone else to drive extended hours without a break. I said it was a SHITTY tradeoff and it is.
The Leaf was a spectacular failure for Nissan. The Nissan range is dreadful , and that’s what their sales indicate. There will never be autonomous vehicles approved in most countries. Elon is dreaming. FSD(supervised) just doesn’t work, and never will using cameras. Robbotaxi will not happen, the whole concept is laughable. BEV’s have slowed down in Australia, sales are approximately the same as 2023. HEV’s are outselling BEV’s 2 to 1 this year. Diesel sales are up 10%, and the 4 top selling cars in Australia are Diesel duel cab utes. What does this tell you? It tells me that most people that want a BEV have bought one, the others are waiting for prices to come down. Most Australians , like over 90% don’t want a BEV.
What is better 1.35Million deaths per year in vehicles worldwide or 135K deaths per years worldwide. I think it would be criminal to insist on the 1.35M deaths remaining.
I'm not insisting. I'm telling you that society has a different standard for automated systems and systems that can cause mass-casualty events. I also don't buy your claim that driverless cars would be 10x safer if let loose today.
It seems that those who are fans of evs have no mechanical knowledge and no knowledge of electricity generation.Electric cars are nowhere near the convenience of ice vehicles and will not be for a long time.If evs continue to be forced on the public our road transport will be reduced by at least 50%,simply on affordability.
Bullshit argument. Open the market for the Chinese and you get prices below current ice cars as batteries are getting really cheap. Tesla could reduce prices more if they wanted but go for FSD now.
What happens when everyone is driving EV's? it seems to me that we will end up with those who can charge at home being subsidised by those who can't. there's no such thing as a free lunch, the electricity system has to be paid for and if some people in society are getting a free ride, literally, then others will have to be paying for it, and it would appear likely that it will be those that are already at the lower end of the wealth ladder.
How will they be being subsided? They will have an advantage in convenience sure. But there's lots of solutions to enable charging across a pavement eg Kerbo charge on your home electricity for the same price. Other solutions exist too, like lamppost charging. There's no reason every residential street without offering street parking couldn't have the necessary numbers of chargers installed - there will certainly be demand for it, so it could be done with a fair business case. It's feasible everywhere a car rests, and they rest/ aren't used 90% of their lives, for a charger to be installed. Just needs the political will.
Why do you expect personal transport to be any fairer than anything else? You could say people on high incomes subsidise poorer people by paying a higher tax rate. People who pay school fees subsidise people in state education. People with private health care subsidise people who wait to get treated by the nhs. Nothing is fair in this world.
@@Lewis_Standing I think free destination chargers will be the thing. Shopping centres, offices, hotels, restaurants,everywhere. Once electricity gets cheaper, then people will go to the places with free charging.
When everybody has EVs, many apartment buildings will install chargers if they have parking, work parking lots, shopping centers and fast food will have chargers, cars will transition to self-driving and go charge themselves at some point, and the price of mobility energy will be less than petrol overall, with solar practically free midday in many places. Nothing to worry about.
@@charliedoyle7824 unfortunately that is not correct. As the current situation for public charging shows, the overheads of running charge networks are high and are passed on to users. That will be true for any type of charger which is not the property of and operated by the homeowner. Cars will certainly not go around to charge points to charge themselves up - that will be a licence for gridlock. The price of electric charging looks unlikely to go below gasolene for a long time, if ever. Tesla superchargers are much more expensive than was originally claimed by Musk. Solar will not be "practically free" unless the vehicle operator has a long term vehicle to grid arrangement with the service provider, and in practice that means that only the homeowner will be able to take advantage of V2G prices. This is a major problem for the UK now as the high income motivated sector of car owners has gone to EV, at least for enough time to evaluate it. If the total cost of ownership is not going to be lower, at least in the forseeable future, that will slow the market down, as is already the case. The UK Times and other papers are making a big deal of this just now. We havent yet addressed the probem of maintenance, which should be much less onerous for EVs versus ICE, but the overhead cost will be much higher due to the amount of special equipment and trained personnel needed. So maintenance is likely to be much more expensive on a per garage visit basis, and that will be reflected in insurance costs. It is going to be a very bumpy ride
AVs, you look at the problem from within the Motor industry i.e. you are old farts. ICE, BEV and H2 vehicles will be driven by software and soon AI The digital revolution has been underway since the turn of the decade. CAM level 4 will be available in UK from 2026 re: Tesla, BYD, Waymo, Wyave... The legacy OEMs need to react now or they will 'wither on the vine' and die. The fine auto vintages will be enjoyed by enthusiasts for years to come using eco-biofuels. Why are legacy OEMs holding onto the past?
The LEAF will go down as a classic and historic car.
I go back to 2013 when the production of the LEAF was transfered to Sunderland. I took up my local dealers offer of a 48 hour test drive of the new UK model and was convinced within an hour that this is the future and haven't looked back since.
I have now owned EV's for over 10 years and driven many EV's probably near 200k electric miles.
I have loved owning my 3 LEAF's that I have owned and still driving one to this day. Thank you very much Andy for being a big part of this car and for being a big part of the shift to the EV revolution. 👍
I have a Nissan Leaf 2021, i wilö sell it soon with very little loss ober 36 months, thanks nissan, i go now a smart brabus, and my wife wilö switch to a Nissan Arya soon, the price point is still little to high in germany!
and one daugther a Fiat 500e, the other one lives in bigger City, and the boy will surely go electic as soon as possible, i commited to pay him solar power from our roof top😂😂😂
we are absolutely happy living in a house and solar rooftop although i must admit it is not for everybody fitting 2024 in europe germany, but it is getting better and better every day!
