I bought the cheapest EV, a used Nissan Leaf
jeffgeerling.com
jeffgeerling.com
I drive it to work every day (where I can charge it for free). I drive it to Oslo and can park/charge almost anywhere around town for really cheap, about €3/h, which is nothing compared to regular parking, which is usually ~€16/h.
I drive it to the Netherlands, about ~950km in two days, without a hint of range anxiety, thanks to abetterrouteplanner.com. Sure, I'm averaging 85km/h, and have to take a ~10min stop every ~2 hours to charge, but that is a welcome pause to visit the toilet or grab a bite.
I had to change a bearing that was getting noisy after 10 years of use, and it cost me €50 in parts and half an hour changing it. I was worried it was going to be a complicated affair, not having done it before, but it was as easy as changing a tire.
Oh, and there is physical buttons for everything! There is a little display that controls the music and shows consumption stats, but it is entirely optional and can be removed completely.
The battery has hardly degraded at all. I'm keeping this thing for as long as I possibly can, it is the perfect car!
Currently trying to get rid of our petrol car but knowing realistic range up front is rough. I'm fine with driving slower.
When driving to the Netherlands in the months between March and October, the consumption has been around 8.3kW/100km. The car is light and has little tech that consumes power.
Since the car has no heat pump, heating the cabin has a noticable impact on range during cold winter days.
That said, it is a really good car to drive in the winter as the cabin gets warm in no-time and the windows in the front and back are heated and melts away thick ice in about a minute, even in really cold weahter! When doing normal commutes, the shorter range does not matter at all. But I would probably not drive to the Netherlands in -10°C during the winter!
Going 900km with that is pretty bold. I wouldn't want to..
But driving around town, this is perfect.
I expected a nerve wreaking trip with the eUP, but got slightly more confident after some planning. Using abetterrouteplanner.com and a charging card from elli.eco, I could drop by almost any charging station and avoid apps or paying with a credit card.
Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands is flush with chargers, so a range of ~130 is actually more than enough.
After the first trip was a success, we have repeated the trip up and down several times, and will take the same trip this October. And by success, I mean a very respectable Wife Approval Factor and a pleasant trip all-around.
The only real downside I have found is that after the 7th or 8th charge, the battery start to get hot, and since there is no cooling the charging time drops from ~10 minutes to more like 18 minutes. But that usually only happens at the last one or two stops.
I know this is far outside the norm and I plan to get another used electric car with some more range at some point, but I'm in no hurry. Having tried what I thought to be almost impossible, I was surprised to find how painfree it actually was.
It was $20k used.
We also have a 2014 BMW i3 with a worn-out battery. This was designed for ~50 miles between charging, or you could get the one with a little petrol engine as a "range extender". Mine can only do about 40 miles in winter. Later models doubled that, and most i3 cars on the road do 1.5x what I'm getting. But I got it used for $5000...
So if you take an EV's battery size in kWh and multiply it by 2.7, that's the worst range you will get in km.
In normal weather EVs get 5-7km per kWh.
Holy HELL that is crazy. I thought £5/hr in London was crazy.
The two are related. The whole point of charging for parking is to leverage scarcity to convince people to not make the problem worse and just find alternatives to driving to the doorstop that work well for them.
Do people seriously think that these companies want to charge more, for environmental reasons? Of course not. They care only for profit.
https://news.wttw.com/2025/05/21/final-tally-chicago-taxpaye...
The parent says that the reason the price is high, is because someone is trying to up the price for environmental reasons. What proof have they for this? I'd really like a citation, because instead I see almost all parking being profit based.
If someone is saying it's for environmental reasons, likely they're lying to make more profit.
Did you think they should just let you park in Cambridge Common, Harvard Yard or the Charles River park? Why park at all— just stop your car in the middle of the street.
The T is atrocious. Parking is simply expensive.
if less space is allocated, it becomes more expensive (scarcity), driving down car use. this is an easy case of pricing in environment and external impacts.
The post I replied to said "The whole point of charging for parking" was to force people to, essentially, drive less. This is saying it's the only reason people charge for parking. Clearly not so.
