evnow
Well-known member
Purely in terms of finances, it may be true.mogur said:I think it is going to have to go much higher than that to have a dramatic impact on EV sales. You can buy a very nice high-gas-mileage car for half of what the Leaf costs (and not have to worry about battery life).
But in terms of psychology, higher gas has a profound impact on American consumers. When the gas hit $4, we curtailed driving quite a bit - even though in terms for actual $ it wasn't probably going to be big difference.
In anycase, Nisan doesn't need a great shift in consumer prefernce - just a small tilt. Even at 150K/year, it is still about 1% of the market. As I have commented elsewhere even if just the MoveOn.org people bought Leafs, it would take Nissan a decade to satisfy the demand.
Oh BTW, a similar sized ICE, similarly equipped as Leaf is more like $20K.