I’m surprised nobody here has suggested the correct plural form is Nissan Leaves
For the record . . . I would disagree with that person
At less than 10K it might actually work for my daily commute. It is 20 miles each way and we have charging stations at work, but you have to pay. The problem is I need AC (South CA), and I would need another car for all the other stuff, trips and so on. Then the question is the extra registration/insurance fees.
For most of my life, I have had beater cars, but the $1K car won’t work for me now. Mostly because I drive close to 20K miles a year and have a full schedule. With my previous beater, the NAPA desk people thought I have a shop and were giving me the mechanic’s discount. I realized I am spending too much money on parts and time ($) on repairs.
Took me a long time to realize I didnt have to stand in line at the parts store every Saturday.
You know if I had an electric car,I wouldnt have use the AC if I had a long way to go,Rangers used to work in Death Valley without AC in their vehicles(od course that stopped when AC became availible,but on the other hand when I was young physical discomfort didnt bother me,10 hrs a day in the blazing sun,will sort of acclimate you(to a point)Bossy man didnt give us any shade breaks either.I have a friend who leased a new Leaf and goes all over and returns with a few miles left(She does use a charging station @ a Nissan dealer in a distant town)She makes it work and spends about a dollar a week on transportation fuel,so I will say it again"an electric auto,can work for some people"if you find a Nissan Leaf someone wants to give away,drop me a line(be perfect here in the Ridges)
I bought a Citicar back in the mid 70’s. It had a range of about 40 miles and was little more than a golf cart. I used it on base and it was a great way to save gas back then. A couple of problem arose and I had to sell it eventually. Since I lived on base…they took a dim view of my charging the “car” at night since I did not pay the electric bill. The final kicker was that my wife refused to ride in it or allow to take the kids anywhere either. I finally sold it to a guy who used it as an enclosed golf cart on the base golf course.
Funny thing…the golf course on base had chargers for their golf club members and the base had no problems with that. I guess commuters are a lower class of people than golfers. I am seriously thinking of buying an electric car again because they are now safer and the limited range is no problem for me. I rarely go over 30 miles a day and I would love to be able to say goodbye to gasoline for the most part. I’m going to start checking out the Leaf next week.
I noticed the other day the current month’s MotorTrend – I think that’s the correct magazine title – has a new car review, and they list the 5 year resell value. From what they say there, it’s true the Leaf is on the low side of this stat, very low actually, in the high 20’s (as a % of new purchase price) vs low 50’s for a car like the Corolla. But it wasn’t clear if they were taking into account the tax rebates. For example if you buy a Leaf for $30K, but get $10K in tax rebates, you’re really thinking you are buying the car for $20K. So you’d not complain to sell it for $10K in 5 years, as you’re getting about 50% what you paid originally. But if they don’t take into account the rebate, the stat would say you paid $30K and sold it for $10K, so you’re only getting back 33%.
Not only does the A/C reduce the advertised range considerably, in the “Snow Belt” in the wintertime, headlights, heaters, defrosters, wipers will reduce the range more than the A/C does…The cost of the L-Ion battery must come down or the price of gasoline must go up, way up, before these vehicles are practical…
I can’t believe that the lawsuit re: “shorter range with a/c running” went anywhere. You’d have to be ignorant of both automotive technology–and thermodynamics–not to understand it takes electriricty to cool stuff down. Heck, anybody who’s ever paid a utility bill knows better!
Besides, this is a “comfort” issue more than a “performance” one. You can have the advertised range, if you slum it and roll the windows down!
I’ll go off topic
Motor Trend magazine has 0% credibility, as far as I’m concerned
I gave up on that “car magazine” decades ago
No offense intended to any subscribers
I get hand me down versions of Motor Trend and it seems like they like every car they test.
I checked the local listings of used Nissan Leaf’s and you can get a 2011 with 20K miles for less than 10K, 7K for one with 60K miles. I am sure one can haggle on it too. Curious now to know the insurance rates on it (we have a teen driver). Interestingly, carfax on a few shows regular engine oil changes (one @ pepboys); so much for carfax.
Caddyman,why do you think the price of petrol is going down or at an acceptable level?Its basically to stifle developement of diesels and alternative vehicles,if everyone drove a guzzler now,we would see avg gas around $5 a gal(my take anyway-theres still a lot of crude around,though admittedly,the low hanging fruit has been plucked,greed,greed)
This double-whammy of increased supply and reduced demand will always do just one thing: drop prices.
. For example if you buy a Leaf for $30K, but get $10K in tax rebates, you're really thinking you are buying the car for $20K
Do you actually get a 10K refund on your taxes or do you get to claim a 10K reduction of your taxable income?
If it’s the latter, then your actual savings will depend on what tax bracket you are in and will be far less than 10K.
It’s a non-refundable tax credit.
So, let’s say you owe the government $12,000 in taxes. If you bought an electric car over the year, you now owe it $2,000 in taxes.
If, however, you start out owing the government $8,000 in taxes, then if you bought an electric car you now owe the government nothing, but the government will not give you the $2,000 still remaining on the credit.
Hmm, if I could get a good late model Leaf for under $10k, including the special charger, I’d have to strongly consider one. Every place I HAVE to go is 20 miles or less from home. And I’d get a good workhorse truck for towing-camping-roadtrips.
But let’s see, 75 mile range, that’s about 1 trip around a major metropolitan beltway. What if you got caught in traffic on the way home? Of course you’d have to turn off the a/c or heat. Would the stop & go, stop & go kill the battery? Suppose it was night, you’d have to leave the headlights on.
Darn on my phone it won’t let me seperate paragraphs so everything is all stuck together in one run on paragraph.
Everyone I’ve talked to who has a Leaf has a gas car as a backup and uses it any time there’s any question about range. Even the much greater range Tesla requires a backup ICE car right now for longer trips (though it will shuffle you around a metro area all day without issue). Tesla is working on building a charging network to enable road trips, but as of right now it’s pretty limited in where you can go.
I’d consider an electric vehicle right now if the other half weren’t insisting that any new vehicles I acquire will mandate selling one that I already have. I don’t have any that I really want to give up. I’d trade the Acura in on a Tesla, but not a Leaf, and the Tesla is considerably out of my price range right now.
I started to write something, realized I was wrong, and deleted it. Sorry.
Re: Motor Trend’s credibility
It’s true I wouldn’t place their content in the “unbiased” category. And most of the articles they run don’t interest me very much. They hardly ever talk about 20 year old Corollas and 40 year old trucks … lol … But they do have that driver experience section in the back where their staff drives a new car for a year or two and reports periodically on their experiences with it. While they hardly ever rag on any of the cars, in the same issue I noticed that one staff member made some somewhat negative comments about the Nissan Versa; not that it was a bad choice for a new car, but that it didn’t compare favorably in certain aspects to a couple of other newer cars the staff member had also been testing. And that was valuable info I though. So when I see a Motor Trend, while I skip-through most of the content, I do tend to read that section.
Motor Trend, Car and Driver, Cycle World, et al, I regard them all as advertising masquerading as journalism.
But they do have that driver experience section in the back where their staff drives a new car for a year or two and reports periodically on their experiences with it.
And that driver experience is either good or bad depending on how much advertising the company does in their magazine.