My Nissan Leaf Forum

The limited color choices are still the case, unless you pay extra, regardless of the battery capacity chosen. The metallic and multi-coat choices are more $.

And that "$50K" car after tax credits is now about to be $52.4K for starters, after tax credit, but before tax, license and (I believe) delivery/destination charge.

The 1M cars a year "luxury" market starts at some 35k. S essentially starts at some $65k. That market is a lot smaller than 1M.

BMW M3 and Mercedes E class both offer 2 colors at no up charge. I really think people are stretching here to find a reason not to like the car.

http://www.mbusa.com/mercedes/vehicles/ ... del-E550W4

http://www.bmwusa.com/standard/content/ ... lcode=133h

It is par for the course for car companies to offer options and charge for those options.
If you don't want to pay more than the base price, great, order the base car. If you think options should be free, wonderful, good luck with that.

And yes, for people who don't place their reservation by Jan 1, the price is going up. That it pretty common in any industry for cost of goods to increase over time.

And yes, I would love to see level 2 and super chargers scattered across the planet. Tesla is making some available at their own expense, but only for the middle and large size packs. I am sorry they didn't make them free for everyone and put one on every street corner, but do you really expect a company to do that all on their own dime?

Interesting... this sorta goes with how it seems like some German automakers charge/nickel and dime for everything. I've had no interest ever buying or leasing any German car but I'd heard that from others who'd looked. Until now, I'd never heard of cars where most of the color choices cost extra. I'd only seen some where a couple choices cost extra (e.g. Blizzard Pearl on Toyotas).

Back when I got my former 02 Nissan Maxima GXE (lowest trim), it came w/plenty of standard stuff (which tended to be extra cost on many cars in 01) like AC, HID headlights, steering wheel audio controls, power seat, cruise control, and alloy wheels.

I also considered an 02 Acura 3.2 TL. There were a whopping 4 choices in their matrix in total: non-Type S and Type S, with or w/o nav. There were no other options (other than maybe stuff like floor mats). On EVERY TL, they ALL came w/standard heated and power leather seats (w/memory, I think), sunroof, CD changer, HID headlights, alloy wheels, traction control (not sure about stability control), cruise control, steering wheel audio controls, auto climate control, wood grain (probably fake) interior, and so on. I'm 99% positive that competing German cars made most of that stuff optional.

edit: I just checked for the (regular) Prius, for example and for models Two thru Five (Persona is some new trim for '13 that I'm unfamiliar with), the same 6 basic colors are available on every trim from Two thru Five (Two being the base, One is fleet only and not easily available to consumers, Five is highest). The only extra cost color is the $395 Blizzard Pearl choice, which is broken out as a "premium" color.

you also have to pay for the upgraded paint when you spend $85,000 on a performance car. Paint upgrade is for all versions....

Well stated.



You raise some good points, and I don't want to argue this on behalf of other posters, since they are perfectly capable of doing that themselves. That said, I believe this did not come out right. Most people realize that quick charging costs money. Personally, I did not expect Tesla to make it free, but I agree that it's a great sales tool for their premium trims, and I think I will renew my deposit before the year-end deadline.

The point being, the base model is orphaned in this regard; it can't quick charge anywhere, for any money, since it does not come with this option. It's similar to Nissan's decision to only offer the QC port on SL trims. It's their right to do so, but it might have other implications, and limit the addressable market size. I wish Tesla all the best, and I believe that they are executing well against their strategy. I can also empathize with folks who feel that the S is not for them given this situation, and they might have to wait a while to see how it all shakes out. As someone recently said: we are ready for EVs, but they are not necessarily ready for us.

I agree completely. Some things will price some people out of the market. So people that need a 250 mile range but can't afford a $77k (soon $79k) car are priced out of the electric car market, for now.
People that need quick charging and can't afford the $71k or $79k model are priced out of that market.

I am curious how many LEAF owners that have used QC, have done so to allow them to make a trip of 100 or 200 miles?

As others have said, there are a number of factors that went into the decision. One of them was how many QC stations does Tesla need to make a nation wide system and how many can they afford to build? If you are building the system to allow cars that have a range of 208 miles (EPA of 60kW car), and you build in some buffer, you can place a station every 150 miles or so. If you design it for cars with an EPA range of 130-140, and build in the same buffer, you need one every 105-110 miles.
That is a lot more QC stations and frankly, I think is a cost a young car company can't realistically afford.

Nissan or GM on the other hand has the deep pockets, but they are both relying on the public sector and third parties to build out the charging station system. I understand why, there are a lot of choices where they simply can't win (someone will always complain).

Zy, I drove 140 miles RT using the new GoE3 QC. Now, I'll be able to drive down to Tucson which is over 200 miles RT.

I've made a pretty substantial number of 100-200 mile trips aided by QC. Earlier this month we drove ~270 miles in one day, aided by two QCs. Itinerary: Arrowbear Lake->Rancho Cucamonga(destination,L2)->Oceanside(next destination,L2)->San Juan Capistrano(QC)->Diamond Bar(QC)->Redlands(L2)->Arrowbear Lake. The battery temperature went from four bars to six bars, which isn't bad. The amount of en-route charging, not counting the time in Rancho Cucamonga or Oceanside where we had commitments, was pretty substantial, and hard to do on a regular basis.

Yes, I'd love to have a Tesla S, or even better, a Tesla X with AWD. I'm not spending that kind of money at this time, though.

Great to be curious, but there must be several LEAF threads where that question is asked/answered. Start a poll, but not in the Tesla Model S thread.