Nissan’s Leaf Ushers In the Electric Era

Woot! Love the navigator screen with a circle on the maps that gets smaller as your range decreases and the trackball-like stick shift. I'd be in line if I could afford a car for strictly around town driving.

Leasing the batteries?

They say that the cost to charge the batteries combined with the price of their lease "won't be more than you'd otherwise spend on gas".

If it costs the same to operate as a gas car, then what's the point? Also, the buyer's taking a significant risk that the manufacturer will continue to make batteries available.

I'm glad that I don't need to by fuel for my Oldsmobile from the manufacturer.

Nissan. Ushering in the electric era 100 miles at a time.

Good one.

Pass.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's cool as heck, but short sighted business decisions are getting in the way.

GM's EV-1 was built 20 years ago and had equal perfomance to the Leaf. Sadly, someone is sitting on the battery patent preventing its manufacture.

Meanwhile, lithium phosphate battery technology is perfectly capable of filling that gap, but since the only people in the world who build stuff are the chinese, and they are completely incapable of guaranteeing quality, progress languishes.

Bolivia, with the greatest lithium reserves in the world, is undertaking development of the resource, eventually including a battery manufacturing facility.

Actually, while I usually oppose the idea of leasing items, especially cars, I thought leasing the batteries made sense. If technology improved the year after I got the car allowing for 300 mile charges, I'd sure love the convenience of exchanging my 100 battery for a 300 battery. Of course, this totally depends on the cost of leasing. It would have to be cheap to make sense.

Battery lease projected to be about $150 a month.

An equally likely scenario is that three years after the car's introduction, they discontinue production due to lackluster sales. The new battery lease terms offered to the existing owners is $450/month.

So it's gone up that much in three months?

Checking the family records, we spent about $3300 for gas over the last 3 years, for 2 cars. Obviously, we don't get out much and I have a short drive to work.
The Leaf won't save me any money driving around town. 100 miles just barely covers a round trip to Olympia or one way to our nearest relatives.
The Leaf might make sense in Europe, where fuel prices are triple what we pay, put the numbers don't work for me.

Ouch! Too high for this tightwad. I was thinking about $50/month.

Maybe they should make leasing the batteries an option but I suppose that will push the price of buying the car/batteries way up out of range.

But interesting development anyway. Hope they keep working on it and develop longer-range batteries soon.

I was unclear. There's no guarantee that in 3 years it'll still be $150.

The smart thing to do is raise the tax on fuel to the equivalent of what Europeans pay and take that money to "green" America.

That would take political balls though.

Gotcha..."is" threw me off.

The numbers don't make sense for us, either.
We'd have to be "forced" to buy one.