We've launched the new forums! Read more here

No gas!

kenh

kenh

Over the top
Albatross 2024 Club
Joined
Dec 11, 2011
Messages
2,208
Reaction score
60
Location
Middle-of, CT
Handicap
short game
New addition to our house that arrived about a month ago now - an all-electric Nissan Leaf! No gas ever. I've had my eye on this for the last year or so but hadn't pulled the trigger yet. However, I dropped by to check on one at the local deal and they gave us a crazy deal on a 2 year lease so we went for it. Based on what we had been spending on gas, it's almost like getting a free car monthly-payment-wise.

We now use it for all of our local running around and it's a great car. It's super quiet and very zippy -- lots of torque. If you're coming to the NE invitational, you'll see it.

Definitely worth a look if you don't have a super-long commute or, like us, do a ton of short trips around town.

The second photo is of the 240V charging unit we had put in for it.

Leaf005.JPG


WP_000255.jpg
 
nice car, but why would you lease it? yeah, it's not as much as buying it outright, but when you buy it, at least you get to keep it and can sell it later on and recoop some of your money..
 
Oregon Jack said:
nice car, but why would you lease it? yeah, it's not as much as buying it outright, but when you buy it, at least you get to keep it and can sell it later on and recoop some of your money..
Click to expand...

A few places that I checked on this agreed that leasing is the smarter choice for electric cars and newer hybrids like the Volt because the battery technology is evolving very quickly.

I think of this more of a technology purchase than a car. In two years, there will undoubtedly be options with higher battery capacity and similar-or-lower price points than today so a short lease makes a lot of sense for us.
 
Nice. I wouldn't mind trying something like this, the Volt catches my eye but I have no real reason to get one at the moment. I think leasing is a viable option a lot of times, obviously you want the best deal possible and maintenance is usually free. I mean why rent a house as opposed to buying one or vice versa, pros and cons to each.
 
Bloomberg had an article a short while back showing that you can actually lease a new Leaf for free or actually come out ahead after state and federal tax incentives to buy (lease) a new fully electric car. I'm contemplating one as our next car. Until then, we'll stick with the Hybrid Toyota Highlander.
 
Nice car!
 
That is cool man. Are you able to go a full day on one charge? Also are there any charging places in your area.
 
Leases can be very good in certain instances. Sometimes not, but there's a lot more to consider than just making payments and not getting to keep it afterward.

Curious on the Leaf, because I've never heard this info, but how much does it cost you on your utility bill to charge it up all the time?
 
Like any other car, how far you can go on a full "tank" depends a lot on how you drive. The maximum range is probably in the vicinity of 75 miles on a full charge based on a 50+ mile round trip we did last week (mostly highway) which left a comfortable ~25 miles. Since most of the driving we do is within a 15-mile radius of home, this works out perfectly. We just plug it in when it's home and it charges back up pretty quickly.

The most miles we've done in a day is about 100, which was a couple of extended errand-running trips with brief periods at home on the charger between stops (less than an hour total). That was probably pushing it too much because my wife wound up having to crawl the last mile home with the low-battery warning blinking at her. The moral of the story there is simply to take one of the other cars if the Leaf is showing four bars or less of battery capacity. :)

I can't really tell what the impact is on our electric bill yet but we expect it to be way less than what we were spending on gas. Before we had the 240V charger put in, we charged it from a 120V wall socket which drew a pretty steady 10.5 amps (and took about 4x as long). This suggests that the overall effect will be about the same as running a vacuum cleaner for the same amount of time.

I just checked some of my records... apparently we spent about $600 on gas last May. This month it looks like the total is going to be about $230 and a big chunk of that was a 500-mile road trip we did last weekend in the gas-guzzler minivan. Wow!

Other bonuses : no oil or engine coolant to leak on the driveway :)
 
Oregon Jack said:
nice car, but why would you lease it? yeah, it's not as much as buying it outright, but when you buy it, at least you get to keep it and can sell it later on and recoop some of your money..
Click to expand...

With an all electric car or even a hybrid, it's not that easy.
 
Keep us posted on how this works out for you kenh, this is very interesting as we do a lot of local driving ourselves.
 
Unfortunately with PG&E providing the power here where I live in California, the electricity(provided by mostly burning fossil fuels) is so expensive that electric cars don't make much sense. To charge a Leaf and go 90 miles it takes about 29KWH, which in the summer months here costs about $8.25. A VW Jetta diesel will cost about $7.50 to drive that far, and is a much larger, faster, more comfortable car that will last longer, IMO. The other thing not considered when purchasing an electric vehicle is that most electricity is provided by natural gas, coal, or nuclear power and the power loss from the plant is significant. The end result is you often burn more fossil fuels per mile with and electric car than you would with a diesel or hybrid.

