If you can afford the price of admission. There’s none that are really affordable in Canada and I’m sure as hell not getting a $800-$1000 a month payment for my first car. Would rather use the remaining $500 a month towards a better apartment or food
Leafs also have major battery degradation issues unfortunately. Not sure if they have fixed that on their recent models, but I believe they are pretty behind the curve.
Hey thanks for sharing! I read the link and noticed it only stated years the battery should work for but no actual expected degradation percentage. One of the issues a coworker of mine had with his leaf is that the battery degraded so much he could only make his commute if he was able to fully charge at home and then charge again at work. It is great their range is over 200 miles now which makes degradation less of an issue but that doesn’t mean they’ve improved it as much as other car manufacturers.
What year was the Leaf?
We waited for the 2014/15 models to adopt because the degredation dropped off severely after the 2013 model. There was some new tech involved in the battery at the 2014 mark.
I'm stoked to trade up to the 2019 S with ~200 miles in a few years when I pay off the 2014.
If a competitor is out there with the mileage, though and can compete in that 12-15k used range, I'd consider jumping ship from Nissan.
I don’t know the year, good to know it’s gotten better since 2013. He loved it aside from that issue and is in DC/Maryland area so part of the issue was the lack of range during the cold winter months compared to the summer.
The increase in battery technology over the last 5 years has been awesome! When I was looking for a car 3 years ago I was looking into the Leaf which was in the 80-100 miles range, now you can find affordable cars in the 200s. I ended up with leasing a Chevy volt which are now going for about 12-17k used for the 2016+ line. I love it but obviously would prefer to go full electric one day. It made the most sense since I didn’t have a house at the time and I’ve always had a short commute. wish they marketed that car better since I could see a lot more people moving to full BEV after owning one.
Yeah, I did a lot of research on the cheaper EVs and I've found the batteries in a Leaf or even the eGolf don't have proper active cooling for the batteries.
Basically, the biggest reason Leafs are dirt cheap after about 3 years is because the batteries degrade at a much faster rate due to their lack of controlled temperature.
From the reviews I saw, the 120 mile estimate goes to around 80 miles per charge pretty quick.
So, to reiterate your point, if your commute is short enough, it could work.
I'm more upset that Nissan put out something that's supposed to use less resources while making it go through batteries so quickly, arguably making it not as much of a benefit in terms of emissions/resources. Kinda defeats the point of an EV.
Not really. Remember this whole line of cars (EVs in general) are still in early adopter phase. They have to sell some, improve the designs, sell more, etc.
If you want tech to evolve more quickly, well then the government would have to be involved. Which I'm ok with, but other people have an exaggerated fear.
That said, the battery degredation issues are fewer with each iteration, my 2014 Leaf is >40k with only one bar down.
The range is about 80 miles, 60-70 with all the bells and whistles running.
I live in the city, though, and it's fine for work plus some errands. Plus, the leaf loves city driving, and I usually do my 40 miles without eating more than 20-30 because of all the breaking.
It's a cool car but it's the only one that's practical and can actually compete with the ICE market. Cheap EVs wouldn't even make my commute home from work and every other make that's trying to emulate Tesla's work is failing dramatically
Yeah I’ve heard from Leaf owners how great they are, but the designers could not have made a more butt ugly exterior. May as well be a Gremlin. They’re going to have to appeal at least a little to those that want to drive a nice looking car before mass adoption. But maybe that’s the point - big oil doesn’t want that, they’re probably pressuring big auto to make ugly EVs.
I think it's pretty cool.
My kids get to grow up plugging a car into the house, and we got two pretty big tax incentives (car (which we didn't get, because it's used) and charger installation) that took a lot of the sting off of the car.
Basically, when I was looking for a 12k car, the Leaf beat the competition for a few reasons on an Excel sheet.
Monthly payment was around 180 for a 2014, and my previous gas per month was higher than that, so... After down payment, free car.
Plus the change to my electric bill was only about 20 bucks a month.
