Did the Leaf come from the factory with a 50mi range? That’s whack, I remember seeing an eGolf with like 75mi while I was car shopping last year and couldn’t believe that would work for anyone who drives any appreciable amount of time or distance.
The car I ended up with (2021 Polestar 2) has a nominal ~230mi range and that still feels pretty low compared to newer vehicles with 300+mi ranges.
No. I think it might have had around 100 miles when new (it was a 2012 model, one of the first EVs on the market after the Saturn fiasco covered in Who Killed the Electric Car?), but I bought it when I was at the dealership to look at a used vehicle (Nissan Frontier) and there was a Leaf there for $4000. My entire equation was: I’d like an EV+Here’s a used EV+It’s way cheaper than the truck I was test-driving=I’m buying the used EV. I did no research on battery capacity, etc. going entirely into the purchase cold. Apparently like 40% of the cells were spent. But I really only needed the car to get me around town, so it was perfect for that. It also taught me how to effectively drive an EV for maximum battery usage (which works great for my current car).
What they’ve done with battery capacity in the last five years is incredible. My 2017 Kia was ~125 when new (but purchased in 2020 and battery was down to about 95 miles). I had some manufacturer related issues, so I wound up getting a brand new electric motor and battery in the car, significantly jumping up the range of the vehicle (but they never reset the calculator, so it’s a bit of a guessing game. When fully charged it says I have between 96-100 miles, but I’ve got it to 126 with a bit to spare, never once going into “turtle mode” or anything like that). But, again, since I live on a not-very-big island, I don’t need more range than this. What would be nice is if there was better EV charging infrastructure (and not needing twelve different apps). More chargers would make range-anxiety on older EVs nonexistent, but I’m sure that since Big Oil is now investing in chargers they want to try and pull an Apple/Samsung and steer everyone toward having to buy newer cars more often.
Did the Leaf come from the factory with a 50mi range? That’s whack, I remember seeing an eGolf with like 75mi while I was car shopping last year and couldn’t believe that would work for anyone who drives any appreciable amount of time or distance.
The car I ended up with (2021 Polestar 2) has a nominal ~230mi range and that still feels pretty low compared to newer vehicles with 300+mi ranges.
No. I think it might have had around 100 miles when new (it was a 2012 model, one of the first EVs on the market after the Saturn fiasco covered in Who Killed the Electric Car?), but I bought it when I was at the dealership to look at a used vehicle (Nissan Frontier) and there was a Leaf there for $4000. My entire equation was: I’d like an EV+Here’s a used EV+It’s way cheaper than the truck I was test-driving=I’m buying the used EV. I did no research on battery capacity, etc. going entirely into the purchase cold. Apparently like 40% of the cells were spent. But I really only needed the car to get me around town, so it was perfect for that. It also taught me how to effectively drive an EV for maximum battery usage (which works great for my current car).
What they’ve done with battery capacity in the last five years is incredible. My 2017 Kia was ~125 when new (but purchased in 2020 and battery was down to about 95 miles). I had some manufacturer related issues, so I wound up getting a brand new electric motor and battery in the car, significantly jumping up the range of the vehicle (but they never reset the calculator, so it’s a bit of a guessing game. When fully charged it says I have between 96-100 miles, but I’ve got it to 126 with a bit to spare, never once going into “turtle mode” or anything like that). But, again, since I live on a not-very-big island, I don’t need more range than this. What would be nice is if there was better EV charging infrastructure (and not needing twelve different apps). More chargers would make range-anxiety on older EVs nonexistent, but I’m sure that since Big Oil is now investing in chargers they want to try and pull an Apple/Samsung and steer everyone toward having to buy newer cars more often.