I am as far from a tree hugger as you can get, but for cost savings we did put 24 solar panels on our new house last year, which saves us about $5,000 per year in electricity costs. If I had to add solar panels to provide enough electricity to charge a Leaf every other day, that would cost me about $9,000 with panels and installation.
 
Last edited:
tahoebum said:
The other thing not considered when purchasing an electric vehicle is that most electricity is provided by natural gas, coal, or nuclear power and the power loss from the plant is significant. The end result is you often burn more fossil fuels per mile with and electric car than you would with a diesel or hybrid.
Click to expand...

I heard this too and when I looked into it, I found that it's a myth/FUD. Except for coal burners, which are on their way out, modern fossil-fuel energy plants plus electric motors are way more efficient at turning squished dinosaurs into movement than a gasoline engine (up to 60% vs 25-30% for gas and 40% for diesel) so there's significantly less net pollution.

This efficiency advantage at the utility end is also why it's much cheaper to power your home via the grid than with a generator in your back yard too.

And congrats on the solar panels -- my house has a big line of trees that screen the sun for most of the afternoon so we are not well positioned for solar.



 
Personally I have a problem with electric/hybrid cars. As in I'm no where near a fan of them. But some of the things on this Leaf are quite amazing. They had to make a whole new windshield motor because the normal one is too loud. And they designed the headlights to move air AWAY from the side mirrors, as again with no engine noise, the wind was too loud going over the mirrors. When the battery life can go more than the standard 100 miles, I'll be more interested.

And another thing added about leasing/buying. At least if you lease, you can trade the car in, if the batteries in these electric cars go (and they will) they are EXPENSIVE to replace. Talkin thousands of dollars. At least if you lease, and trade in at the end, you will hopefully avoid this expense.

Still it's cool, but not for me, yet. As long as you like it it's all that matters, and a great deal
 
I'm thinking the Tesla S is going to change a lot of people's opinions on electric cars. With a range around 250 miles per charge and only requiring an 1:15 to recharge, they'll catch people's eyes. Also, the fact that their interior, ride and handling are as polished as a Mercedes S or BMW 7 series, it's hard not to consider one if that's your price range.
 
kenh said:
"I heard this too and when I looked into it, I found that it's a myth/FUD. Except for coal burners, which are on their way out, modern fossil-fuel energy plants plus electric motors are way more efficient at turning squished dinosaurs into movement than a gasoline engine (up to 60% vs 25-30% for gas and 40% for diesel) so there's significantly less net pollution.

This efficiency advantage at the utility end is also why it's much cheaper to power your home via the grid than with a generator in your back yard too.

And congrats on the solar panels -- my house has a big line of trees that screen the sun for most of the afternoon so we are not well positioned for solar."


Your state gets about 45% of it's electricity from coal/petroleum/natural gas and about 50% of its electricity from Nuclear power, but coal is still the most common source of electricity in the United States. Here's an article that may help.

The bottom line is there are only 5 states where driving a Leaf reduces your carbon footprint over a conventional gasoline powered vehicle. I have no problem with electric cars - but in most cases the source of the electricity to power them is fossil fuels and the reduction in one's carbon footprint is small or non-existent. For someone like me that lives in California, the cost per mile to drive a diesel or hybrid is less than an electric car and has the benefit of being larger, safer, and has a 600 mile range.


http://blog.wegowise.com/blog2/bid/...Footprint-Hybrid-vs-Gasoline-vs-Electric-Cars
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
tahoebum said:
The bottom line is there are only 5 states where driving a Leaf reduces your carbon footprint over a conventional gasoline powered vehicle. I have no problem with electric cars - but in most cases the source of the electricity to power them is fossil fuels and the reduction in one's carbon footprint is small or non-existent.
Click to expand...

Everyone makes their own decision about what car to choose based on what's important to them. Our decision wasn't made with some carbon footprint calculator and a Sierra club bumper sticker, it was made because we realized we were paying way too much for gas and that almost all of our driving is on short trips within 15 miles of home. and we're happy with it. :)
 
GopherNut said:
I'm thinking the Tesla S is going to change a lot of people's opinions on electric cars. With a range around 250 miles per charge and only requiring an 1:15 to recharge, they'll catch people's eyes. Also, the fact that their interior, ride and handling are as polished as a Mercedes S or BMW 7 series, it's hard not to consider one if that's your price range.
Click to expand...

