Zurc said:
As people clue in to the economics of driving electric and as manufacturers get out of the 23kw battery mode,
electrics will take off on their own.
Zurc.
Yes and No, Electrics still have to be proven and while the leaf is reliable there are a few obstacles to over come, The battery will loose around 20% capacity after about 100K miles as Steve Marsh has shown, or In the U.K Nikki Gordon Bloomfield's Leaf is down 20% after 59K miles.
Nikki's capacity loss is from high use of the fast charger to travel the length and breath of the U.K and Nikki will say that she thinks this is perfectly acceptable given the technology, and maybe it is or it isn't, the point being people expect a modern car to last 150K miles and more without having to spend a lot of money on the car to repair a vital component.
Imagine being down 20% after 60 K miles ? that means in winter you now have about 48 miles range, this is simply not acceptable in a modern car by the majority of the non ev enthusiast world.
That's 48 miles on a 100% charge, a qc means an 80% charge and an 80% charge of a 20% degraded battery means 38.4 miles, this is ridiculous.
And then for Nissan to turn around and say you've to loose 30% before it's replaced ? I mean that is hilarious, while end of life in the battery manufacturers world might be 70% remaining capacity, this isn;t acceptable in a low range car.
To make things worse, in Ireland we're not allowed to lease the leaf battery because Nissan Ireland fear that people won't touch an ev that if you have to lease the battery. The other problem Nissan Ireland have is what to do with spent batteries ?
I tried explaining that I will not buy a car that I have no option to replace the battery and I won;t buy 2nd hand if I can't replace the battery, I asked Nissan Ireland, what do you think the first question someone buying a 2nd hand leaf will ask ? it's going to be what condition is the battery in ? how long will it last ?
But we do have a fascination with owning everything here, be it property or cars, leasing is not a popular option.
Anyway I told Nissan Ireland that my only option is to lease the car on pcp or buy a Renault Zoe, they only allow leasing, you can not buy the car with the battery.
PCP at my usual anual mileage of about 20K miles per year would mean that leasing would work out as expensive as buying the whole car outright so I would not put that much money into a car without owning it.
With the Renault Zoe I could buy it outright and it would replace the 14 year old Honda CRV , when I'm finished with the Zoe the new EV would replace the Prius.
IF I buy a Leaf I have absolutely no option to replace the battery and so will be useless as a 2nd car because we'll need at least 64 miles per day range for the 2nd car as my partner will use it to get to work and back.
So at last I'm getting to the point, in the U.S you can lease or even buy a brand new battery for your leaf, but leasing or replacing the battery means that the gap between ice and ev is significantly narrowed, it will still be cheaper but not nearly as much as if you didn't need to replace the battery.
I worked out that the Zoe over 100,000 miles would work out about 5-6K Euro's cheaper over the Diesel Renault Cloe if averaging 58 mpg ( that's 48.29 U.S), the clio is advertised by Renault as a 90 mpg, (74.29 U.S) so it's possible you could get higher mpg.
The whole battery thing makes the case for electrics much much harder.
Granted for a lot of people 100K miles could be 10 years driving others 5, some even less. There are a lot of people who like to buy old cars and who can't afford new ones. And I don;t think anyone wants to buy a 2nd hand car to face putting several thousand $$$$ or €€€€.
I'm leaning now towards the Kia soul, if for no other reason than it's thermal controlled battery. Future electrics won;t have such an issue such as the Model S 85 Kwh because the battery is so big that even a 30% loss means 180 miles range, far more practical than 30-38 miles range.
The Zoe is another alternative because of it's brilliant AC charger, so many charge points here are 22 kw and a lot of qc 44 kw. But Renault decided not to heat the battery. BMW have an option for the I3 but the price of that car is a bit mad.
Though if you think about it the BMW starts about 33K Euro's , if I bought the Zoe highest spec for 20K Euro's and leased the battery for 10 years on the highest lease plan it would take 10 years worth of driving to match the BMW's starting price !