☀️💨🔋🏎️ and circular economy! is the key but although some glue to the street we are moving on, doing our best so what...
but there are some strange movements who worry me they are doing huge Propaganda against us, often mixes with Trump Trolls, far left, far right, conspiracy theories, nuclear mafia, pretty obvious what is goong on, fight east vs west and old energy and car economy vs new, although some old economy guys are also shifting and start to upscale their renewable Potentials, where are the Forums to discuss this energy politics chess? Mr Liebreich?
Interesting discussion.
One point Andy made that is demonstrably incorrect is that markets will make the right decisions.
Without government intervention, it's doubtful EVs ever would have achieved dominance. Government subsidies, government intervention (particularly in China) and government mandates have pushed it along
It's clear that traditional automakers hate EVs because it's tipping over their profit model. Toyota pushed hydrogen because hydrogen is complex and complexity makes things expensive which protects barriers to entry and that preserves profit margins.
@@ChrisR-xs9wpHydrogen provides quicker refueling times… it’s all about consumers need for efficiency. Battery and grid infrastructure technology need to advance quickly to make BEV’s more viable. I suspect in another 15 or so years
@@cmnhl1329 No, it's not quicker because there are very few hydrogen fueling stations anywhere and there's not going to be any. For consumer uses, the technology is DOA. It's too expensive, too inefficient, and too complex.
@@ChrisR-xs9wp What? Hydrogen is not faster? So all of those people refuelling their car for under 5mins are lying? Last time I checked the dictionary, “fast” had nothing to do with viability. Need to relearn what the term “fast” means. Back to kinder I guess.
Nice podcast. I have an 2014 Tekna Leaf, with now 240.000km, still going strong and with no hiccups. Well back in 2010, when I started following the EV scene, my decision was never due to climate or CO2. It was all about cost and efficiency.
A brave engineer creating the Nissan Leaf.We don't credit top engineers in the UK as we should.They are the backbone of our society.
I am a recent listener to your podcast. I found through the Everything Electric show in Vancouver, Canada, which compliments that show. Thanks again for your great topics.
Glad you found us and thanks for listening! And thanks to Everything Electric for the recommendation.
This is a brilliant interview and the insights breathtaking. I am now a convert to Cleaning Up.
Fabulous! Please help spread the word. And you are lucky - we have a huge back-catalogue.
Utter sh1t
I'm also pleasantly surprised on how well the batteries hold up. Currently driving a 4year old small ev with 75.000 km and i do not see any reduction in range in everyday driving so far.
Thanks for such a great discussion of EVs with Dr Andy Palmer. Rarely do you hear from someone who combines such in depth knowledge of the industry, with practical experience of pioneering electric transportation.
Love Andy's honesty... left Nissan too early because he wanted to be a car company CEO.
Another fantastic guest on this show... one of the best sources of energy transition content on YT.
We drive a 2014 Leaf and SOH is at 89%, living in the north of Sweden.
Always interested to hear your views on EVs. Like you I have requirements (towing a large caravan) that make EV ownership unrealistic for me at the moment but things will change over time I have no doubt. I would very much welcome hearing some discussion on the issues surrounding both Lithium battery production and their end of life scenarios as these topics are seldom addressed as we concentrate on hurtling headlong towards electric everything! As to pricing I hear the argument that EV’s are simpler with fewer moving parts. I appreciate there is still the cost of adding a battery but we have also lost the cost of making an internal combustion engine complete with fuel delivery and ignition system, an exhaust system which contains expensive catalysts and a gearbox/transmission system! Surely all of this offsets most of the battery cost so why are they really so expensive compared to an ICE alternative? Keep up the good work.
Been driving Tesla since 2013. Still driving the same car fueling at home with my own solar panels. Try doing the with petroleum.
Thank you both for confirming my scepticism about autonomous driving - there are just too many permutations!
They're both wrong about autonomous driving. It's pretty much a solved problem now. It'll be some time to scale it up, but the Waymo Driver is pretty much at a Level 5 ability.
The system Tesla trains does not have 'permutations', it works very similar to a human brain, it learns how to drive by 'watching' various people driving.
The only challenge is for it to 'see' lots of videos, and the 'brain' to fit digitally in a car computer and achieve the inference with not too much energy needed.
Money (training power) seems to be solving it, the progress is...mind blowing :)
I was driven in an uber a few days ago, I had no idea the driver was on self driving all the time.
I agree, there are too many edge cases and I think they're right that it can't be rolled out until it can deliver almost zero fatalities. It is not an easy problem, driving is not like chess where it has a clear set of formal rules, while there are rules there an almost infinite amount of variables and it is an activity that relies upon most aspects of human cognition.
@@charliedoyle7824Waymo will use their cars on roads that Waymo are confident that the car can handle. I think that if you took a Waymo to New York or London that it would not be a safe car to be in. Waymo would not use them in situations where there is falling snow or heavy rain as the sensors will be blind. A good driver can anticipate what is about to happen before it does, an autonomous vehicle can’t do that. Lots of reasons why level 5 won’t work in the real world.
Tesla FSD is almost as good as needed. It can drive you around for most journeys most of the time in America.
Tesla FSD is basically lv4 right now. I predict all cars will be using this tech in the future licensed from Tesla. It's safer now imo than me in more than not.
If you haven't tried FSD 2024.5.4 I urge u to to see for yourself how astonishing it is. I guess u would have to come to Canada or USA at the moment.
I am no Musk fan boy but I can't believe you didn't utter the word Tesla in this conversation being so critical in pushing the EV & battery transition.
Electric buses make complete sense, also dustbin lorry's/refuse collection vehicles, like buses they do a fixed route and do lots of starting and stopping.
