the nissan leaf.where can i get 1?have you heard any stats on these car?
http://www.nissanusa.com/leaf-electric-car/?dcp=ppn.39666654.&dcc=0.216878497
Apparently, you can’t get one. Yet.
I “love” the idea of electric cars, but I’m going to have to see them and read reports I can trust from owners for a few years before I bite. It’s been more than ten years, and I wouldn’t buy a hybrid anything yet. I would recommend you wait.
Best of luck…
They aren’t available yet, but when they come out, they will be lease only. You also have to lease the battery packs. However, I would wait until they have been proven to be as reliable as conventional cars. Also, the range may not be as lengthy as a hybrid or gas car.
In a tour around the country, Nissan is revealing more details about its 2011 Leaf electric car. Nissan plans traditional sales and leases of the Leaf starting next December. (There had been some speculation that the company might only lease the Leaf, or sell or lease the batteries separately from the car.)
The Leaf will use an 80 kW (107-hp) electric motor, which will give it a top speed of about 90 mph. The interior is well finished and looks roomy enough, though the company would not let us sit in the car. Glossy buttons on the center console are big, but may be hard to distinguish without looking. The large battery pack under the floor creates a large box that sticks out a little from the seats, which could be awkward. We?ll have to wait for further opportunities to drive the car to find out.
The five-passenger car will have a 24 kwh lithium-ion battery capable of a 100-mile range. As a purely battery-electric vehicle, it will not have a gas engine to extend the range like the Chevrolet Volt. Nissan still has not announced a price, but says the compact Leaf will sell for the price of a midsized sedan. Ownership costs are claimed to be in line with compact gas-powered cars, after accounting for fuel costs. At national average electric rates, it should cost about $2.80 to fully charge the Leaf, or an average of about $450 a year, Nissan says.
– from Consumer Reports Auto Blog
If you turned on the heater, headlights, wipers, range WILL be considerably less. Turn on the A/C and it will be lucky to go 40 miles on a charge…
for me perfect it’s 22 miles on way too work and i can charge it there.
Will your employer allow you to use his electricity to charge your Leaf?
Do they have a dedicated 240 volt line with a 40 amp breaker?
Dream on.
The elephant in the room with electric cars is battery cost, range, and life. Until there is a major revolution, (not slight improvement) in battery technology, I think electrics will remain niche vehicles.
If you are smart, you will not routinely drive an electric car to the limit of the battery capacity unless you want ridiculously short battery life, so if they say “100 mile range” think 50-60 miles realistically.
Suitable batteries are available NOW and have been for years…
Though leasing batteries may assuage your dependability worries on these lines, guess what; you’re now back in the hands of the energy corporations who will hold and control those leases and get there monthly cut. Sounds like a gas budget all over again. That’s why I’m a big fat wait.
The car companies themselves really don’t want to sell these white elephants as anything more than low volume come ons…these things could be out running around now, but corporations haven’t finalized how there all going to get there ongoing cut from consumer like they can from ICE with controlled energy supply, parts and maintenance.
Heck by some responses on these discussions, there are already some here saying it won’t affect car company profits…sure, that’s like buying a Dish from Direct TV and getting your over the air signal free…neither can live with that. There’s just not enough maintenance on an EV to support car companies and energy companies have to find away to tap into the electric grid to get their cut…which now is illegal. I wouldn’t be surprised if a group of bought out senators sponsored a bill for a surtax on your electric bill that would cover the loss in revenue for Exxon…still waiting and still skeptical.
Go to a Nissan dealer. They are advertising the car on TV so they are looking to sign up early adopters and taking deposits.
And you can bet for good reason, they’ll cost “twice” as much as they should to recover their expected parts and maintenance losses.
Electric cars have come and gone since the early 1900’s when Studebaker made an electric car, there was a Baker electric, etc. These cars disappeared and in the 1970’s during the contrived fuel crunch, two electic cars, the Citicar and the Elcar came on the market. These cars didn’t stay on the market very long. General Motors had an electric car that was leased (I don’t remember what it was called, but I saw one in a museum that GM hadn’t destroyed).
