"Can you drive that electric car in the rain?" and other ???

[amtoro]

The reduction gear box has some transmission fluid in it but I assume it is good for 150k+

Correct, the manual indicates it should be inspected at 15k miles and then every 30k miles (for the less severe, normal-road-car-use schedule 2).
No mention of replacing it at or any time before 120k, which is as far as the maintenance schedule goes.

 

[Caracalover]

I tend to not answer questions, but ask them. Ask how far do they drive in a day, and 80% of the time they shut up and you have them. The other 20% you say that if more of these are on the road, gas demand will go down giving them a cheaper drive. Win win.

 

[aqn]

About driving through standing water (12" worth of it): an ICE car, with its tail pipe well within 12" of the pavement, would not have made it through that "puddle": the engine would have died at about 5 feet into it. Why? I don't know, but that's what happened the one time I did that (torrential rain on the Harlem River Parkway); it's probably the same reason why the "banana in the tail pipe" trick works.

No, that would have no affect on the car running. If that were true outboard motors would not work, among other things...

For one thing, outboard motors don't just have the end of the exhaust in the water: they usually exit through the center of the propeller. I don't know how that works, but that seems a significant difference. (Thanks for bringing that up. I did not know that previously.)

Exhaust pressure can easily blow through many feet of water.

Color me skeptical. You also need to explain to me why my car died when I drove through sill-deep water.

More like, it simply splashed water on the electrical or ignition system...

The car was a 1983 Rabbit GTI, with solid state ignition. And it'd be really tough for any significant amount of that water to climb up high enough to get any ignition electronics or eletrical wiring wet quickly enough for the car to die a few feet into the puddle i.e. within a couple of seconds. The only wiring low enough to get wet would have been the oxygen sensors' and the fuel pumps. Oxygen sensors don't make a car run or not; they only make a car run well or run poorly. Fuel pump? Sure that would make the car kaput if the fuel pump or its wiring short out. But in any case, if it was electrical, I wouldn't be able to re-start the car as soon as I was out of the water: a Jeep pushed me out and my car immediately started back up.

Obviously, my one anecdotal experience does not prove that cars won't run with exhaust submerged. Indeed there are many vids on youtube of cars (the three I looked at are trucks actually) doing so, albeit in fairly shallow water. All I'm saying is that my experience says otherwise.

 

[TomT]

When an outboard is sitting at idle and in neutral, it is essentially just an underwater exhaust. The same is true with I/O (outdrive) type boat propulsion. (Through the hub exhaust is used to scavenge the exhaust more thoroughly at speed, decrease noise, and to bury the exhaust gases deeper and more thoroughly in the water. It also provides a slight improvement in propulsion efficiency.) To expel exhaust one foot underwater, it requires approximately 0.4 pounds of pressure. This is relatively nothing to a common ICE engine in terms of back pressure and certainly will not stop it.

Here is an article that discusses it: http://auto.howstuffworks.com/under-the-hood/trends-innovations/driving-underwater.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

For one thing, outboard motors don't just have the end of the exhaust in the water: they usually exit through the center of the propeller. I don't know how that works, but that seems a significant difference. (Thanks for bringing that up. I did not know that previously.)

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

And why, as someone else asked, would it be more difficult to drive an electric car in the snow than a regular car? Not that I'm going to be driving any vehicle if it snows in coastal Southern California.

So what's the funniest question you get about your LEAF, or the one that just leaves you shaking your head?

unlike my Prius, traction control can be turned off, but it does work fairly well in snow. here is video i took on my Droid. scenario; heavy rain, turned to ice, then 4-8 inches of snow on top of that.

as you can see, with traction control on, i had no issues driving. even when pumping the accelerator, the car did an excellent job of maintaining control. iow; driving sensibly would have been very easy.

now the big problems my Prius had was getting going due to traction control. hard to rock it when power is being shut down to the wheels. notice the MAJOR difference when i turned off traction control on the Leaf. realize my "pumping" motion did not change at all

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNvC3BG4Syg[/youtube]

 

[Yodrak]

They did. It's called a Volt. But it isn't cheap.

I got one Saturday, " Why don't they just hook up an electric motor to the alternator of regular cars and make a cheap electric car?"

 

[Herm]

The car was a 1983 Rabbit GTI, with solid state ignition. And it'd be really tough for any significant amount of that water to climb up high enough to get any ignition electronics or eletrical wiring wet quickly enough for the car to die a few feet into the puddle i.e. within a couple of seconds.

You got a few drops of water in the distributor.. a diesel GTI would not have any issues unless water got sucked into the air intake, then you would have big issues.

 

[rumpole]

Mine is more moronic than funny...

"Why don't you just buy a golf cart? The car is just a glorified golf cart, isn't it?"

<groan>

I have a response all planned for that one. "If I'm driving a glorified golf cart, then you're driving a glorified lawn mower."

 

[Smidge204]

Color me skeptical. You also need to explain to me why my car died when I drove through sill-deep water.

Depends on how you rev the engine. At high RPMs there is enough power to push out just about any blockage. Remember that the engine is essentially an air pump, so if you got enough power to force the air through you can build up enough back pressure to clear the blockage. Cutoff point would be when the exhaust gas left in the cylinder is at high enough pressure to be at or above intake manifold pressure, thus precluding an intake stroke.

