What year and how's the battery holding up? The $2K Leaf I got with a worn out battery really demonstrated how important proper thermal management is for EVs and the Leaf lacking that, even the facelifted/2nd-gen ones, bothers me. I thought 20 miles would be fine for my 3mi commute but even then I was chasing outlets. Otherwise a GREAT little car. Plus the price was right and I traded it in for $2800 at the Chevy dealer LOL. BUT definitely meant to be owned next to a hybrid/ICE. I can't imagine anyone having a Leaf as their only car.
Real-time exposure of the challenges of EV use
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What year and how's the battery holding up? The $2K Leaf I got with a worn out battery really demonstrated how important proper thermal management is for EVs and the Leaf lacking that, even the facelifted/2nd-gen ones, bothers me. I thought 20 miles would be fine for my 3mi commute but even then I was chasing outlets. Otherwise a GREAT little car. Plus the price was right and I traded it in for $2800 at the Chevy dealer LOL. BUT definitely meant to be owned next to a hybrid/ICE. I can't imagine anyone having a Leaf as their only car.
The battery is 9 years old and still around 80%. Our other car is a hybrid and we have a pickup that gets driven occasionally, 200 to 300 miles a month or less.
Not bad. Do you ever Chademo it? I think that's why the one I got was so degraded, they "fast" charged it too much. Only had 60K on the odometer.
JHZR2
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Cost per mile is only if you’re cheating the system of road tax paying residential rates intended for air conditioners and lights.I agree they are idea for people that don't stray far from home. Which is, let's face it, a large percentage of people. In your case, not a good choice, plus you got the car at 20% state of charge. Rental car agency screwed you over on this one
From a cost per mile perspective Bolt is the cheapest good vehicle IMO. Plus they're cheap used. I saw a 2017 Bolt Premier for $16.5K at a local Chevy dealer this week. Now that I can charge at home, I ALMOST traded in my Volt on it. But I didn't like the color. If the Bolt had 100Kw charging I would have overlooked the color and just gone for it.
I’ve paid $22.52+$13.44 for charging. Prices have been between 30-48c/kWh. Plus a time at charger fee. I’ve gone 112 miles and will go about 70 more. So call it 200 miles. That’s 17c/mile.
At $5/gal, a 45 mpg hybrid would be 115/mile. In NJ, our odyssey getting 21 mpg in the city, and with $3.20 gas is 15c/mile.
So these EVs are extraordinarily expensive to drive per mile unless the system is being cheated of its road taxes.
Figures don't lie. Cheating the system, they'll surely put a stop to that once they realize a lot of people are doing it. Just give them a little time.
Oh and the cheaters will ultimately spoil it for everyone, they always do.
4WD
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Some Tesla’s use both oil and filters for the gearboxes …
Gotta wonder how many owners know that …
Gotta wonder how many owners know that …
If it wasn't fully charged, then that was the choice of the car rental to not set the slider to 100%, or perhaps a previous renter changed it if it was at 100% or some other value. As far as I know, there's nothing preventing it from being changed, as I've set it to 100% in Tesla loaners.
I don't know about quickly. I'm pretty sure they have an incentive to make the batteries last such that they have longer displayed range at the time they sell them. Level 2 charging is ideal and fairly easy to implement. I would think that Tesla will be selling lots of their Universal Wall Connector units to rental car agencies that have mixed fleets of Teslas and other EVs.
I haven't heard of Tesla selling any of its Level 3 charging systems. A far as I can tell, they're only available with their public Supercharging setups. I remember my parents asking for a top off charge when they took delivery of their Model 3 RWD, and it added about 14% in 40 minutes of waiting at the showroom/delivery center. The Tesla app called it "Supercharging" but it obviously wasn't. I suppose if they're going to be setting up Level 3 charging at car rental lots, they're going to have to be from someone else.
Right now they're kind of at the mercy of the customer who may not want to charge it. They could create incentives, like steeper penalties. Tesla says that they hope to make zero on idle fees, which are meant to encourage turnover at Superchargers. I suppose rental car agencies could say they hope to make zero on (for example) $50 low charge fees but encourage that to help out the next customer.
No chademo here.