One of the big problems is heating and cooling the interior of these cars. Electric motors don’t produce enough heat for cold climates. Air to air heat pumps involve a compressor. Heat pumps aren’t efficient below 35 degrees and are either supplemented by electric resistance coils, or in my house, by a gas furnace. Running a compressor for air conditioning takes energy. The Citicar answered the heating problem using a propane powered heater. However, it seems to me that one might as well have an engine that develops mechanical energy while it produces heat.
I did come across a used Citicar that needed a battery pack. I was going to buy the car and meter the electrical energy that it would use to charge and recharge the batteries. My wife talked me out of the idea. I have to travel to work on a busy street and she didn’t think the Citicar seemed very substantial.
And until those issues you mention and others are resolved, they still make GREAT golf carts.
Everybody is ASSUMING energy prices will be stable and at current prices for the next 5-10 years…That is a VERY risky assumption…The car companies want to have SOMETHING on the showroom floor they can sell, and have a proven design in production and be able to quickly ramp up production if needed…
ALL of the car makers will hedge their ICE bets with pure electric cars as the “Peak Oil” situation plays out and Chinese and Indian consumers add MILLIONS of new cars to the global fleet every year…
Are we going to play hard-ball with Iran over Nukes?? If so, that means gasoline at $6/gallon TOMORROW…That’s the bet the “Leaf” covers…
A friendly reminder for me; the “conservation of oil” is really not an issue with energy and car companies. They are happy to produce things like hybrids, while still producing less oil but at but a higher price. Wouldn’t you like to get the same pay for less work ? It’s the EV that bends that reality for them in a way they are not ready to adjust to.
There is enough oil reserve for a long, long time, as reserve is figured on the actual cost to extract energy v. the market price. Higher price more reserve. That’s why there seems to be disagreement on reserve from one year to the next.
That’s why we do it (EV’s, CAFE and the like) for different reasons, like the environment,personal safety and health. We can’t loose site of that goal, regardless of how much or little oil cost. Contrived price control by direct drilling nations should not be our indicator for action as it has so many times in the past. Those who constantly want it to be a short term economic issue, are giving up our control over our mobility more than any govt. regulation would.
I’m impressed and enthusiastic about the progress made by Tesla in the arena of purely electric vehicles, and I’m enthusiastic about their future, but I also believe that an advancemet in storage technology and a supply infrastructure is needed for any real mass use of all electric vehicles. Litium ion battery arrays are just too expensive to produce currently and their true lifespan and cost to replace in automotive applications is currently not really known.
If the cars become truely usable for normal daily drivers, become affordable, develop a reputation for long term reliability and affordability of the power packs, and a rechargiing infrastructure is developed, I belive the manufacturers will manufacture them and the public will buy them.
It may even turn out that all-electric drivetrains are far cheaper to produce than hydrocarbon fueled drivetrains (gas or diesel) and manufacturers can (if the cost of power packs comes down) produce and sell them at higher profit margins. I can easily envision where an electric powered powertrain could be much cheaper to manufacture than a gas-engined drivetrain. Electric motors are relatively inexpensive to produce, reliable, and don’t need the complicated fuel and emissions systems, nor do they need the complicated multispeed transmissions that gas engines do. Heck, they could even be placed right at the wheels, like locomotives do. Or coupled with a CVT.
"Suitable batteries are available NOW and have been for years… "
I’m skeptical. Certainly the type of battery has been around for a long time, but they have not been available in the form or quantity or at the price required to use in mass transit. Sure, Tesla does it but the cars cost $100,000; a lot of that is ganging the small, expensive batteries generally available to make the fuel cell.
One country, Saudi Arabia, controls the world price of oil. They can make it go up or down at will. No privately held oil company or oil producer can set the price of oil.
We now IMPORT over 60% of our oil. Drill all you want, you won’t change that figure very much. It’s the “Price at The Pump” that drives consumer decision-making…
Traction Motors produce 100% of their torque at zero RPM and therefore need no transmission or clutch. 100 HP electric motors, when made by the millions, will put a great demand on copper supplies and push prices up to a new level. But, as always, it’s the expensive and short lived battery that is the limiting factor…
Most American families own more than one car…I can see having an electric for “around town” transportation needs and also having a ICE vehicle for longer trips and interstate traveling needs. This would cut our gasoline demand by more than half and take great pressure off our trade deficit by reducing oil imports…