And there is artificial scarcity too. I've seen cities where one company owned almost all the parking lots. In that situation, they controlled pricing entirely.
I've seen a lot more of "doing it for profit", including the city doing it for profit, than for environmental reasons.
That's doesn't mean I support this position or not. Describing reality as it stands is important, one cannot effect change one way or the other, without understanding what is.
And they lie because they get vilified otherwise by people who can't stand the idea that they make a profit.
BTW, whenever someone gives you a reason why they do something, odds are pretty good that you're given the palatable plausible reason, not the actual unflattering one.
And sometimes city councils restrict the amount of parking that can be built because they want to create that scarcity to encourage people to take transit instead of driving, because they know that the owners of the (fewer) parking areas will charge more, making it less desirable to drive and park.
This goes doubly so for all the additional roads you need to get the cars to their parking spots.
Indeed, and to build upon your comment, how entitled can some people be to expect they can just take over random ~10m² spots in a property you do not own and expect that to be ok? It isn't. Those spots ain't yours, and I would love to not have to come across your car.
Are you against renting homes, hotel rooms etc too? Do you object to the vast spaces that hotels occupy?
And if it's public property, well, we all pay taxes and could argue it's collectively owned. Why would it be entitlement?
I could say public transport advocates are entitled expecting taxes to pay for vastly expensive public transport infrastructure projects
If you talk of taxes, then yes, you can argue against tax payers subsiding free parking for people living outside that city
It's one way to put a lot of cars in a small space. Much of the space in a conventional parking garage is lost to the driveways.
Out of zone 1 it can be done though I believe
As to the GP, it’s refreshing to hear about a reliable VW. Most folks I know, that own VWs, complain about reliability.
But they still love their cars. I’ve never driven a VW, but, apparently, they handle quite well.
Cars are simply not viable past a certain density. It's silly (misleading at worst) to take a distance (say 40km) and a speed (say 80kph) and just claim the journey by car takes 30mins, ignoring everything else!
Trains + metro + bikes are the only way to make the journey you describe viable (and comfortable and fast).
If there are professionals willing to pay continually-higher portions of their salary to live in the city regardless of who they displace then why can't we find ways to build new areas they want to live in? In some places there is a huge weather or natural-feature draw that will always prop up demand, but in others there isn't. There's just a lack of imagination and effort.
Because people want to live their lives today, while what you propose takes decades and must be a process worked on by Town Halls, not "the people". And no, it's not the same. The Town Hall of rich people who didn't yet have the need to leave, is dominated by rich people who didn't yet have the need to leave, not the people who is more affected by the excessive centralization.
My (European) experience is the opposite: it takes longer to go to work by car, you're sitting in traffic whereas subways and trains take a fraction of the time as they are not impacted at all.
I live in Rome, which isn't known for great public transport. Yet I've seen multiple times people going from Rome suburbs to Naples downtown (a completely different region, 150 miles away) than it took me by car to do 7 miles.
It's a rare case where American Exceptionalism is a fact.
The London subway system is just wonderful.
My city has "great" public transport. It's been appraised multiple times, which I guess means that average public transport must be worse than what I've grown up with. I take 20 mins by car from home (in an outer neighborhood) to my workplace (in a central area), 55 mins otherwise. When you consider roundtrips, it adds up (and if we add a middle stop coming out from work to somewhere else for some shopping, the time counting goes out the roof).
The 30 mins vs 1h30 comparison was assuming a trip from a nearby dormitory city 25 kms away, which is the minimum (insisting: minimum) distance everyone nowadays is being pushed out in order to being able to buy any home at a reasonable price. For example: where my parents live to my work is further away 30 Km: that's 30 min by car and 1h10 by p.t., but that outer city had reasonable prices 15 years ago, not today, so nowadays you would go live somewhere farther than that.
I find that typically people talk about public transport benefits from the perspective of being able to buy a home within the centre that is well connected. Yeah, the subway is great here if you live in a 10 Km radius, but talking about it is out of scope for most.
Trains don't have stop lights nor traffic. They don't care about rush hour. They are always going to be the fastest connection to a city center.