You haven't included the battery depreciation yet. EV's biggest cost is the per year battery depreciation and there is no way around it. Assuming it cost $6k to 10k every 15 years you are now going to have to add that to the cost of electricity as well. For a car rarely driven pass pickup and drop off kids at schools and grocery shopping, gasoline or worn out well depreciated used Nissan Leaf only. It is very unwise financially to buy a new EV to sit around not driven, and I found a lot of older people tends to buy hybrids and EVs to drive only 50 miles a week, saying that saves them a lot of money and they don't have to worry about gas cost ever again.
SammyChevelleTypeS3
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I think many people who are giddy and tickled to avoid the "evil" gas stations with EVs are in for a big surprise once Big Brother has enough folks tooling around in them. About that time is when we can expect them to drop the bomb. Then it will come out that the EV can not be allowed to roam the highways free of surcharges. We need tolls to keep up the roads. We need extra taxes added to the charge costs since we simply can not expect the energy monopolies to assume all the cost needed for the , now emergency fixes and upgrades to the power grids across the country. Then we will certainly have the excessive discard fees like with tires these days to get rid of any used EV a person has or their bad batteries. The disposal fee for batteries will likely sky rocket as the environmental groups across the USA go to court against the EV makers and the gov to stop people from being able to cheaply dispose of all the used batteries. It never ends. People need to wake up and accept the fact of life. No one on earth is going to spend all the time and costs and hard work to invent something to make people able to spend less money. Like an EV vs ICE vehicles. The main push behind EVs are profits not good will to man even though it could be why someone may want to own one.
Mazda was able to get access to Toyota’s hybrid technology and at the very early stage it looks promising. The new CX90 PHEV which is a three row crossover gets well over 50mpg. The CX70 is due out soon and I’m curious to see what the fuel economy numbers will be for a smaller vehicle.
Hybrids make the most sense for the majority of owners. The flexibility of EV use for short trips and the long range if you are driving further.
JHZR2
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While I’m the first to expose the fallacy of EV not needing service and repair, at the same time I’ll call you on this. How many modern cars need 30k atf changes for regular benign use? Examples that aren’t for some unknown severe service are appreciated.
JHZR2
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Agree, though in theory the ICE/transmission depreciates. Sure, there isn’t calendar life ageing on an ICE the way that a battery degrades just sitting there with time. But notionally most vehicles are used.
That's what I've always wondered about, when they show these Tesla "Plaid" cars drag racing Hellcats, Shelby Mustangs, and the like. That battery has to take a horrible beating, pushing that car to over 140 MPH in 9+ seconds.
If fast charging is hard on a battery, super fast discharging has to be even worse.
You nailed it. Give it some time and we might get a chance to say I told you so! Or better yet maybe things change and they start pushing hybrids and alternate fuels.
JHZR2
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Correct. It was a user setting. While I don’t particularly like the ergonomic or user experience of the Tesla tablet (the bolt is generally all around better in that regard), the slider was essay to find and set.
WRT level III or high power/fast charge, it’s a farce too. On a preconditioned battery late at night at a low use 250kW supercharger, the rates weren’t great last time I used one.
The map software and info was great though compared to the bolt. Here’s an example:
It's a relatively minor thing to discharge quickly. The biggest issue is always going to be heat generated, and I wouldn't necessarily be that concerned with a good battery cooling system.
I didn't actually run it in that mode, but I looked at Ludicrous Plus mode when driving a Model S P100D loaner. It said that it would need to prepare the battery for it, which I believe involves heating it to allow for faster discharge. But that's also the case when prepping for Level 3 DC charging, where allowing navigation to select or know the charging destination gives the system time to prep it.
Maybe I'm the outlier, most of my recent vehicles still do 30k ATF change. Is it ok if I don't do it? Probably, but I don't like rolling dice on something that only cost like $100-200 if done at a shop or $50 at home.
No need for service is just a lie. Other than oil change and spark plugs everything else on EV is already there on a normal car. You still need to rotate tires and add wiper fluid.
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I think eventually EV's depreciation would be based on its design and build quality, just like gas engine and automatic transmission. You will likely have things that's relatively trouble free for 250k miles and then garbage that won't worth much after 8 years and 80k miles. We already know how the depreciation of Leaf is as a reference. We'll find out if Tesla will eventually be as reliable as Camry and whether it would depreciate well like a Prius 2nd gen.
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