1:15 is a bit of an advertising gimmick. They cannot charge that quickly yet. Under normal circumstances, they'll take 6+ hours to charge. That is still the limitation of electric vehicles. I did a pretty lengthy study on electric vehicles last year, including a long discussion with a high exec of an energy company. they're working with electric car companies to get the tech better, but at this point, the batteries cannot handle that rapid of a power exchange, and the power grid isn't ready for it either. To charge as quickly as they want ends up with massive amounts of lost energy.

I like the leaf, and really like where the tech is heading (even though I hate the Prius - for it's smugness) but it's not practical as an only car. If you've got another one, then it works out, but you can't take the Leaf anywhere. I'm an hour away, and I can't drive to the beach and back with the leaf.
 
GopherNut said:
I'm thinking the Tesla S is going to change a lot of people's opinions on electric cars. With a range around 250 miles per charge and only requiring an 1:15 to recharge, they'll catch people's eyes. Also, the fact that their interior, ride and handling are as polished as a Mercedes S or BMW 7 series, it's hard not to consider one if that's your price range.
Click to expand...

I've seen the model S up close and it's a VERY nice car both inside, outside and performancewise. If I could afford one, I'd have one right now.

It was interesting to note that in the first quarter of this year, the model S outsold the 7-series, the S-class and the Audi A8 combined.

Ken
 
GopherNut said:
I'm thinking the Tesla S is going to change a lot of people's opinions on electric cars. With a range around 250 miles per charge and only requiring an 1:15 to recharge, they'll catch people's eyes. Also, the fact that their interior, ride and handling are as polished as a Mercedes S or BMW 7 series, it's hard not to consider one if that's your price range.
Click to expand...

Rapidly charging the batteries, especially that quick, will lead to quicker battery failure. And if the S has as many batteries as the Tesla Roadster did, I'm not going to try and change that many batteries. And that doesn't even include the cost. Top Gear did a electric car test, if the batteries are on a full discharge cycle (full charged, fully discharged) your lucky batteries in these electric cars last 8 years. If you don't let them fully discharge, your looking at a 5 year battery life. When the battery technology catches up and is able to fully go 200-300 miles on a charge, and won't kill batteries in a matter of years, I will prefer one. For now, give me a gas engine that I know I wouldn't have to replace 5-8 years down the road.
 
Ndfan301 said:
Rapidly charging the batteries, especially that quick, will lead to quicker battery failure. And if the S has as many batteries as the Tesla Roadster did, I'm not going to try and change that many batteries. And that doesn't even include the cost. Top Gear did a electric car test, if the batteries are on a full discharge cycle (full charged, fully discharged) your lucky batteries in these electric cars last 8 years. If you don't let them fully discharge, your looking at a 5 year battery life. When the battery technology catches up and is able to fully go 200-300 miles on a charge, and won't kill batteries in a matter of years, I will prefer one. For now, give me a gas engine that I know I wouldn't have to replace 5-8 years down the road.
Click to expand...

The battery warranty in the leaf is 8 years/100K miles with 20% of capacity loss considered normal the first 6 years/60K miles. Neither of these will be a concern to us during our lease and this is another reason to lease rather than buy. :) Of course, they expect you to do follow some basic rules regarding care of the battery and bring it in for periodic maintenance.

The Leaf has a fast-charge capability as an option (ours doesn't have it) and Nissan does say that frequent use of fast charge will hurt battery capacity.

I think that most EV makers realize that the majority of owners will not be worst-case users of the vehicles
 
I am as far from a tree hugger as you can get, but for cost savings we did put 24 solar panels on our new house last year, which saves us about $5,000 per year in electricity costs. If I had to add solar panels to provide enough electricity to charge a Leaf every other day, that would cost me about $9,000 with panels and installation.
Click to expand...


Not to get the thread off-track, but the dirty little secret of solar panels is the manufacturing process for them requires MASSIVE amounts of electricity, primarily generated from burning fossil fuels. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
 
You will have to report back on the cost of recharging versus gas prices. Might be the future for sure if its not a total wash cost wise as it is not free to charge.
 
This is awesome, not sure if I'm skimming but about how's much does it cost you in terms of electricity to charge the car's battery?
 
I saw a Tesla Model S on the road this morning, while taking my son to school. Looked pretty sharp.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top