With regard to the perceived implausibility of safe fully autonomous vehicles you discussed: I agree with Dr Andy Palmer when he said he hopes he is wrong. It would criminal for legislators to ignore the possibility of any technology proven to be capable of ‘REDUCING ANY PERCENTAGE’ of the following human driver carnage statistics:
1,711 UK road fatalities, 135,480 casualties of all severities in 2022. More than one in three collisions in Great Britain were caused by drivers not looking properly.
UK Gov Chart 14: Top 10 percentage of contributory factors attributed in reported road fatalities in Great Britain, 2022 RAS0701
Loss of control
Failed to look properly
Reckless or in a hurry
Speeding
Miss judged persons/vehicle path or speed
Alcohol/drug impaired
Poor manoeuvre/turning
Too fast for conditions
Aggressive driving
Illness/disability
The once deemed impossible technologies are now common, does that make sense?
I don't think either Andy or I were saying that the technologies to reduce those causes of accidents were not developing rapidly and should not be rolled out universally as driver aids. It's the jump to driverless that we are less bullish about.
I'd like to thank Mr. Palmer to have introduced by means of the Nissan Leaf the idea of VTH or ultimately VTG.
It doesn't really work in the country I live for various reasons, but that's not the point. The point is that it has been proven it fundamentally works.
So some time in the future we will have it.
Right after the entire world builds a completely new electrical grid
@@davidwestwater2219 Not necessarily. As if the grid would be replaced, we won't need VTG any more
Kudos to you Andy I simply love my e-NV200 its the best van I ever had. I regularly rent it out at present 127 times. Everybody without exception loves it specifically how nice it is to drive. A shame Nissan seems to have lost their way after you left. For a first off van the e-NV200 has proved to be super reliable. Since I purchased it in 2019 I have had one service done for €634,- including a front tire change.
I agree that the consumer will decide, but I am also very confident that 3% will choose diesel for towing and that 96% will choose battery electric due to cost and driving characteristics. Untimately, companies that continue to pursue hybrid, ICE or hydrogen will find they lost time and capital pursuing these interests.
An interesting thing about the rowan atkinson piece about ev's is that is that shortly after he drove a hydrogen powered Toyota at Goodwood Festival of speed. The timing seems suspicious and almost in line with a toyota pr campaign. It wouldn't surprise me if toyota wrote the article and wanted Rowan Atkinson to put his name to it. I wonder if there was payment from toyota for driving the car and potentially the article.
Rowan what is an electrical engineer With a masters of science degree in control systems. He was enthusiastic about electric cars from the very beginning, bought one of the first and then later bought a tesla. But go ahead and make things up.Based on nothing, but your own speculation.I've come to expect that from battery heads
@@davidwestwater2219The real problem with Rowan’s article is not really the points that Rowan makes. The problem is it has been used to support anti EV talking points that Rowan never said. EVs are indeed not as good a solution as a mass adoption of public transport. It is true that decarbonising the grid is a really important step, EVs alone are not good enough. The trend over the last few years, for car companies to prioritise big electric SUVs and luxury high price tag cars is not good for the environment either. Car sharing and down sizing should be being encouraged. But, all of those points don’t change the premise that sticking with petrol and diesel powered vehicles is a really bad idea.
Much of Mr Atkinson's article regarding EVs was based on a 45 page report on the industry published by Volvo. The report concluded that EVs were potentially as toxic as fossil fuel vehicles. Much of their argument focussed on battery production, and the source of the energy required to power EVs. The report failed to properly factor in the continuing decarbonisation of the grid, and massive improvements in battery production and recycling. I took the time to read the material and was gratified to learn that subsequently Volvo published amendments. Mr Atkinson's was/is in favour of EVs but after reading the report he somehow felt he had been lied to by the EV lobby. The anti EV media groups then cherry-picked his comments to create their usual vitriolic clickbait and the story went a bit postal (as opposed to viral). All water under the bridge now and pretty irrelevant.
One important aspect of the future of cars that almost everyone overlooks is that electrics scale *much* better gasoline motors. The consequence is that a 'electric car' about the size of a Smart Car cut in half lengthwise will be a very practical single occupancy vehicle in the cities with a proportionally cheaper cost. The reason that hasn't happened so far is because internal combustion engines just don't scale down very well compared to electric motors. With electric single occupancy vehicles costing around $7k taking up half the width of current lanes mini cars will become very popular. Large EV cars for long distance driving will still be available but large cars in city centres with single occupancy will begin to be heavily charged and large petrol cars will be banned almost entirely by about 2035.
The future of EV's is mini not maxi.
The "battery will need replacing" argument is alive and well and the legacy manufacturers are almost silent on the subject.
Another great informative discussion👏
i have a 2013 Japanese Leaf, 55 miles real range due to one weak cell. Nuff said innit ;-)
Crazy to say you need to have zero fatalities with autonomous vehicles.
Do you know how many people die every year, due to human error when operating a vehicle ?
Even if you could halve that number, the effect would be saving millions of lives over years, not to mention all of the horrific injuries sustained in vehicle accidents, caused by human failures, that could also be minimised. You both will definitely witness autonomous vehicles in your lifetimes
Society does not have the same safety expectations across different activities.
We tolerate vast road, drug and - in the US - gun deaths; we tolerate no aviation, train, tram or fire deaths. Interestingly, we tolerate quite a bit of bus death (pedestrians and cyclists, not passengers), particularly in London (the least bus-safe city in Europe in case anyone cares).
When we switch to autonomous vehicles, society will have no tolerance for their failure. Media will react very differently to "human falls asleep and kills family" than to "software messes up and kills family".
