Monday, August 9, 2010

Tesla Motor's Elon Musk Sneers at Nissan Leaf Battery

If there's ever going to be a green-car cage match, we can guarantee that one of the fighters will be Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk, who apparently can't pass up the chance to take on any competitor. His latest target? The lithium-ion battery pack in the Nissan Leaf, about which Musk had some critical things to say in a conference call with investors this week.

Even though Nissan is supremely confident in the ability of its battery pack, Musk said it was a "much more primitive level of technology" than even Tesla's first prototype. Musk also said that the Leaf pack will have temperatures "all over the place" that will cause it to suffer "huge degradation" in cold environments and basically "shut off" in hot environments, according to Earth2Tech.

Tesla's battery has a more sophisticated/complicated cooling system than the air-cooled system found in the Leaf pack, but Nissan strongly supports its battery pack with an 8-year, 100,000-mile warranty and has been working on lithium-ion battery technology for a long time. We imagine they know what they're doing, and the proof will be in driveways soon enough.


Source: Autoblog

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