I live 4 minutes by foot from the Colonna Galleria train station, in a village 30 kilometers outside Rome, Italy. The train to Termini (Rome central station) takes 28 minutes, and Termini is the crossway of the 2 main metro lines and the most important city bus lines.
It's 33 minutes at night with empty streets and it's 1:15 at rush hour. Leaving work at 5:30 can easily cost you 2 hours in your car.
But sure, put me 3 miles from the train station, put my office in a place that is just 10/15 more inconvenient from metro/termini and it's drammatically different.
Woah yeah that changes the calculations, I had a similar situation before, andof course I preferred the subway by far. But you know, it depends. I work late into the evening and when getting out of the office, the streets are empty. So it's a hard sell for me to use a transport option that will cost me 1 hour of my already short free time before bed. But everyone's situation is different, that's why I am in favor of keeping all options open.
I live in Munich and yet going by car is often the fastest, and only during rush hour it's worse. I generally use my bike though, which is so-so. If was 5min by foot from the subway station (and not 15) it would change drastically.
Also I mean it's not terrible, but 30-45 minutes to get somewhere by public transport is the norm. 5min to the bus stop, bus to the subway, subway then is quick. And by car this is often faster, also more reliable, and no walking in the rain.
This usually means you can't stay for a particularly long time.
Here is a map of all charging points provided by the municipality around Oslo: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/2053e5d9f24c48c487e...
This program isn't the same throughout Norway, though. In Trondheim, it looks like you pay for parking and then you pay for the charging separately so you really aren't parking for free. (Private parking might vary, and sometimes city parking is free).
And the cheapest Model 3 will have significantly more acceleration than the Bolt. Maybe the rental's acceleration was set to comfort mode. That reduces pedal responsiveness.
I didn't own a Bolt, but I did drive one and found it underwhelming. It had bad software, charged slowly, and then all of them were recalled due to battery fires. I don't seem to be alone in this opinion, as their depreciation has been pretty rough compared to other EVs from the same time period.
I'm not saying the bolt out-accelerates a tesla. That's silly. I'm saying the bolt was fast and nimble.
Software on mine was fine. Battery charging sucked but that wasn't a problem for me having had subsidized charging at work. Battery fires caused my bolt to receive a free, brand new battery so also not a problem.
Sometimes i wonder how our nation works. Low taxes, effectively no poverty among locals (and a foreigner can only be poor if they are an illegal immigrant, otherwise they lose their rights of residence and kicked out), almost no crime, and a budget surplus! And nothing seems to be a ridiculous overcharge: even healthcare is dirt cheap, funded by a really low tax of 2.4-4% if income.
All issues we have seem to be a product of culture/poor education, rather than economical - such as some trash in the streets or very poor quality of building and car maintenance. Also no Schengen but again, only foreigners care about it.
I don't think it is something to be proud of though, as the riches are not earned.
In particular, the taxes being paid in these jurisdictions are not earned in them - which makes it even worse.
Thisnis not rocket science? Why all the lobbying?
You should be proud, but you should also lobby for better spend of the tax money.
Regardless, a well functioning nation should target some level of equality. This does not necesarrily happen through taxes, but taxes have just shown to be incredibly effective.
Regardless of your status, you still suffer from high inequality. If you are poor it is self explanatory. But even rich people need to shield them from ceo killers, use incredibly bad infrastructure, etc.
In that view I do understand why you are not a proud US person - but taxes would likely safe you - like it did in the 60s.
CEO killers are not a result of inequality. The only recent example of a CEO killer was a result of being the head of a health insurance company and the motivation was not his comp.
Bad infrastructure is also not a good example. That’s just a result of gov choices on spending.
At least in the US, pulling levers on taxing the middle and upper middle class produces far more revenue than hitting the 0.1%. This is why Democrats nor Republicans will ever provide meaningful cuts for people making $90k-$500k/year.
Inequality causes issues, but infrastructure failures is not one of them.
Thinking about taxes in terms of producing revenue completely misses the point. Taxes in this context is a tool for increasing equality.
As for the ceo killings, if not the US increases equality, we will likely only see more of that behavior going forward.