Don't get angry with me, I'm just telling you how it is, as a former board member and safety panel chair of one of the world's largest transit authorities.
Completely agree to let the consumer (the market) determine the best solution. But that only works if governments stop picking winners and vested interest is stopped distorting the market. Gas companies encouraging FCEVs for example, knowing there is (or would be) insufficient green hydrogen available. And what is available should be directed to industries where there is little or no alternative to cleaning up their act (fertilizer, steel, refining...).
Yes. Free market is a fitment of our imagination. Power & money biased the system always. There is just fog not transparency. It's part of the democratic plutocracy we have.
Clearly from the 60s the oil, gas, coal & car industry word hard to bias & control the market so they could sell their product.
Don't forget the oil/car industry buying the tram companies in the US and ripping up the tracks.
Just sold our 20011 leaf, range was less than 20 miles, was remarkably reliable, handbrake servo replacement would have been twice the value of the car. The BMW i3 we’ve had for 9 years shows little loss of range.
Leaf shared a lot of Verso parts
Should have a little bit more compliment to the Norway and China. Norway took about 12 years to reach 85%+ new registration in EV/Hybrid in 2023 and China as of 2024 is reaching 50%+ NEV from
Have you tried the latest FSD. Were basically there on level 4 imo
Can't believe Tesla wasn't mentioned here
Unpopular opinion: the Nissan Leaf actually set the electric car market back by a number of years. Its too small battery and its lack of thermal management meant that it rapidly gained a reputation for short battery life which plauged the EV market ever since....
But most (94%?) journeys people do are within its range... At a stretch, longer journeys are feasible.
@@Biggest-dh1vrbut that’s completely missing the point. People don’t want to make an investment of many thousands of pounds for something that doesn’t manage what their current car manages. I.e. any length of trip you want.
The Leaf HAS made people painfully aware of the potential weakness of battery power, and Nissan haven’t helped by not addressing the issue immediately, and not having a free upgrade policy to batteries with thermal management.
@@dominicgoodwin1147 the ability to cover 94% of use in a green manner was superior to their current car. More than made up for the caveats in my opinion.
@@dominicgoodwin1147For the majority of people I don’t think that it’s the Nissan Leaf that alerted them to the “limited “ life span of EV batteries. It’s the comparison to smart phones, where people have to throw them away after 10 years that people quote.
@@davidhumphreys9938 I think anyone who looks into it with the hope of finding an ev they can afford second hand, is terrified of getting stuck with a dead battery, and the Leaf is definitely a huge part of that worry. I know, I’m one of them.
I really enjoyed that conversation. Andy Palmer’s quote of only 6% of MPs have STEM qualifications was quite depressing. Margaret Thatcher had a chemistry degree. I think she was the most recent to have what is now called a STEM qualification. I wonder why UK has lost its appetite for engineering and manufacturing? Cheap Labour from the East? Possibly, but we don’t build ANYTHING anymore. Cars, ships, commercial aircraft, computers, consumer electronics, etc. we used to do all of these.
Another great video Michael
Palmer shows a remarkable lack of understanding of the progress in neural network training
There is definitely a slowdown in EV sales here in Australia. We have been sitting on only 8% of our “fleet” being electric or hybrid for 18 months now. It hasn’t changed and hybrids sell 3 to 1 over BEVs.
my daughter have a 2016 leaf and still have 85% of life now in 2024 still working great is costing us about 20 or 30 $ monthly to keep running on monthly basis in Canada.
I actually saw a hydrogen-powered, Toyota Murai once, while on a visit to San Francisco. One of the things I liked about the car was that it looked like a typical car, nothing much pointing to how absolutely unique, how rare the car was. You can’t throw a dead cat in San Francisco without hitting a ten year old Toyota Prius hybrid, or a newer Rivian, Ford, Hyundai, etc. EV. But it was interesting to see the hydrogen car. I’ve read there are still a handful of hydrogen charging stations in the Bay Area, though many have shut down because they are unprofitable. I took a picture of Toyota’s hydrogen car. I haven’t seen one since, anywhere!
It’s always intriguing the coincidence of right people right time.
Mr Palmer wanted to do an EV (Leaf). He had the support of his boss Mr Ghosn.
If neither of those people or motivations in them had happened would it have changed where we are today? Would someone else have done it instead? Would it have been a Honda Leaf, or Ford Leaf?
BTW, on Leaf battery repair, there was a neat episode on the Mr. EV YT channel a few days ago that showed a local garage (Essex I think) replacing a failing module in a Leaf for a few hundred pounds. It shows it’s all repairable and businesses are there to do it.
Wow did I learn a lot of new stuff about EVs ty
I could not disagree more with the stance expressed at 31:19 and onward. This is exactly the detracting talk of German and Austrian politicians who want to champion ICE cars and call for "Technologieoffenheit" (~ technological openness). If we didn't have a climate catastrophe to avert and only a few precious years left to fend off the most terrible consequences, I might see it differently, would also prefer to let the market decide. But politicians are still in the pockets of of powerful lobby groups, which also spread fear, uncertainty and doubt among prospective EV adopters. Established car makers will want to squeeze as much revenue from ICE car sales as they can and will only bring as many EVs onto the market as they absolutely have to.
The crap about "not dismissing one technology or the other, letting them play" is playing right into the hands of those who would rather slow down EV adoption rates.
"Maybe we can keep selling ICE cars; we'll fuel them all with 🌈E-FUELs🧚♀"
"Maybe we should invest massively into hydrogen, and subsidize FCEVs or even H₂-ICEVs; we'll fuel them with aaall the green hydrogen that we will totally have in a few years."
