The Nissan Leaf boasts a battery that can store 24 kilowatt hours – enough to power a typical US home for about a day. After the catastrophic Tsunami and resulting earthquakes that have rocked Japan since March and have left many Japanese citizens dealing with periodic blackouts. Now there is growing interest from both consumers and Nissan’s Hideaki Watanabe to find a way to tap into the 24-kilowatt hour battery and turn the Leaf into a mobile backup generator.
Watanabe admits that the technology isn’t there but is pushing for engineers at Nissan to develop a workable solution within the next year; ideally a working prototype that doesn’t require any additional hardware to work. Right now though, Nissan’s efforts may be to focus on getting their plant, which was badly damaged during the earthquake, back to 100% operating capacity and fill the 10,000 Leaf vehicles it promised the American market.
Source: Detroit Free Press
Oh my god that thing is uglier than a macaques balloon knot