So given that the only recent CEO killing was not a result of inequality, what evidence do you have to support the notion than increased inequality would increase CEO killings?
It's a fantastic city car, and he's even done some longer trips in it.
I've also got an EV6 AWD which is obviously more powerful, and bigger, but nowhere near as fun to drive.
Every other month I drive 800km with my Opel Corsa-e, it takes me 10-12 hours and 4 charging stops.
This is 2 hours more than what my friends and relatives manage with their ICE car.
And since I have a child, I've been doing it in 2 days. Allows me to spend half a day packing, spend the other half in the car on the way to a hotel, and the next day I can be with the family for lunch. Kid is also not sitting tied to the seat a full day this way.
But I admit it is getting a bit much, and since I can't charge at home, I'm not getting the financial advantage either, so it's lots of travel time + hotel, and all the gain I get is that I love my car and don't want to switch back :D
Driving 950km with an e-up: I totally believe you that it's fine, but I'm sure I would be eyeing for a slight upgrade.
10% mora range isn't worth double the car price, probably. My personal benchmark is a 200km stretch on my way where I cannot reliably charge, and my current car is about the cheapest fully electric, that can do that. Even if I'm driving 90km/h behind trucks in the winter.
But good in you, nevertheless!
Ice car drivers love to make us feel miserable for the extra time and inconvenience, but it's a package deal, and overall the inconvenience is relatively easy to mitigate by smart planning, thinking outside the box.
And now I want an e-up for my wife :D
Such advantages will disappear as EVs become more common. Lots of stuff, like super-fast home charging stations or EV using HOV lanes, cannot scale as EVs become a majority. Enjoy the special treatment while it lasts.
It exists now as an incentive to buy EVs, but as EV become more popular it's bound to disappear.
Because current grids are not setup for 10,000-watt chargers in every home and/or parking spot. Just think of trying to provide chargers in an apartment complex, one to each apartment. The power requirements become crazy very quickly. This parallels the issues with rental car companies trying to charge dozens of cars at once, such as at airports. Our grid standards never conceived of such loads becoming commonplace. Whereas today when every EV owner just expects their home charger to be available 24/7, if everyone had an EV some sort of rationing/scheduling would be necessary
Some parts of Canada have already seen this with heat pumps. People were encouraged to switch from natural gas to electric heat pumps. But incentives have been withdrawn as power spikes during cold weather challenge local grids, especially when there is no wind/solar power available locally (think cold winter mornings in the midwest/prairies.)
600W is not much, that is an average gaming computer running a somewhat demanding game. Nerds all over the world have this as a multi hour nightly ritual. I choose to charge my car now and then instead :P
need a mini electric car with high clearance and surprisingly there aren't that many.
(need a tall car as I live in rural area and am driving on many dirt roads )
No doubt running on milky tea.
Afaik in Europe, CCS2 is the standard (and mandatory these days), when I rented an EV a few weeks back there was no location which didn’t have it. And all the spots I tried charging at except Tesla accepted card payment (though there were a pair of times it was a struggle getting a card to work).
Apps / memberships will get you cheaper prices but that’s about all I saw (and I didn’t bother with any of it).
TBH the only things that annoyed me were implementation issues of the car (a polestar 4) as well as how overly wide it is. And that the rental company (AVIS) does not provide an AC adapter, so I was not able to charge at any wallplug even though I had the opportunity to charge the car at least twice over in all (I will likely purchase one if that remains their policy and I rent more EVs).
All this is modulo it being summer and a pretty long range model so range anxiety was present but reasonably limited.
The fact that both J1772 & CCS2 are 100% universal in Europe is huge. So much so even Tesla switched to CCS2. This doesn't help Jeff but certainly one less problem for many readers of his article.
That was obvious from the article but given they specifically mentioned CCS2 bundled with the mess that is US charging I thought important to point that (anecdotally) the situations are quite distinct. Both in terms of charging hardware and payment.
Funnily enough, not for the Leaf! Though it will be on the third generation that's coming out this year. The second-gen Leaf (a ten year old design, at this point) that the author of the article bought doesn't have it. The EU only mandates CCS2 in _charging points_; manufacturers can still sell cars without it, though I think Nissan may be the only remaining one who _does_.