This is all baloney. Using green hydrogen as a fuel will never be nearly as efficient as BEVs are already today. It's a stupid idea from the get-go.
The only big players who want people to believe in hydrogen for powering cars are natural gas companies.
And e-fuels for cars … don't get me started.
Combustion of hydrogen, COMBUSTION of hydrogen?? H₂-ICE is just the worst of all worlds combined.
For cars, it's BEV for the foreseeable future. That has to be put into legislation and FAST, and it has to be communicated to industry and public. Everything else is a distraction and an attempt to slow down the cleaning up of transportation.
It honestly makes me furious to hear a seemingly intelligent man say something so impractical and dangerous.
Btw, while pioneering a new technology is always laudable, the Nissan Leaf is probably the worst mass market electric car ever conceived, and single-handedly responsible for most of the stereotypes levied against EVs.
The issue is not which drive train will win. Both Andy and I are sure it will be EVs all the way for land transport. The question is whether bans accelerate the transition or just attract political opposition and so allow it down.
I have been EXTREMELY vocal about my views on hydrogen cars and synthetic fuels. What is would say is that there is a large and powerful constituency that simply doesn't care how many reports, how much analysis, and how many experts show that they are stupid ideas. The only thing that will persuade them is failure after failure. So it's better to allow and even fund fast failures, so we can all move on.
interested in all the point about, small batteries, light weight and ease of being able to charge vs charging speed. All things that seem to be solved by using an e-bike to get to a train. We have been charging our ebike from our roof top solar for years. :-)
Interesting to peel back some of the politics at Nissan at the time. Also good to challenge the Hybrid statement. Saw the Aston Electric and it was as you say an aftermarket kit; battery in the engine bay etc. The Nissan Leaf was also not a dedicated platform. It is a modified B platform; Micra, Tiida.
Great episode & Channel
It's a pity the Leaf battery did so badly in hotter climates and that later models didn't add battery cooling. I think Nissan also missed an opportunity to sell 'upgrade packs' to early adopters. It would have been a point of difference and cannibalised very few later sales but it would have added confidence. Instead, the Leaf has done a disservice because too many people think a 2024 model car will lose capacity like a 2012 Leaf. What other car maker could say it offered to upgrade your car to better than new with a longer range, faster charging, improved battery chemistry and greater longevity?
It’s becoming a new cottage industry to repurpose the Nissan Leaf drive unit in a classic automobile.
i have a 1953 Ford customline and that's my plan!
Great stuff👍
Perhaps someone can clarify: if batteries now cost $70 per kWh and batteries represent 40% of the cost of a car, how come a typical average BEV with a 68 kWh battery doesn't cost around $12000? The carmakers are more likely to charge $35000 and that's some markup!
Getting back the development costs, plus profits. There are finally cheaper EVs coming out now, there will be more competition at the budget end and cars will get cheaper with time.
Probably he is referring to China.
Chinese battery costs are distorted because the price of lithium has dropped significantly with falling demand
1) That is the cost of batteries in China, and there you can find EVs with 60kwh for around those prices 2) Batteries cost more outside China 3) Western car makers put huge mark up on EVs as they want to prolong the life of their ICEs, and position EVs as a premium product. Tariffs are an attempt to enable them to continue to do that.
Some manufacturers want you to buy ice because it’s more profitable to them. Others are pure play EV makers.
Loved the LEAF!
I always call level 3 autonomous driving the suicide level. We need to jump to level 4+.
Thoroughly enjoyed this. Had not really understood who Andy Palmer was, and his unique path to the top, and totally of interviewer. He’s clearly a great force for good.
So the elephant in the room in this discussion has to be ‘whatever you say, don’t mention Elon or Tesla by name’. That kind of spoilt the genuine natural discussion that was emanating throughout the interview. The no BS approach was very honest.
I applaud Andy for starting at the shop floor, disillusioned with School. But he needs to research neural networks, and get over what is perhaps an attitude to Tesla, and the innovation they are bringing.
Hate on Elon, ok, but to have this whole discussion and literally not mention Tesla. Mind blowing.
We didn't agree beforehand not to mention Elon or Tesla, they just didn't come up.
Not everyone is obsessed with Tesla, just as not everyone is convinced driverless cars are just round every corner.
A lot of pro EV people don't understand that a large percentage don't have a driveway to charge at home, also most places that offer charging are very expensive
Look at Scandinavia. Problem solved. No problem with charging
We do understand. It is shocking that lack of charging isn't taken more seriously. Slow charging (i.e. what they call fast charging, such a stupid name), for example at work, should be incentivised and cost marginally more than home charging. But still, in the UK about 40% of households have a drive (probably more, the data is a bit messy) and yet EV sales are only 20%. How does that make sense!
excellent
Thanks to Dr Andy Palmer for joining us on Cleaning Up this week. Sign up to the Cleaning Up Newsletter to get all the latest from the podcast at cleaninguppod.substack.com
Excellent
❤ Thanks ❤
The reason I'd be hesitant to buy an EV is not the price, the range or battery degradation but in repair costs.
You hear stories of an EV out of warranty that needs some part that will cost hundreds for a simple part or thousands for a larger part which could right the car off.
Nonsense. EV maintenance costs are on average 60% lower than ICE.
A great listen, my hesitancy for EV is the fact I'm located 3000" up in a mountain valley, Winter can be 6 months long with a period of -30C.today, battery degradation is real & big, when will that issue go away!
- Batteries degrade much slower in cold climates.
- EVs are great in mountain because regenative braking allows you to charge up the battery when going down.
@@pauld3327have you ever been in -20 deg ?