Keeping engine RPM, and thus power and exhaust flow, high is the key to prevent water intrusion. Put it in first gear and burn your clutch a bit (or powerbrake if it's an automatic).

A banana won't do anything to the car. Apparently four potatoes is what it takes.

One potato is not enough though:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqBp59R8xMQ[/youtube]


Meanwhile, the LEAF can handle 27.5 inches of standing water without hesitation:

=Smidge=

 

[smkettner]

If Nissan had just sealed the interior cabin we could drive under water

 

[JeffN]

I noticed it has warnings that you must not handle the charge plug when your hands are wet or when you are standing in water or snow (page CH-2). It says you also shouldn't charge the car when there is lightning nearby.... So I guess you can drive in the rain but not charge it.

Update: I charged my rental LEAF in the rain this morning while getting breakfast and survived.

Further update: I survived a 35 kW quick charge this morning but it was in a nice and dry parking garage.

I tried doing a Chademo charge outside at PSU's Electric Avenue in a light sprinkle of rain but the Eaton charger there appeared to be non-functional. Plugshare shows it was supposed to have been fixed just two days ago and someone claimed to use it earlier this morning. Oh well.

 

[happyamp1]

I noticed it has warnings that you must not handle the charge plug when your hands are wet or when you are standing in water or snow (page CH-2). It says you also shouldn't charge the car when there is lightning nearby.... So I guess you can drive in the rain but not charge it.

Update: I charged my rental LEAF in the rain this morning while getting breakfast and survived.

Further update: I survived a 35 kW quick charge this morning but it was in a nice and dry parking garage.

I tried doing a Chademo charge outside at PSU's Electric Avenue in a light sprinkle of rain but the Eaton charger there appeared to be non-functional. Plugshare shows it was supposed to have been fixed just two days ago and someone claimed to use it earlier this morning. Oh well.

Electric Avenue has had problems keeping the charging stations going. I usually use a Blink station, but this one has particularly bad problems compared with all the other Blinks I've used.
Ken Peterson, Professor Emeritus

 

[Volusiano]

I think my husband said the only liquids are coolant and brake fluid.

What does the Leaf use for power steering, by the way? No power steering fluid is needed?

It's electrically boosted with a DC motor.

-Phil

Now why can't ICE cars make power steering like that? I just spent a ton of money to fix my ICE car's power steering because it started to leak fluid. Isn't it better to use the DC motor approach on ICE cars, too?

 

[cwerdna]

Was there ever an English translation (either dubbed or transcript) of the press conference that came from? I only now stumbled across it at http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=39003#p39003" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.

 

[amtoro]

Now why can't ICE cars make power steering like that? I just spent a ton of money to fix my ICE car's power steering because it started to leak fluid. Isn't it better to use the DC motor approach on ICE cars, too?

Electrically-assisted power steering is quite common in small ICE cars. My previous two cars, a MINI and a Yaris have had it.

 

[Herm]

Electrically-assisted power steering is quite common in small ICE cars. My previous two cars, a MINI and a Yaris have had it.

Most new cars have it, the old style PS is becoming rare.

 

[aqn]

The car was a 1983 Rabbit GTI, with solid state ignition. And it'd be really tough for any significant amount of that water to climb up high enough to get any ignition electronics or eletrical wiring wet quickly enough for the car to die a few feet into the puddle i.e. within a couple of seconds.

You got a few drops of water in the distributor.. a diesel GTI would not have any issues unless water got sucked into the air intake, then you would have big issues.

There's no distributor. It's ECU -> coil (single coil) -> spark plugs. And again, all the electronics and wiring are in the upper part of the engine bay. I'm very skeptical that enough water can get that high to cause electrical problems. I wouldn't say it's impossible; it's just difficult to believe.

And as I mentioned above, if water-in-electrical-bits was the problem, the car wouldn't have started right up within like, 30 seconds, of stalling.

 

[keydiver]

Most of the time I have seen cars stalled in high water it is because they inhaled too much water into the air intake. They are usually very low, right behind a headlight where they can scoop up water too easily. In many cases it will not just stall the motor but hydrolock it, so you can't even crank it over. If you do it with too much power applied it can even break rods or other engine parts, since you can't compress water.
Or, the other thing that may have happened to you was water on old spark plug wires, which will make them arc over to ground or each other.

 

[Ingineer]

Several things; the 1983 GTI had a distributor. No points, a reluctor and transistorized coil switch, but still a distributor and spark plug wires. This is the most likely cause for stalling.

Exhaust back pressure with a foot or 2 of water will not cause any piston engine to stall, this is definitely not the cause!

-Phil

 

[Nekota]

Most of the time I have seen cars stalled in high water it is because they inhaled too much water into the air intake. They are usually very low, right behind a headlight where they can scoop up water too easily. In many cases it will not just stall the motor but hydrolock it, so you can't even crank it over. If you do it with too much power applied it can even break rods or other engine parts, since you can't compress water.
Or, the other thing that may have happened to you was water on old spark plug wires, which will make them arc over to ground or each other.

Add to that the water spray from the fan, wheels and in particular a burst of steam from hot exhaust manifold and you have killed the oxygen supply to the ICE. By the time you extract the vehicle from the water, it's recovered from the ingress of water vapor and ready to run. Is the practice of adding a stream water to air intake to 'blow out carbon' used anymore?