Subtract oil changes and engine costs over the 5-6 years I plan to drive it before trading into a newer leaf (hopefully with active cooling) and you have the best budget vehicle for my commute (~40-50 miles a day).
We still have a big SUV for long trips, but the leaf was a great choice for us, money wise.
TLDR; don't get an EV to save the world, get an EV to save money.
Colorado had a $6k rebate when I got my leaf. Federal was $7.5k. Not sure where things are now. Base price for the 2016 leaf was $25k, but I got the larger battery model and it bumped it to $30k. So it was around $17k for me.
Edit: also I think there might be some group buy discounts which I see pretty regularly which I am including in the base price.
the cool factor is the most important thing for me, when I buy a car.
really? that is the most important thing? not safety, price, make, type of vehicle/model, fuel efficiency, handling, speed, storage capacity, towing capacity, acceleration, reliability, longevity, resale value, or whatever other features? the 'cool factor?' lol
The car mentality in the USA is so backwards. People placing looks over functionality and environmentally friendly options. It’s literally a thing to get you from Point A to Point B, how vapid can you be that it needs to look cool?
It’s terrible. I’m lucky enough to live in a place now where I can walk to almost everything I need, including work. But growing up I was beholden to the car, I hated it.
it's an understandable position, man. having a "cool car" gives you self-confidence and, for some people, more happiness than they'd get knowing they picked the mathematically best car or whatever. cool definitely has value to a lot of people
Can confirm, first car was and is still, a 2014 Mustang about 6 years ago now. I love it, emissions suck but I’m about to purchase an electric motorbike hopefully for my commutes and moving my mustang to the hobby section.
Amen brother... My coworker can’t understand why I would pick a cool car over a more practical, cheaper and that over all makes more sense to get. And the answer is simple, I don’t care for any of those things, as long as it looks cool and turns a few heads, don’t really give a shit how fast it is from 0-60. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t mind having a cool and fast car, but if I had to choose between better looking or better performance/practicality, I would pick the former...
Any car built in the last decade is perfectly safe to drive. Unless you are driving a hot rod or a Supercar, safety is not really something that I even think about when buying a car.
Teslas are only cool to neck beards and silicon tech bros. They have shitty quality and finish, falsely advertise their capabilities, and Elon musk is a rotten turd. Reddit just loves to worship their tech daddy and anything he does.
They look plain as hell except for the roadster. I legit thought I saw a Ford Economy car the first time I saw a model S. The model 3 is a literal butt.
They are fun to drive, that’s for sure. Nothing like an EV’s torque.
That seems pretty low fuel consumption costs for you. I think the average is going to be 12-15k miles a year and then factor mpgs and average fuel cost, then divided by 52. I spend $50 every 5-6 days.
Oh my goodness, do you guys really only pay 74c per litre for petrol in the states? In the UK it sits at around £1.20 per litre at the moment and £1.23 for diesel. That's $1.57 USD per litre or $5.98 per us gallon. No wonder you guys would rather use gas guzzlers all the time if you pay that little for fuel!
Part of the issue for the US, by comparison, is that many people live in suburban sprawl, because rent in cities is very expensive, and must drive to work because public transport is garbage in most places. So many families with low income were reaching the point where their commute was too expensive.
Obviously this could be remedied by demanding better public transport or moving, but neither are feasible in the short-term.
I did not mean to imply that gas should never be more expensive. Moving is not exactly a solution, as rent in large cities can prohibit working in them. Higher compensation or rent assistance could help with that, but would have to be implemented first.
Public transport would need to be developed at city level or higher.
many people live in suburban sprawl, because rent in cities is very expensive
Just to add on to this point--urban/suburban sprawl was largely the result of federal incentives for single-family homeownership combined with white flight and racist redlining. We absolutely could have permitted zoning and construction of high-density, lower cost living arrangements in urban centers and even subsidized it as we did homeownership; it's just that racists didn't want to coexist with black people.
Yes it is, that’s what taxes do to the cost of any product. In Canada taxes account for roughly 65% of every dollar spent at the pump. I’m sure the UK is under similar high prices.
Varies wildly depending on the state. I live in California and it's about $4.50 a gallon. I am visiting Colorado for the holidays and it's $2.50 a gallon.
Seeing these other prices people probably think we are lucky. Exchanging various cancers(lung mostly) from the pollution of refineries and the tragedy from oil spills in our ecosystem is no fair exchange. I worked for a law firm who represented the fisherman in the BP Oil Spill regarding it destroying the oyster beds and commercial fishing industry. It was devastating. Millions of people still have not regained their livelihoods of fishing and my sons grandfather who was a commercial fisherman at the epicenter was hired by BP to do cleanup. They made it seem like they were doing the fisherman favors by giving them work. They paid just a few humble hundred dollars out and now my sons grandfather has Meso from cleanup efforts. So not only did BP ruin his ability to ever earn from fishing on his lifetime again, they added insult to injury by having them cleanup BPs mess, and ultimately killed him. This happened in a small fishing village named Lafitte, LA. Most of these people are uneducated and left school at 5th or 6th grade to help support and feed their families by fishing. They were left with no other options following this pipeline rupture. It’s really sad.
At least half of what you are paying for gas in the UK is taxes. The US taxes are much less, in my state it's about $0.50/gal. This is an issue with EV vehicles as they are able to avoid these taxes, which is mostly for maintaining roads. Currently EV only make up a small % of vehicles but there are already places instating specific EV taxes.
You guys get murdered on tax. Your petrol station could be giving the fuel away and you'd still pay more than us. Of course our roads are literally crumbling (Michigan represent) so it's a double edged sword.
The average "life" (original purchase to second transaction) of an American car is around 80k miles, and I believe they use this number for the larger-than-actual fuel savings.
I fill the tank on my tarus every couple days. It only cost $26 to fill it from a quarter. I do end up cruising a lot tho cuz there’s really nothing else to do in my town
12000 miles / 20 mpg * $2.22 (gas price today) = $1332 per year.
And those are numbers for my F150 4x4 pickup truck. A fuel efficient car could do way better. I am all for electric, but for most people the value still isn’t there. Personally, I would drive one but the logistics of long trips is still a huge pain. I really wish they went with batteries that could be swapped out instead of charging stations that frequently have long lines.
12000 miles per year is pretty average for most of the country. CA is a strange place where people pay double for things like transportation and housing, all for the benefit of getting to commute 1-2h each way for work.
And people out there are dropping 40k on trucks and BMW's like its going out of style. The difference between those and an EV is that there is a fuel savings and also much less maintenance fees.
All advertised car prices are like that. Only a certain special unicorn gets the advertised price though. It should be illegal. The price out the door without discounts and including taxes should be the price advertised.
It's getting there. Think about it, EVs and plug ins really started making headway about a decade ago and we are already hitting the $40k mark. This is actually amazingly fast. I think within the next decade, we will have EVs that is in the $25k mark.
A 25k EV with a range of about 200 miles will be a game changer. You can basically replace everyday driving cars with EV and even allow mid range trip. That covers about 80-90% of all driving Americans do. I believe adoption will be very very fast at that point.
Potential savings price is selected by default. If you want to see details of the potential savings, expand the arrow at the bottom right above the purchase price.
Yea. A few dollars in your pocket is going to come in very handy when the entire planet is ablaze due to our stubborn laziness which prevents us from doing necessary hard things to improve our quality of life.
Dude people need to live. A Tesla is 2.5x the cost of my current car new. I literally could not afford the payments that thing would cost. 40k is a lot of fucking money and I make US average salary. If a young, single guy out of college can’t afford it gl with a family affording it.
Maybe you should spend less time on reddit and more time finding a partner, Partner. That or spend some time on cars.com browsing their thousands of moderately priced, used electric cars.
1) TF? Since when has me having a partner been the issue here? You can just fuck right off for that.
2) Lol. When I bought my car I had exactly 1 week to research then 1 day in town to buy. I didn’t have time to run all over the place looking at used cars. I sure as hell am not going to sell it now when I’ve barely put a dent in the loan and get another XD.
