TonyWilliams
Well-known member
kubel said:the LEAF is inferior to the Focus when it comes to overall quality. I'm surprised anyone would dispute this. Though you didn't necessarily dispute this- you just prejudged me.
Since I have no quality issues with the LEAF, it's hard to qualify how a converted Focus has higher "quality". You might be confusing that with features, of which I'd like to have a leather steering wheel. Focus has it, LEAF does not. That's not quality; that's a feature.
So, officially, I dispute your assertion.
But ChaDeMo is dead. I'm not sure how you can ignore this. Automakers want one place to plug in. It's easier for everyone that way. I'm not sure why the Japanese would want two places to plug in. Probably because they had no other choice with no standard being made yet. I commend Nissan for pioneering the idea and doing what was necessary to make it happen with no standard being made yet, but I don't think fanboys should discourage a better solution.
Now, fanboy isn't something I get called everyday!!! Again, I disagree with each of your assertions. ChaDeMo is hardly dead; there will be hundreds of them in the USA, in addition to maybe thousands in the world before a single SAE combo plug is installed anywhere. There will be tens of thousands of cars that use ChaDeMo when SAE anything DC shows up. There currently are ZERO cars anywhere in the world using the SAE frankenplug. So, your statement is blatantly wrong.
Sure, you could be puffing our chest out in that special 'mercian way, and predicting that ChaDeMo is a future Betamax, superior in both quality and engineering, but a failure in a consumer market that equated VHS with VCR, so for that, we'll just have to see. Folks from your special area of the world underestimated the Japanese many, many times. So, back to fanboy. Your blind allegiance to vapor ware and unproven technology versus the already established one seems to me to be the very definition of fanboy.
The "two places to plug in" is a bit of a stretch. I have exactly one place to plug in, properly placed on the front of the car. There are two sockets there. I don't use two at once, nor would there be a time when I would. Would there be an advantage to have the sockets combined for me, the end user? No, none at all. Is there an advantage to the manufacturer to install a frankenplug in a gasoline fuel filler door? They seem to think so, and obviously for car conversions like a Focus, there is probably an advantage to them (but, as we already know, the Focus does not take advantage of this advantage).
Liquid thermal management is superior to air. The FFE will not only provide marginally better range in moderate temperatures, but I have a feeling it will provide substantially better range than the LEAF in winter conditions. They aren't merely comparable and there is no slight advantage. The FFE is the clear winner. Of course, you're paying for it if you get a FFE.
I suspect the simplicity of no heating / cooling LEAF battery will give way to liquid temperature control, or some non-liquid control, much like few cars have adopted the air cooled engines used on piston airplanes, Porsches and Volkswagens.
Warm and cold weather range. Energy efficiency. Quality. Audio. Performance.
Somewhat to perhaps significantly, marginally, doubtful, probably, perhaps.