dgpcolorado
Well-known member
My reasons were much the same. I think the latecomers second-guessing the early adopters aren't aware how poor the leasing deals were for the early LEAFs and they can't comprehend that we ordered our cars over the internet and waited and waited and waited for the cars to be built and shipped from Japan. It was a completely different era of LEAF buying.fooljoe said:GetOffYourGas summed up my thinking almost perfectly when I was one of the first to reserve a Leaf. The memories of EV-1 crushing were still quite fresh on my mind, and magnified by the release of Who Killed the Electric Car? I was very eager to get the first economical production EV to market, and to actually own it.
Also, with respect to leasing vs. buying, the $199/month deals we see now were not around in 2011, so purchasing was the more economical choice, setting aside the at-the-time-unquantifiable risk that it entailed. And prices didn't come down that fast, as it turned out - they actually went up with the 2012 model, and benefits like free charging stations started to get phased out, and the California rebate went from $5000 to $2500.
And as to that risk, I fully understood at the time that batteries degrade and knew what I was possibly getting myself into, but Nissan made the mistake of making promises, and they got burned for it. I didn't expect to get a free replacement battery, and I'm certainly happy that I will (getting installed right now actually), but I and many others are justifiably upset about how this class action lawsuit and capacity warranty were implemented. We all have the same defective batteries, but only those of us who drove the right amount of miles or parked in hot enough places will see any benefit from it...
That was a big factor for me. I got a $5400 state tax credit and it would have been much lower for a leased car.Phatcat73 said:A reason why I purchased over leasing - $3k available state credit on purchases of EV's only. Leasing did not apply.
In addition, I'm on track to be around 80% battery capacity at five years, just like Nissan estimated in the disclosure documents I signed. And the car still has almost as much utility for me as it did when it was new. If I had wanted a cost-effective car I would have bought an inexpensive used car and just driven it to death; buying or leasing ANY new car is a waste of money (by the way, there were no used LEAFs back then). Instead, I had wanted an EV for years and eagerly purchased the first mass market EV when I could, in part to show support for Nissan's EV program in the hope that it would be successful.
Easy to look back with 20:20 hindsight and rag on those of us who purchased our LEAFs. How prescient of those people to now know what fools we were... :roll: