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EwanToo

Nissan claim to have sold over 250,000 Leafs so far, and the new model has range similar to the Model 3.

The race is definitely on, which is great news for those of us who just want the best electric car :)

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/nissan/leaf/first-drive...

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I was excited by your comment, so I looked up the 2018 Leaf's range: 151mi in the US vs 310mi for the Model 3.

Is there a different model in Leaf the UK? The article you link to says "235 miles (NEDC)/177 miles (WLTP combined)" for the Leaf. Or is the way EV's are rated for range in the UK just different than is the US?

That's interesting, this[1] press release says:

    400 km  (248 miles) using a Japaneses standard JC08.
    241 km  (150 miles) with EPA
    380 km  (236 miles) with NEDC

That's quite a range.

http://www.nissan.com.au/Discover/News/2017/September/06/The...

I'm pretty sure you can't buy that version in the US.

I think those are for the same car, just using different standards for measuring range. Depends on which is most accurate. If the US measure for Tesla 3 is 300+ then it's probably apples to apples. But it would be interesting to see the same standard measurements for the model 3.

Correct. And the EPA tends to be most accurate. I've never hit NEDC numbers in any EV.

That's the same car, with three different range ratings based on different standards. The EPA one is the only one that bears and relation to real world performance.

As I understand it, EPA is the only one of these three with any reputation for accuracy.

My Leaf has an EPA rated range of around 80 miles... And there's no way it would ever do that unless I drove under 50mph the entire way. At 80mph I get half the range!

The European model is a delusional.

So that's why those LEAF people are always driving 55 in the HOV lane!

Exactly.

We own two electric cars: A Tesla P90D and a Chevy Bolt. The Bolt is an American Car, if that matters to you (it does for me) and has an EPA range of 238. (Consumer Reports got 250 in their tests).

We also have a car with an ICE -- a Chevy Volt. It gets 55 miles on all-electric, and has a gas engine too. Handy for when I have to do the occasional long drive and don't want to worry about superchargers, etc.

The Bolt isn't as glamorous as the Tesla S, but it's certainly nicer than the LEAF golf-cart.

I don't think there is much (or any) zero sum competition dynamics is EVs for now. More sold means more consumer familiarity, better price curves on components, better supporting infrastructure.

Meanwhile, there is not real market share to quarrel over. There isn't a fixed number of EVs that will sell in 2019. It'll depend on price, consumer familiarity, supporting infrastructure...

btw... I think Musk has said things to this effect, at least back in TSLS's earlier days. I don't think they're worried about competing too much

not being in a zero sum environment doesn't mean that people aren't going to look at the price. When big manufacturers can scale up output I don't see how Tesla is going to justify their price.

And that isn't even taking into account that Tesla is burning through crazy amounts of cash already.

Sure. If you're expecting a total Tesla failure on price performance... then they'll fail. In terms of the EV models out in 2018, I don't think this is what is happening here. Tesla are having trouble keeping up with demand. They've also been playing a big risk strategy all along, so they still may explode or run out of money.

..I'm just skeptical that the last line of this article:

If Tesla can’t figure out how to make more cars soon, it could open a lane for rivals from Detroit and overseas to...

I don't agree. There is a big market here, it's basically the market for cars. There's no way Tesla could have ever held that whole market, I don't think they expect to and we shouldn't want them to. Within the market for cars, Tesla could be selling many times more cars than they are optimistically promising to make currently.

I think competition is, in this case, way down the list of problems. The problem is as they've been saying all along, they need to build more cars faster.

I'm glad they dropped the awful look of the car.

Still looks pretty ugly to me. Why does an electric car need such a large front grille?

Yeah, it was an improvement, but very small.

I just don't understand why car designers think it's OK to make ugly electric cars.

The craziest example is the i8 vs the i3. The i8 is lovely but the i3 is beyond ugliness. It's the same designers trying to build for the same line of cars. A regular BMW 3-series is no uglier than a 5 or 7-series.