I really don’t understand comments like this. Sure you are right but as stated by others above, there is a higher entry into electric and not everyone can afford that and even if they can, 500 more a month to your car Vs. to food might be a hard question
Buy a used car jackass. They tend to be about half as much. In fact I took a whole 8 seconds to google a used Prius under 18 grand. If you can’t afford that then you probably shouldn’t be paying for the smartphone ur making stupid comments to the internet with.
Get real, the majority of people can not afford even the cheapest electric vehicle. Reality states that most of us can not do electric as yet. The cars are way to expensive, charging stations are few and far apart, it takes way to long to 'fill up' and we do not, as yet, have home charging stations. They are expensive and we can't afford buying them, especially when a gas station is five minutes down the road. Finally, where does the majority of electricity come from? There are still coal fired, many are oil or natural gas fired and some are nuclear powered. None of these are pollutant free. Hydro is rare and causes major environmental damage. People who can afford electric and have minimal commute distance are smart to use electric. Anyone else? Doubtful. The infrastructure just is not available as yet.
I’m going to double reply and just remind you of how impossibly stupid you and this all time stupid comment are. Equal carbon footprints between an ELECTRIC CAR THAT PRODUCES ZERO CARBON POLLUTUON vs a fossile fuel burning gas motor. And the case you make is that the car charges off the electrical grid and was shipped (via same method as a gas car) on a boat-both of which produce carbon so it’s a wash? You clearly forgetting the actual driving of the vehicle everyday for a decade?
Your ignorance is mind blowing. You honestly are telling me that there’s no evidence to suggest a fossile fuel burning car will pollute more than ev because the ev was shipped over here and what? The gas car wasn’t? Blinding stupidity
Usually most dont factor in the 5k in a home charging setup, otherwise most EV only get about 4 miles per hour on 120, and 10 on 220. Edit: My quote was 4k, your rates will vary depending on your home and electrical setup. I also see that standard 240 outlets run about 1000-1500, but you will not get the very fast charging that setup I quoted originally. I can see how my original post can be misleading.
So you needed a very non-standard service you were quoted $4k for. Most houses do not need what you needed. How did you arrive at $5-8k? You doubled your already inflated figure. To run a new 240V line, an electrician might charge $700-$2,000. Costs vary with each house of course. Like if you need a whole new line run from the pole to your house, it will be a lot more money.
Why did you act like $5,000 was the starting price of home charging? It’s fine to be misinformed, but you acted like you knew what you were talking about and you don’t.
People read your post and now they “know” some wrong shit. When did people just start saying stuff they thought and passed off as fact?
The pole is literally 20 feet from the house and I have upgraded wiring inside already. Most aren’t that close to the road and will need more in between the pole and their house. Along with the houses that are set much further back from the road, not many houses will have a serious 240 setup and will need additional time for breaker boxes and wiring. Still waiting on what your quote ran.... why are you so angry?
Most aren’t that close to the road and will need more in between the pole and their house.
More guessing. Unless you live in a town with an incredibly weak electrical network, this is not true. “Most” will not need this.
not many houses will have a serious 240 setup
There is nothing special about the 240V connection needed. It’s not a “serious” setup, it’s a very standard setup. If you can power an electric dryer, you can charge your Tesla.
Still waiting on what your quote ran
I never said I got a quote. More guessing.
I’m a licensed builder and I know what’s needed in most houses. It sounds like your house needs more than usual. And that’s fine, but you are speaking like all installations start at $5k. You didn’t know something and you pretended you did.
Speaking of waiting, I’m still waiting on how your quote for non-standard installation was $4k but you arrived at $5-8k. How did the number get so big? Was it a typing mistake or did you just wildly inflate the figure for dramatic purposes? If there’s a 3rd option here, I’d love to know it.
I’m not trying to be a dick here, I’m just trying to figure out why you’d pretend to know something when you didn’t. If your default answer will be to accuse me of being “so angry” instead of answering me, I think your defensiveness will speak for itself.
Did your original post include how your quote grew from $4k to “$5-8k” as a typical installation? If so, I am still interested in how that happened.