Right but that’s the most important one. If you have a leaf it means you know you need an adapter always, so while it’s a bit of a hassle to waste space on that there’s no question whether you’ll get a compatible charging plug.
In my country chademo is rarely available, I know only two networks that provide it (and they are smaller ones).
This does mean Jeff's Leaf would be limited to AC without an adapter, which isn't perfectly ideal, but still better.
In North America it's attempt at a CCS plug was awful and ugly and so much worse than CCS2 and made J17772 almost look preferable. The marketplace winner (by almost a landslide) was Tesla's plug and NACS is CCS protocols over Tesla plugs. All of the car companies at this point are mostly agreed that NACS is the present and future in North America.
I was under the impression Type 2 was the only European standard.
Europe actually doesn't use J1772 either. They use type 2 mennekes which has an additional AC conductor relative to US J1772 and CCS1.
Chademo is still standard in Japan.
Also, given his comparison to the ease of the old way, in Europe at least it's fairly standard to know someone who has filled their hire car with diesel (or not diesel) by mistake. They have warning stickers on the filler flap because it happens so often.
Meanwhile knowing someone who uses the inexplicably more expensive premium fuel option also offered is maybe rarer.
Maybe EV-owning car reviewers should counter the FUD by pretending to be confused by these, always using the most expensive one in price comparisons and then breaking the car completely by using the wrong one during their test drive, like the many propaganda pieces put out about EVs.
In the US, if you roll up to a random charging station you may or may not find a plug matching your car’s port.
However, I haven't seen a station that takes card yet (or they don't advertise it). They all have their own app, which is inconvenient and a hassle.
It is exactly this kind of Nissan Leaf. Japanese older generation cars. Enough around to still be available, but I think it is slowly disappearing. After that only 6kW (32A/single phase) charging will be available for these cars.
https://www.electway-charger.com/CCS2_to_CHAdeMO_adapter.htm...
The problem is the CCS and CHAdeMO is different protocols so an adapter has to be an active adapter.
With CCS to CHAdeMO you need something to power the active electronics in the adapter. I've heard of some that do this by having a cable and plug on the adapter that plug into the car's 12 V port. I've heard of others that have a battery in the adapter.
Compare to adapters between NACS and CCS. NACS and CCS do use the same protocol. They just have a different pinout. The adapters are passive and so can be a lot cheaper.
Here in Norway, new EVs are no longer allowed to be sold with AC adapters, due to the potential fire hazard. At least that's the reason I got when I purchased my current EV.
Perhaps a EU thing, wouldn't surprise me.
Could also be that for historical reasons you could have a house wired for 10 or 13 A and not be aware if it.
‘Course you can manage that by having the chargers limit themselves to 8A default (or even always), at 1800W that’s a very slow trickle but it’s something, and even if it does not fully cover your commute it spaces out carger stops or helps condition the battery on cold mornings.
That's a little more power than a US 15A, or the same as a US 20A.
There is often 3 phase power to the home in Europe, however. That allows 415V phase to phase and also 3-phase synchronous motors.
Both type E and F plugs are rated for 16, and afaik that’s generally the rating in countries which use them.
I’m sure there are others but Switzerland is the only country I know of in Europe were plugs are limited to 10 and you have to hard-wire 16.
[1]: https://www.ba.no/lader-du-elbilen-din-i-stikkontakt-det-bor...
Sure you might burn a house down if you find one that has a plug which isn't correctly installed with loose connectors but the fire risk here wasn't the EV. Its the incorrectly installed wiring.
You don't tell people to get rid of their fridges because some people might have forgetten to plug theirs in and therefore they could get food poisoning from spoiled food inside.
That said there's been a campaign for several years trying to get rid of sockets for high current or permanent installations. I recently replaced both an electric water heater and mini split AC, and in both cases the previous appliance had used a socket and that was not allowed anymore.
Could well be they're just being proactive.
[1]: https://brannstatistikk.no/search?searchId=6EB5433C-AC28-4F6...