Tesla built a beautiful car in my eyes. They took the look of an Aston Martin from what I see.

Then in a similar fashion as converting the style of a 7-series into a 3-series, they've managed to shrink and simplify the design whilst keeping the look. It's ridiculous that other car companies can't do this with electric cars.

I know it's pure vanity, but the Tesla is worth more simply because you don't have to wear dark glasses and a hat to drive it.

It's the same reason that I believe the Prius sold so well over other hybrids. A Hybrid Civic or Hybrid Fusion just looked like regular cars. Nobody looked at the tiny badges so nobody knew they existed.

You see a Prius, it's ugly, but you know what it is right away, an economical hybrid. People who didn't know asked WTF is, and the car kinda sold itself. I think Toyota knew that the people lining up to buy them would not care about how good the car looked. They just knew that the Prius was the weird car they saw over and over that was a Hybrid.

I mean, most people don't even know the 1st gen Prius existed. They look like a regular car. They still got great economy, but IIRC the car didn't sell nearly as well as the newer, more ugly Prius.

how many among these 250,000 leafs sale are for new model, for proper comparison ? This seems like total sale of all Leafs ever sold.

The new model just went on sale this week so, none. That’s how many of the old ones they sold.

Model 3 says 220 miles base model and Leaf says 151, I don’t find their range to be that similar. 70 miles is a lot of distance. Granted the model 3 is more expensive but I would much rather have that extra range.

The Model 3 has over 300 miles of range. As far as I know, the Leaf is less than 250.

What’s the charging network like?

The same as the Tesla's charging network, since they are compatible...

Are you sure leafs can use superchargers? That doesn’t seem correct at all.

I’m not sure what other charging network i would refer to.

In the UK I've never seen a supercharger (though they exist) but lots of car parks at offices, shopping malls, etc, have generic charging points.

BP are adding them on petrol forecourts too.

See this map for example https://www.zap-map.com/charge-points/

Superchargers are usually built outside of cities along the long-distance routes. So they might not be as obvious as other chargers. Here is a map of all active superchargers: https://supercharge.info/

You can use all non-tesla fast-charging stations, charging to 80% in 20 minutes. Do note that tesla supercharger stations also have "normal" fast-charging stations. Tesla is the only company remaining to deploy vendor-specific chargers.

Interesting that while we tend to beat on the standards drum in HN, Tesla might get a pass ...

I don't think it's entirely fair to expect Tesla to _wait_ for the rest of the car industry to agree on a standard that suits everyone. When the Model S was developed, no other car company except Nissan had any notable interest in electric cars, and no other company had plans to make cars even _close_ to Tesla's in terms of battery capacity.

Assuming that a charger network was necessary for success, which I would argue it was, waiting for the others to catch up could have killed the company.

Note that there have still been no large-scale deployments of charging standards with more than 50-60kW of power, which is half what Tesla is currently deploying to most of its charging stations in North America.

They don't even have to wait for an open standard, they could make their proprietary system one.

Tesla offered their implementation to all car manufacturers, including access to the Supercharger network, but none took the offer.

https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you

Not a Tesla fanboy at all but it's too early right now to settle on standards, it would stifle innovation.

Tesla released their patents on charging back in 2014 in the hopes that others would adopt their tech: https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you

Have you seen Tesla's charging connector? It's way superior to the bulky standardized connectors. And as said by others, there really is no other game in town right now for long distance travel in an EV.

Disclosure: I own a Tesla Model S.

Tesla super charging stations don’t have normal fast charging stations co-located.

Tesla is the only car company which creates large scale charging networks.

