Nissan, one of Japan's oldest car manufacturers, has recently made their move to bring their own line of hybrid cars to the streets. Today, they unveiled a new technology that can revolutionize the electric cars, the Nissan e-Power.
The e-Power uses a smaller battery pack than what they have installed on the Nissan Leaf, reducing cost, weight and allowing it to be used on smaller cars. Hybrid cars currently on the market use petrol and batteries to fuel its engines.
The e-Power will only be using the gasoline engine to charge the batteries, and not to drive the wheels. This type of drivetrain can also be called a series hybrid.
The wheels are driven by an electric motor that uses energy from an onboard battery pack. The gasoline engine automatically turns on to recharge the battery whenever the charge goes low.
This technology can take the lead of Nissan further from its rival, the Toyota Prius. Although the Prius charges a certain amount of power to the battery whenever it stops, it still uses both the gasoline and the battery to drive the car. On the other hand, the e-Power engine only uses the gasoline to charge the car and will run purely on batteries.
Time spent charging the battery can also be an advantage for the e-Power as it uses power that comes directly from the car to charge, the Prius, however, takes up to 5 hours to get a complete charge. This feature from Nissan can be a real time saver for drivers who are always on the go and does not have the luxury of time to fully charge their car batteries.
The e-Power can truly be a big leap in advancing technology towards renewable energy. The Nissan Note e-Power is the first model to use the new hybrid powertrain.