Thanks this is a really informative video. In the UK some of the negative 'stories' about EVs we see in the newspapers are laughable. Sadly many people believe their nonsense.
Why do you say it? It's clear there's an issue with fires and controlling them.
The problem at least here in the United States is that we'd rather dedicate 80% of each tax dollars war and weapons than industry innovation and competing with a Chinese that have really been dedicating a large percentage towards future and current growth and developing a strong middle-class. Not an advocate for the rest of their politics over there but they are in fact growing
Walkman/Diskman is to Sony, while Hybrid is to Toyota.
Sorry but a bit too much credit to Toyota. Toyota did NOT invent hybrid (done before second world war) but did improve it via their kaizen method.
How many people buy a ICE car based on the size of the petrol tank?
They don't have to because virtually every ICE has the right size tank for adequate range.
@@ralphwindsor9113 and wtf is "adequate range"? My Corolla has ~300 highway miles of range but motorheads sneer at any EV with less than 500. My first ICE car had barely 200 miles and I lived on a farm out in the sticks.
The obsession over EV range was invented by auto companies and EV haters.
In my articles, I always call level 3 the suicide level. That should be the vision of regulators.
Talking about survival of companies that fail to adapt to new tech... where is Kodak today?
Collecting royalties as they did invent the digital camera!!! But internally were not seeing the opportunity to make a digital camera by themselves!!!
We were forced down the road of an IPO??
😮 shame on Aston Martin. they could have led the way instead of trying to confuse unfortunately lie 🤥
The pocket always rules, EVs are here to win our pockets, it’s to-late to stop it, 👍
The ev evolution is not quite in the Renaissance era but close -with the Chinese ahead, it's gonna take a great change to catch up.
But it is possible.
On this journey in situ, the path becomes clearer.
A full circular system should be the ultimate goal.
-Net zero power
-inducing more outside gains to battery
-smaĺĺer dence but cheap( ion salt 🔋)
-level 4 for energy harvesting
Tesla lead followed by a small number of Chinese companies. This is why china allowed tesla to set up a factory (unpartnered), the only company allowed to do so.
The guy who lands rockets when all the experts said it was impossible, made electric transport trucks better than thought possible, made a cybertruck no one thought possible and so much more is about to reveal a robotaxi with no steering wheel Oct 10th. Tesla fsd has exponentially gotten better since AI was introduced this year. He might be a bit late with predictions like fsd but he almost always eventually comes thru and he is smart enough not to bet as much as he is on a robotaxi platform if it wasn't ready for market by production time coming soon. If he had doubts he would just be introducing the cheaper $25,000 models made with the new assembly line engineering. It will still take time to rollout and ramp up fsd robotaxis but anyone who has driven the recent fsd updates in a Tesla can clearly see it's coming soon...maybe not in India as mentioned for a while but definitely in USA and Canada and countries with similar road rules.
Not holding my breath for Tesla or my nose for Musk.
He probably would have made Nissan more appealing.
Carlos might be correct, but he is being asked to step down!
Carlos ghosn revolutionized nissan and would have done more in this brave Chinese led new world.
Youre forgetting home chargers, cheaper and millions.
There was the EV1 by GM in the late 1990's. Granted, GM only leased them then took them back and destroyed them in front of their crying owners for some unknown reason.
They were bought off by the oil industry.
EV being an "economic solution" to travelling can only work IF the Government does not slap everyone with a road tax based upon pence per mile. Of which the current Government is hell bent on taxing the car driver into the ground.
With EVs being 7x cheaper to fuel, there's a bit of a gap for taxes
Once EVs are at parity/cheaper than ICE, the incentive will be to 1) price per mile so as not to lose too much revenue, but that will be for all cars, including ICEs (maybe old models will be spared, new ones not) 2) Further increase price of petrol/diesel so as to continue to make EVs cheaper and drive electrification.
Palmer will be vindicated on Lagonda. It's such an obvious no-brainer.
You cannot turn the output shaft on an internal combustion engine by hand because it so full of crap, It takes effort even with with a long ½ inch breaker bar
So much complexity, most of which has negative effect and/or is not to produce power but to overcome the inherent problems of the internal combustion engines design that cannot be engineered out
* Cooling system
* Oil system
* Cylinder, Piston, Rings
* Crankshaft
* Camshaft and Lifter system
* Valves & valve Springs
* Ignition System
* Fuel Injection system
* Exhaust System
* Turbocharger
* Supercharger
* Clutch-Torque Converter
* Transmission
* Dozens of Emission Systems
* Dozens of Diagnostic systems
You can turn an electric motor's output shaft with your bare hand
The electric motor only need a handful of supporting components to function
A V8 ice engine has a few power pulses during one revolution of the crankshaft but don't forget about that compression stroke, valve springs, and the internal friction sucking up that power even before it leaves the output shaft
The electric motor has dozens of power pulses during one revolution of the output shaft with very little internal friction
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
EVs are so amazing government have to mandate them :)
Why couldn't overtake Nissan the magnificent AC charging from Renault?
EV battery pollution is Just Getting started !
Level 5 autonomy is coming soon.
Power to move with electricity may well be part of our transport future but not with great heavy batteries which we have now. The engineering to try and mitigate the effect cannot hide the grossly over weight with all the attendant costs.
With regenerative braking, the main concern about weight - that it wastes fuel - is dramatically reduced.
Issues of road and tyre waste are clearly not real concerns, or we would never have allowed the rush to SUVs. Battery energy densities have doubled in the past decade and will continue to improve.
BTW, range for range, BEVs are lighter than H2FC vehicles.
surely if a vehicle meets crash safety regs (or is the benchmark) and is the same weight as it's ice competitors, then that would make the point moot? right?
