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Comment by Hamuko | Hacker News Reader

I don't think the fuel tank and gearbox in my car take up that much space when compared to the batteries in a Leaf or a Tesla. And you still need to put this where the engine used to go, so it's really a limited amount of space there as well.

Just for reference, this is the fuel tank in my car: https://traversparts.com/download/normal/246883_1.jpeg

And this illustrates where the batteries in a Leaf are: https://s1.cdn.autoevolution.com/images/news/nissan-leaf-bat...

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A 15.5 gallon tank is 58.5 liters. A Tesla S/X module[1] is 15.84 liters for ~5.3 kWh. If you could cram every inch of space with batteries it would come to just under 20 kWh. Not that much, and it will degrade quicker because you'll deeply discharge it more often.

That said, you can generally just line your trunk with batteries. You can jam 5 in the trunk of most cars while only losing ~3.5" of vertical space. Its a good idea to leave several inches for the crumple zone, but it's relatively safe if they are properly secured.

The best thing to do would really be to raise the floor and get low-profile sliders for your seats, but that's a real hassle.

[1]: https://www.evwest.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=...

I'm still a bit iffy on the safety when it comes to the trunk. As far as I've understood, Teslas and the like have pretty good protection between the battery and you in case something bad happens. But there's not really that much of a separation between the interior and the trunk, like there is with the engine compartment with its firewall.

Hybrids have customarily placed their batteries at the forward-most part of the trunk for as long as they have existed. The packs are typically inside of metal housings and vented to the outside of the car.

For those extra concerned about fire or poorly designed packs, it's not difficult to add a rear firewall on most vehicles -- this is standard practice required by most motorsport organizations when adding a fuel cell to the rear of vehicles. "firewall" is just a fancy word for a compartment blocked off with a piece of sheet metal.

The Leaf is more of a golf cart with a compact car shell around it. Range is only 60-miles or so. You should be able to get that with a gas-tank sized battery pack in any compact car.

The leaf has 150-226 miles of range depending on the battery option. Even the first generation nearly a decade ago had more than 60.

I've heard that cold weather combined with high speeds and a very degraded battery and running the heater can leave some of them with an effective range around 60 to 80 miles.

You don't even need to have high speeds or heater usage. 1st gen Leaf's have 60mi range pretty consistently just because of how small the battery was, and how degraded they are.

In general the Leaf seems to be a bad buy, IMO, just because they do not have any liquid cooling. I don't know why they think they can get away with it... but literally every other EV manufacturer decided liquid cooling/heating is necessary for operating... but not Nissan.

That’s a 2nd gen leaf, it has a 40kWh battery and a range around 150 miles (240km).

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