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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from house stuff works dot com

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Speaker 1: where smart happens. Hi Marshall Brain with today's question, why

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Speaker 1: is the Nissan Leaf car that was announced this weekend

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Speaker 1: such a big deal. It's true that the Nissan Leaf

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Speaker 1: has gotten big headline since its announcement this weekend, but

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Speaker 1: it's for good reason. This is the first real mass

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Speaker 1: market electric car to be sold in the United States.

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Speaker 1: It's a full size car, able to hold five passengers,

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Speaker 1: and you'll be able to recharge it in your garage.

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Speaker 1: General Motors did offer the e V one electric cars

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Speaker 1: starting in but only about a thousand of those two

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Speaker 1: seaters were built. Then GM canceled the program and destroyed

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Speaker 1: all the cars in two thousand three. So the Leaf

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Speaker 1: really is the start of a new era, and many

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Speaker 1: experts have high hopes because the Leaf is a real car. First,

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Speaker 1: it offers a hundred miles of travel per charge, plenty

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Speaker 1: of range for typical day to day use in America. Second,

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Speaker 1: it has plenty of power. A hundred and seven horsepower

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Speaker 1: electric motor gives it brisk acceleration and a top speed

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Speaker 1: of ninety miles per hour. Third, you can recharge it

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Speaker 1: overnight in your garage, or you can go to a

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Speaker 1: quick charge station where you can recharge it in just

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Speaker 1: thirty minutes or less. Fourth, it's a reasonably priced car

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Speaker 1: that will be very inexpensive to operate. Recharging the Leaf

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Speaker 1: for the next hundred mile journey should cost less than

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Speaker 1: one gallon of gasoline. And finally, it's a very green car.

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Speaker 1: It produces no emissions at all while you're driving, it

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Speaker 1: needs no motor oil or anti freeze, and it could

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Speaker 1: significantly improve urban air quality if enough people buy them.

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Speaker 1: You might have a question at this point. If the

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Speaker 1: Leaf has all of these advantages and looks so promising,

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Speaker 1: why is it taken so long for a car company

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Speaker 1: to produce a real electric car. It's because electric cars

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Speaker 1: are not quite as simple as they look. I mean,

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Speaker 1: we play with little toy electric cars starting at age

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Speaker 1: two or three, so electric cars seem trivial. In a

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Speaker 1: toy car, there's a small electric motor and four double

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Speaker 1: A batteries, but a real electric car is far more complicated.

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Speaker 1: The biggest hurdle has been the battery pack. In particular,

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Speaker 1: it's been the size, the cost, the range, the lifespan,

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Speaker 1: and the safety of the battery pack that has been

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Speaker 1: the problem. For example, if you tried to create the

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Speaker 1: Nissan Leaf with lead acid batteries, the technology used by

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Speaker 1: the big battery in your car now, the leaf would

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Speaker 1: be impossible. The battery pack would need forty or fifty

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Speaker 1: of those big batteries and they would weigh something close

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Speaker 1: to a ton, They would only last a few years,

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Speaker 1: and replacement batteries would cost something like five thousand dollars.

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Speaker 1: The leaf would be impossible in this configuration. Nickel metal

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Speaker 1: hydride batteries are smaller and lighter, but they're still problematic.

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Speaker 1: So Nissan, in conjunction with Neck, has developed a new

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Speaker 1: type of lithium ion battery for the leaf. This is

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Speaker 1: the same technology powering your laptop computer. By comparison to

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Speaker 1: lead acid and nickel metal hydride batteries, lithium ion batteries

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Speaker 1: are small and light, but up until now they've been

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Speaker 1: extremely expensive and prone to the occasional explosion. Nissan is

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Speaker 1: using a new packaging technology that looks like an oversized

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Speaker 1: sardine can, and apparently has been able to bring the

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Speaker 1: cost down through economies of scale and innovative leasing arrangements,

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Speaker 1: making the batteries safe enough to survive an accident and

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Speaker 1: rugged enough to handle sweltering summer days, freezing winter nights,

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Speaker 1: and all kinds of vibration has also been a challenge

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Speaker 1: that Nissan apparently has overcome. With the battery problem solved,

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Speaker 1: Nissan then had to solve many smaller problems. For example,

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Speaker 1: in a traditional car, the air conditioner, the heat or

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Speaker 1: the power stirring pump, the power brakes all take their

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Speaker 1: power from the engine. In the leaf, the air conditioning

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Speaker 1: and the power steering pumps need their own electric motors,

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Speaker 1: and the heat is generated electrically instead of coming for

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Speaker 1: free from excess engine heat. There's actually a little heat

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Speaker 1: pump made out of the air conditioner to provide heat

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Speaker 1: to the car. And then there's the recharging problem. The

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Speaker 1: leaf has a four kilowatt hour battery pack. If you

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Speaker 1: plug the leaf into a standard house outlet in the US,

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Speaker 1: a full charge would take something like sixteen hours. Using

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Speaker 1: something like the plug for an electric dryer would reduce

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Speaker 1: the time to perhaps four hours. But what if you

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Speaker 1: need to recharge fast? Nissan has developed a quick charge

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Speaker 1: station that can do the job in thirty minutes or less.

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Speaker 1: That's longer than it takes to fill a gas tank,

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Speaker 1: but within the realm of reality. If these recharging stations

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Speaker 1: were to spread normal gas stations and convenience stores, it

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Speaker 1: wouldn't make electric cars nearly as convenient as gasoline model,

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Speaker 1: and there is no way to refuel a gasoline car

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Speaker 1: overnight in your garage. Taken altogether, the Leaf's features have

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Speaker 1: the potential to open a whole new segment in the

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Speaker 1: automotive world. It'll be interesting to see how other manufacturers respond.

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Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics because

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Speaker 1: at how stuff Works dot com,