If you go and check the specs on the new model 3 tesla you can see that we are already there today
How quickly you can be made wrong. This video is two months old and Tesla FSD V13 has basically achieved what Dr Palmer said would not be done in his lifetime. And on another bright note Assad's regime in Syria has fallen.
Few companies have hurt the perception of EVs as much as Nissan with their rapidly-battery degrading Leaf and Nissans clinging to ChaDeMo even at a time when it was 100% clear everything in Europe would be CCS.
Dr. Palmer and Michael are wrong about autonomy.
Level 3 is not "eyes on the road" as Andy said. Within the ODD, L3 has a person in the driver's seat who has to remain alert to an audible or visual signal to transition, which is expected to last a reasonable amount of time, up to ten seconds in tests. So the L3 ADS must be able to keep the car safe without the human, with the human taking over after the transition to get it going again. There is nothing in L3 where the fallback driver has to keep eyes on the road and immediately take over for safety when the ADS fails at dynamic driving. It could require the person to immediately react if the car has a flat tire or mechanical failure, but not for dynamic driving task.
Level 2 is where the person is driving at all times, eyes on road and hands at the ready, even if the ADS does all driving on a trip.
Level 3 is eyes off, hands off within the ODD, in the driver's seat and not asleep, ok to be reading a book, ready to take over in a reasonable time. No company will create a Level 3 car with a wide ODD. It wouldn't make sense to assume liability for accidents when they could call it a Level 2 and blame the human driver/owner.
And Michael, Waymo right now can drive itself across a city like London, or San Fran, or L.A., with only occasional fallback remote operations like people getting it out of a jam such as a blocked narrow road or at a gate with no access, or pulling into someone's driveway to turn around. And most remote ops incidents result in the team telling the car to continue without assistance. Level 5 robotaxis will still need a human staff monitoring, charging, cleaning, maintaining, dealing with accidents, doing customer service, getting cars out of jams that require a human.
Level 4 may or may not have pedals and steering wheel.
Level 5 is more of a business and investment problem than driving ability. It's Level 4 driving on all public roads.
An L4 ADS that can drive in multiple entire metro areas and can handle rain, sun, and fog, would likely be capable of L5 driving when the investment comes to map the entire country and have access to necessary human staff.
Waymo can handle London and NY now, and it's improving at a very fast rate. They'll have the driving ability to do a reasonable L5 in a few years, with the bottleneck being the huge investment job of mapping the country and buying cars and contracting for maintenance/monitoring hubs.
In England and the U.S., they don't need to solve driving in Delhi to deploy everywhere.
If Waymo invests in a London operation with Uber, it could be running in a few years to whisk you across London while you read your iPad in the back seat.
It's an expensive way to go autonomous. Lidars, radars and the car won't work if the road is not mapped. The longer term solution is teslas vision only fsd which is making giant strides and is being copied by the Chinese.
Less than 3% of the worlds cars are electric, after 18 years of political agenda towards EV.
If it didn't start already, what does it show us?
It shows you're a fool. Over 20% of car sales are now EV or PHEV, over 50% in China, and growing. Of course it takes time for the fleet to renew, because its average age is over ten years, and cars are scrapped at about 20 years old. So you can either get smart fast, or just wait and be proven a fool.
Oil was 3% the size of wood as fuel in 1900, which one was the better investment opportunity?
@@Apjooz Lol, wood and oil are compared by what? Mass, Volume, or costs? Nice that you invent some numbers... but Not helpful.
Flatscreens needed just 8 years for a 50%... Smartphones we're even faster... didn't you realize how fast new technology which IS wanted, spreads?
@@moskitoh2651 Energy. Joules, kilowatthours, barrel equivalents, you name it. But oil indeed was 3% of the size of wood in the year 1900, Yup.
Global warming is not a political issue but a survival issue. Big oil is the biggest obstacle but lately battery technology has improved do much that within a few years many ice laggers will go bust or sold at bargain prices to the Chinese!!!!
Great convo guys! But we're not going to reach L5 autonomy in your lifetime? Stand by, Tesla's 10/10 Robotaxi event is days away!🙂
Also, we do have autonomous cars today, although they're currently geo-fenced.
Apart from battery fires, high tyre wear, insurance and repair costs, EVs are viable it is the electricity supply at reasonable cost with in the UK the cost being the highest in the World four times that of the US and not sufficient to power the economy without connectors never mind charging EVs and as goes the UK so goes Europe.
Hmmm, Tesla robotaxi event in 2 weeks, will they show Level 5 technology?
Not a chance
They're getting their quickly.
Also the tech being used in 2016 for driving assist bears no similarity to the AI being used today in autonomous driving. Clearly it's been promised for years but the tech is now there - we're just waiting for the training for 99.9999999% use cases to be completed. As for Delhi - you have to train the system for Delhi. There is nothing so special about the human brain that it cannot be imitated with the advantage of no distractions.
You will be right... eventually. I'm not saying self-driving cars are impossible, I'm saying society will hold them to such a high bar that we are still quite a few years away.
Byd has a hybrid that will go 2000 KM on one tank of gas.
If your only criterion for choosing a car is how often you have to go to a gas station, you should buy one and just live with the carbon footprint and pollution.
Unless, of course you have a garage or driveway, or live near to a lamp-post, in which case buy an EV, NEVER go to a gas station, and dramatically cut your emissions and pollution.
It's entirely your call - until of course eventually they start shutting gas stations because so few people are using them.
@@fredfrond6148 Anyone buying a hybrid will regret it. Twice as many things to go wrong will ultimately hurt reliability and drive up maintenance and repair costs.
Shitty tradeoff for range most people never need.