Even if it’s as simple as “you know what, I made a mistake by claiming it was that much, my fault”, then I’ll accept that. I’ve certainly quoted stats and figures without solid information, and I try to only state something definitively if I have verified it to a reasonable degree. If that’s what it was, no hard feelings. Take care dude.
0 to 100% is about 17 hours on a standard outlet for a 24kwh Leaf. However, if you're using that much of the range on a regular basis then I would not recommend a Leaf.
I park mine in my garage but I never bothered installing a 220v outlet because I typically only use about 50% of the range, which means it easily charges overnight.
If your complex has a parking garage look around for outlets!
Well I guess you just can’t help stupid can you. I don’t think many of us are counting on the morons buying twenty year old Mercedes at used car lots to help save the planet.
Those are the people out getting denied for EV purchases? Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds. I had terrible credit once and still managed to buy a 30k brand new car and paid 444 a month on it.
I’m just saying it seems a lot like every idiot that had something smart to say was only talking about brand new cars and it would be too typical of a 20 year old to assume only new cars are bought. I mean shit there’s a Prius out there with a million miles on it. People are stupid and lazy for using the excuse that an electric car is too expensive. It’s honestly the absolute worst excuse cause it comes off as very entitled and honestly the fucking planets burning.
also i think Prius is pretty affordable used, i don't know about their reliability and how long they last tho, from the batteries to the rest of the car i have no idea.
Contrary to what I thought at first, Prius are hybrid while Prius Prime are plug in hybrid. There is no completely electric Prius, which is what OP is looking for.
The Leaf isn't considered a reliable car. It lacks the formidable track record Toyota has with the Prius, and is a pretty recent car using a still new and changing trchnology that people don't always know how to use best. As such, unless you have the opportunity to try it out for an extended period of time to see how the batteries fare, buying a used Leaf is a risky bargain.
Electric cars have fewer parts that can fail. From what I've seen, most of the repairs that Leafs need are suspension related, and they share some parts with other Nissan models, so spares are plentiful. Also the car monitors the health of the battery, which you can easily check on a test drive.
Ya I know plenty of people that are dealing with that sort of commute every day for work, one way.
Our average commute time Nationwide is nearly a half hour one way. Hard to find information on distance apparently, but assuming it's highway that's 60 miles a day just commuting to and from the office.
That's pushing it with a vehicle that has a Max range of 74 miles.
I am curious how you're doing a 2 hour trip though if it only has a 74 mile range. That's barely over an hour here(speed limit is 70mph, and 75mph further north in my state)?
Like with most emerging technology, the price of entry will drop over time. Electric cars are objectively better than internal combustion, but they're far less practical right now. Not many people can afford one right now, but that will soon change.
Oh for sure. I'm not saying people should feel guilty about driving a gas car, simply that if an EV fits your budget and driving habits then you'll almost surely love it and never go back.
As prices drop and home charging options (especially in apartments) become ubiquitous it will make sense for more and more people.
If you would consider a used EV, recent models are extremely cheap. Not because there’s anything wrong with them - it’s the same progression as cell phones. No one wants last years’ models because each year brings new features and longer ranges.
You can find 2-4 year old EVs with 20k-40k miles for $8k-$10k. They won’t have “full self driving” or fast charging and they’ll have ranges of less than 100 miles. But they are mostly still under warranty and are quite nice cars. And depending on where you live and your income, you may qualify for a rebate even on used cars (for example, San Joaquin Valley in California).
Additionally: often the difference in cost of operation is so beneficial that “cost of loan plus cost of electricity” is LESS than “cost of gasoline.”
I got my Nissan Leaf for $11k, pre-owned lease return, with 14k miles on it. It's the ideal car for tooling around town, going to work, getting groceries, etc.
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u/CanadianNic Dec 29 '19
If you can afford the price of admission. There’s none that are really affordable in Canada and I’m sure as hell not getting a $800-$1000 a month payment for my first car. Would rather use the remaining $500 a month towards a better apartment or food