LECTRFY
Member
For someone who has doubts about owning a Leaf I would say the following things:Okay Seattle area LEAFers, I need a little encouragement. I'm tentatively scheduled to go pick up a leased LEAF tomorrow but am getting some last-minute jitters. Im asking myself, Do I really want to get into all this? Main concern is range anxiety of course. My wife and daughter will probably use the car more during the week than I will so my worst-case scenario envisions them with a dead battery on the side of the freeway and me wondering what the heck I was thinking.
So to you folks on the other side of this decision, anything you can say to ease my mind (or confirm my fears, as the case may be) would be appreciated.
Also, if you did lease, did you do 2 or 3 years? I'm leaning toward 2 but it's a bit more expensive...
Thanks!
1) Lease it - 3 years is probably best as the battery will degrade enough by then; you won't want to deal with it after that. We are going into our 3rd year of owning and starting to see the battery range deteriorate. I'm not looking forward to having to use up all of those fuel savings dollars on a new $5,000-$10,000 battery in 6 or 7 more years.
2) It is NOT like a normal car so if you want a normal car that you don't have to think about it, don't get one. You have to constantly plan out your driving. You have to think about how much battery you have left and what you will be using the car for during the day. Also, don't believe the "guess-o-meter" miles left. It's useless. Go by the number of battery bars left.
3) It depends on how much you drive it per day. Every weekday my wife drives to and from work (45 miles RT) and we run a few errands after work from time to time. That's 90% of our driving with it. It works great for that ($1-$1.50 per day in electricity costs). If we have to plan a trip to downtown Seattle after she gets home, we either make sure we charge it to 100% the night before and/or she comes home early from work to plug-in for an hour or two before we make the trip.
4) You can't rely on the DC fast chargers...PERIOD! It's not like if the gas station is out of gas you can go across the street to another station. There's only a few of them. If the DC fast charger on Snoqualmie Pass is broken, you have 3 choices....A) Get a room for the night B) Call a tow truck C) Coast down the hill as far as you can :lol: (P.S. How would the ICE drivers like it if I parked at their gas station to go into the store for a few minutes?! :evil: )
5) The weather REALLY affects what you can and can't do in a Leaf. The heater and defrost takes up an unmentionable amount of energy and the darn thing isn't sealed well so there is a ton of moisture in the car constantly. Don't think you are going to drive it off the lot on Monday and are going to be able to drive 100 miles per day. ...(I used it the other week while my wife was on a business trip. I charged it to 80%...I went on several 1 and 2 mile trips during the week for a total of 14 miles while using 8 battery bars and having to recharge at the end of the week)
All in all, we LOVE our Leaf. However, we know we are EV guinea pigs on the starting edge of what we hope is a long term trend for the future. We also know it is going to cost us much more time, effort, and dollars in the end than if we had purchased another petrol-based car. However, we were willing to make that decision based on the fact of the positives we see in EVs (lower fuel cost, lower air pollution, lower sound pollution, less dependence on foreign oil, etc..). If those things matter to you, you will get an EV too. If not, then I'm not sure what the up side for you would be.