scottwilcox said:
I am hoping the 2013 model year will have improvements like the 2012 over the 2011. The cold weather package of heated seats and steering wheel worked great in my area on a January test drive. I actually got to hot and had to turn them off. I am hoping the 2013 will have the 6.6 kw charger. That was one thing that the Ford Focus EV had over the LEAF that I liked. I think the faster charging time might get me a few more cases on when I could use the LEAF over one of the ICE sitting in my driveway. (wife's car and teenage kids cars) Most of the time I drive less than 12 miles in a day at a EV friendly 30-35 mph with almost no stops. So the 6.6 kw charger might be of no use even if I had some extra trip I wanted to take after getting home from work and charging for a couple of hours. I can not imagine any case of driving over 45 miles in a single day. But Nissan is still trying to convince me that the LEAF will not work because we have no public charging. I am in the last roll out states and hope to be able to get one is 6-12 months.
The other advantage of the Focus is the more aggressive battery management system. The passive battery management system of the LEAF I think is leading to a lot of the issues with the Guess O Meter. I more passive system that the LEAF uses hurts the cold weather range enough to impact a pretty big portion of the cold weather drivers. Or at least put some range fears in their mind.
The Cold Weather Trim was introduced in the very late 2011 (the ones that were
supposed to go to Virginia and Maryland). In the 2012 what we got is was all options removed and rolled into the standard price and a $1,900 penalty ($1,450 for SV) for not being able to order the car when we were told we would, not to mention loosing HOV access to I66 in Virginia. I can't imagine any model year being worse that the 2012.
As for range, about 75 miles, daily, and with 100% charge I've never run out no matter how cold. But anything out of the ordinary, like the
EVA/DC meetings in Silver Spring, MD, if I don't supplementary charge, I can't get home and the Federal Government spends $230 monthly to get people to ride commuter transit to both decongest the roads and reduce emissions but won't spend $30 a month to let folks driving zero-emission vehicles to just charge for a few hours at 120V so they can run some errands beyond their normal commute. Won't even except the $1.50 as cost in payment from it's commuters. Won't allow that when they allow Mini Fridges which draw more electricity per year than an EV parked for 8 hours a day would. The one thing the President
can do to help promote his stated goal of 1,000,000 EVs on the road by 2015 is to simply sign an executive order allowing this. Doe he?
No! And don't get me started on how the third richest county in the country and the most populous one in Virginia charges $1,100 annual tax on a car which in size is a slightly larger Versa.
Clearly I'm young enough to still get up in arms about these issues but old enough to write to my commonwealth delegate and county board supervisor about these issues. I think that allows you to peg my stage of life.