@@ChrisR-xs9wp as you said it is a trade off. If your range anxiety is so great and you take long trips to areas with spotty infrastructure the shark hybrid is the way to go. If you are an urbanite that just does not leave the city then an ev is best.
@@fredfrond6148 Even for highway driving, nobody needs more than 300 miles of range. It's dangerous for you and everyone else to drive extended hours without a break.
I said it was a SHITTY tradeoff and it is.
The next green problem is how to get rid of dead EV''s that no-one wants.
They are shite people don't want them
BYD Seagull Wuling Bingo Dongfeng Box Changan Benni EV Cars for 10.000 dollar Worldwide.❤👍👍👍
I will NEVER even consider an EV appliance.
NEVER.
The Amish refuse to use zip-fasteners, but they sound coldly rational compared to you.
Hope you are old or get a horse!!!! Or you are just blind
The Leaf was a spectacular failure for Nissan.
The Nissan range is dreadful , and that’s what their sales indicate. There will never be autonomous vehicles approved in most countries. Elon is dreaming. FSD(supervised) just doesn’t work, and never will using cameras.
Robbotaxi will not happen, the whole concept is laughable.
BEV’s have slowed down in Australia, sales are approximately the same as 2023. HEV’s are outselling BEV’s 2 to 1 this year.
Diesel sales are up 10%, and the 4 top selling cars in Australia are Diesel duel cab utes.
What does this tell you? It tells me that most people that want a BEV have bought one, the others are waiting for prices to come down. Most Australians , like over 90% don’t want a BEV.
What is better 1.35Million deaths per year in vehicles worldwide or 135K deaths per years worldwide. I think it would be criminal to insist on the 1.35M deaths remaining.
I'm not insisting. I'm telling you that society has a different standard for automated systems and systems that can cause mass-casualty events.
I also don't buy your claim that driverless cars would be 10x safer if let loose today.
It seems that those who are fans of evs have no mechanical knowledge and no knowledge of electricity generation.Electric cars are nowhere near the convenience of ice vehicles and will not be for a long time.If evs continue to be forced on the public our road transport will be reduced by at least 50%,simply on affordability.
Bullshit argument. Open the market for the Chinese and you get prices below current ice cars as batteries are getting really cheap.
Tesla could reduce prices more if they wanted but go for FSD now.
Andy palmer should not be a voice for vehicle manufacturing in the UK. He is only out to serve himself and his pockets
45 seconds in and had enough. Nobody wants them unless sponsored.
What happens when everyone is driving EV's? it seems to me that we will end up with those who can charge at home being subsidised by those who can't. there's no such thing as a free lunch, the electricity system has to be paid for and if some people in society are getting a free ride, literally, then others will have to be paying for it, and it would appear likely that it will be those that are already at the lower end of the wealth ladder.
How will they be being subsided?
They will have an advantage in convenience sure. But there's lots of solutions to enable charging across a pavement eg Kerbo charge on your home electricity for the same price.
Other solutions exist too, like lamppost charging. There's no reason every residential street without offering street parking couldn't have the necessary numbers of chargers installed - there will certainly be demand for it, so it could be done with a fair business case.
It's feasible everywhere a car rests, and they rest/ aren't used 90% of their lives, for a charger to be installed. Just needs the political will.
Why do you expect personal transport to be any fairer than anything else? You could say people on high incomes subsidise poorer people by paying a higher tax rate. People who pay school fees subsidise people in state education. People with private health care subsidise people who wait to get treated by the nhs.
Nothing is fair in this world.
@@Lewis_Standing I think free destination chargers will be the thing. Shopping centres, offices, hotels, restaurants,everywhere. Once electricity gets cheaper, then people will go to the places with free charging.
When everybody has EVs, many apartment buildings will install chargers if they have parking, work parking lots, shopping centers and fast food will have chargers, cars will transition to self-driving and go charge themselves at some point, and the price of mobility energy will be less than petrol overall, with solar practically free midday in many places. Nothing to worry about.
@@charliedoyle7824 unfortunately that is not correct. As the current situation for public charging shows, the overheads of running charge networks are high and are passed on to users. That will be true for any type of charger which is not the property of and operated by the homeowner. Cars will certainly not go around to charge points to charge themselves up - that will be a licence for gridlock. The price of electric charging looks unlikely to go below gasolene for a long time, if ever. Tesla superchargers are much more expensive than was originally claimed by Musk. Solar will not be "practically free" unless the vehicle operator has a long term vehicle to grid arrangement with the service provider, and in practice that means that only the homeowner will be able to take advantage of V2G prices.
This is a major problem for the UK now as the high income motivated sector of car owners has gone to EV, at least for enough time to evaluate it. If the total cost of ownership is not going to be lower, at least in the forseeable future, that will slow the market down, as is already the case. The UK Times and other papers are making a big deal of this just now.
We havent yet addressed the probem of maintenance, which should be much less onerous for EVs versus ICE, but the overhead cost will be much higher due to the amount of special equipment and trained personnel needed. So maintenance is likely to be much more expensive on a per garage visit basis, and that will be reflected in insurance costs. It is going to be a very bumpy ride
AVs, you look at the problem from within the Motor industry i.e. you are old farts. ICE, BEV and H2 vehicles will be driven by software and soon AI The digital revolution has been underway since the turn of the decade. CAM level 4 will be available in UK from 2026 re: Tesla, BYD, Waymo, Wyave... The legacy OEMs need to react now or they will 'wither on the vine' and die. The fine auto vintages will be enjoyed by enthusiasts for years to come using eco-biofuels. Why are legacy OEMs holding onto the past?
literally just clicked the video to see just how indoctrinated this guy was