Teslas can use the other chargers, but no-one except Tesla can use the Superchargers

I really dislike this focus on charging networks. Long distance trips with current generation electrics is not comparable to current petrol powered cars. If anything we should use the roll out of electrics to take back land to service cars which includes "charging stations" other than those already used for parking cars.

with regards to my trip comment, the contorted thought processes people go through to justify one hour stops for full recharges plus what can be ten to fifteen minute side trips to charging stations should clue many in on how not ready it is. (and yes it is an hour if not more even for Tesla to fully charge and range dives in winter)

>the contorted thought processes people go through to justify one hour stops for full recharges

But everybody knows you need to stop a full hour to pee for every two hours of driving else you might die. Think about all the delicious restaurant meals and fun you haven't had because you never needed to wait for your ICE car to recharge in the middle of nowhere.

Most people I know stop 15 minutes every two hours and maybe stop for a meal every 4 hours. An hour every two hours is too much. It extends the travel time by 50%.

My old rule for long drives was to drive for 3 CDs (i.e. albums), fuel up for 10 minutes, and repeat until done. On a highway, that's 200+ miles per 10-minute stop. EVs are already great for commuting and errands, but they have a long way to go before being even close to competitive for long-distance driving.

And yet lots of Tesla owners drive long distances.

Do they? How long does it take them? At 3 hours per 200 miles, 12 hours is 800 miles. Maybe you don't live in the western US, but it's a big place. If every gas station had a super-charger, range anxiety would be almost a non-issue, and travel time would be a noticeable but not intolerable problem, but we're a long ways from that.

EDIT, because HN sucks...

70 MPH * 3 hours = 210 miles. You might want to talk to some normal humans who don't frequent superchargers.

I happen to live in the western US. I run into tons of other Tesla owners at superchargers, not surprisingly.

The usual drill is to drive around 120 miles and then stop for 10-15 minutes to supercharge. So yes, that is a bit more stopping that I used to do.

Tesla has a trip planner at tesla.com/supercharger

For Palo Alto to SpaceX's factory, it recommends stopping for 50 minutes in Kettleman, which means you're charging for 13% of the trip time.

{Sorry about the comment about 3 hours to go 200 miles, I misread what you said as taking what Shivyeta said about stopping for an hour to charge at face value. Oh, and why do you think that insulting me is an appropriate response?}

> Oh, and why do you think that insulting me is an appropriate response?

Yeah, that was probably snarkier than necessary. But we increasingly live in our own little bubbles, and "folks hanging around the supercharger" is definitely a small one.

My purpose for mentioning that was to say that I'm not the only Tesla owner who takes long trips. It was directly relevant to my point.

Wow. I know I'm late but... WOOSH?

There is no Nissan specific charging network. The rest of the industry besides Tesla have long since settled on standards for charging and the presence of regular charging stations is improving but slowly.

A large part of why is that up til this generation of EVs (Chevy Bolt and new Nissan Leaf and others that are coming), they have really not made sense to drive far. You would have had to stop too often. They were in town or short (sub 30 miles) commute cars.

And having owned the previous generation Leaf for the last 3 years I can tell you 99% of our charging is done in our garage. Once in a while we park somewhere that has charging or my wife will luck into getting a charge spot in a parking garage. But we don’t take it on drives where we need a charging station to complete the journey. We have a gas car for those longer drives right now. But that will change with this new generation that have 40KWh+ batteries.

There is an extensive charging network here in Kansas City area; > 2000 plugs. Though as of 1/18 many have started charging $0.20/kWh, which is double the rate at home. I’ll still use them though. Places like grocery stores are still free.

I still wouldn’t leave my car just plugged in somewhere while I walk away for extensive amounts of time. Call me paranoid, but in urban Europe people will steal and vandalise the shit out of anything that looks slightly unprotected.

Help me understand that - leaving your car plugged in while shopping is no different than leaving your gas car not-plugged-in while shopping, in terms of leaving your property around.

The cord is part of the fixed charged, and not my problem ... just like the hose on a gas pump.

You typically can't unplug it without the key while charging.

Thank you for the response--I can see why I was downvoted, but it might have been a bit of a mystery without understanding how the charging networks work.

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