AUTONEWS - AA CLUB OF KENYA MAGAZINE
TECHNOLOGY
– 29
UPDATE
Nissan showcases revolutionary
technology at Sustainability Week
Nissan’s Director of Corporate Af-
fairs and Communication, Wonga
Mesatywa, and Hiten Parmar, Direc-
tor of the uYilo e-Mobility Pro-
gramme with which Nissan partners,
spoke at the event, highlighting the
industry’s responsibility in address-
ing climate change.
“Our goal is to achieve a zero
emission society and we believe that
the innovative technology which
Nissan is currently developing will
go a long way in helping to realise
this objective,” says Mesatywa.
A leader in electric vehicle tech-
nology, Nissan’s award-winning Leaf
has become a global best-seller with
more than 230 000 sales worldwide.
The Leaf is fuelled by a power-
ful lithium-ion battery which has the
added advantage of bi-directional
energy transfer capability. This al-
lows Leaf owners to use the vehicle’s
battery capacity for a variety of
applications, other than charging and
mobility.
The integration of electric
vehicles into the grid will radi-
cally change the energy landscape,
allowing each Nissan EV owner to
actively contribute to the stability of
the national grid.
During the day, solar energy can
be used to power the home and at
night, when little energy is needed
in the home, lower cost energy can
be drawn from the grid to recharge
the car. Then during peak times
the car can put electricity back into
the home to reduce the household
energy bill.
It is during these peak seasons
when large volumes of energy are
being drawn from the grid that
electric vehicles are able to give
back power to support the na-
tional infrastructure, stabilising the
amount of energy drawn collective-
ly by using the car as a personal
power station.
A highlight at this year’s
Sustainability Week was a
demonstration of how Nissan’s
ground-breaking vehicle-to-home
technology can be used to power
small household items and elec-
tronic devices.
The demonstration will be
conducted in partnership with the
uYilo eMobility Programme –
hosted by Port Elizabeth’s Nelson
Mandela Metropolitan University
engineering innovation hub eNtsa
- which is currently exploring local
development of the bi-directional
technology.
“uYilo has established specialised
facilities and developed key exper-
tise to support the electric vehicle
industry in South Africa. A field
testing programme is active within
uYilo where the Nissan Leaf is used
to evaluate interoperability between
the various ecosystem components.
Driver usage patterns, data collec-
tion, second-life battery integration
as well as smart energy management
for EV charging are key outputs from
the project,” says Parmar.
More details: NissanAfri-
[email protected]
Source: http://motorsportkenya.com