This means you can put a low-current plug (small ground pin) into a high-current socket (large ground slot), but not the other way around.
Only downside I've found so far is that you can't use a high-current-rated extension cord to plug a low-current appliance into a low-current socket.
Typical cause seems to be old, worn-out installations or improperly done installations.
Perhaps 999/1000 outlets being able to function safely at rated longterm maximum draw (when there is no obviously visible damage) used to be an acceptable ratio. Doing anything close to maximum draw for long periods and unsupervised was less common.
With EV-charging becoming more common the old standard is no longer good enough. There is too little margin for error and too high likelihood of a situation where error leads to damage.
TL/DR: no but kinda yes
Tesla on the other hand doesn't include AC adapter in newly sold cars (since about a year).
Level 2 chargers here either need PEN fault protection built in, or you need a correctly sized earthing rod installed.
I have wall ovens that connect via a 50A circuit. Do I need to worry about fire hazards when I bake something for hours and hours?
It's complicated. Heat builds up over time. So for example your standard 15 amp breaker on a 14 gauge wire in the US is rated for 15 amps of intermittent use, but if you draw that continuously without letting the heat dissipate it becomes a fire hazard. IIRC circuits are generally rated for ~80% of their max load for continuous use, so that 15 amp circuit is considered good for 12 continuous. Or in your 10 amp example 8 should be ok.
Your oven and circuit should be sized such that your long cooks aren't a concern, if you look at it's label you'll probably find it has a max draw of well below 50amps, but if you have actual doubts ask a professional.
A concern for high current outlets in the US, such as NEMA 14-50, is that they weren't necessarily designed for a large number of plug/unplug cycles. Typically you'd plug your stove in and leave it there for years to decades.
If you use the same 14-50 outlet for car charging, which is not uncommon, the contacts can lose their grip over time. End users may want to take their mobile EVSE with them and incur cycles on the outlet. Properly installed but worn 14-50s have been known to melt or even catch fire under these conditions.
End users should prefer to have their EVSE(s) hardwired or installed with a higher grade outlet like Hubbell or Bryant.
One of those was a leaf
In contrast, it is completely normal to charge an EV at a socket's maximum power for over ten hours straight. This time component is why charging EVs from a regular AC outlet can be a fire risk.
Code in the US is 220V/50A. Your wall oven will get the same, despite having a much lower max draw than the usual oven/cooktop combination.
50A (upgraded from 30A several years ago) is specified for having the oven plus all cooktop elements ON. Maximum instantaneous draw will be below 50A. There's also the standard 20% headroom allotment, and some additional safety margin to account for the heat generated by all of the above being ON (or high duty cycle) for an extended period.
Probably? No, it pulls less than my dryer which runs at 240V15A I think but also just the same as my 1500W space heater. You can totally control how much power the charger should draw.
> With that much power, there’s a risk of overheating and fire. Unlike a dedicated EV charger, a socket is simply not equipped to handle the amount of electricity needed to charge a car battery.
Wrong assumption leads to wrong conclusion. Any charger you can physically plug in will work in a house that's wired up to standard.
It’s the long charge time that leads to heat buildup, not the max amp.
Where I am from standard outlets can deliver 16A but are not rated for more than 6A if the load is longer than 2 hours.
The torched outlet was installed specifically to charge prior homeowner's EV and was only 3 years old.
I moved to an EV-rated 50A outlet which can handle the duty cycle. We have charged two EVs off of it and so far so good. It has a cute little green logo on it and costs 5x as much as a typical NEMA plug. :) Weighs about 5x as much too and grips the grizzl-e plug very tightly and with much larger contact areas.
I'm a believer.
One needs to do one or possibly a combination of:
- Set the pin setting on a home charger for a lower current output. Theres also portable chargers with programmable current limiting, which I find more flexible.
- Replace with a better outlet/wiring setup. Many advocate for a hardwired setup over using an outlet.
The reason why I was asking for the outlet is precisely because "dryer outlet" can mean a lot of different things. Dryers in the US usually don't even come with cords out of the box because people may have a few different plugs. Does it have a neutral? Is it 30A or 50A? All possibilities for a "dryer outlet".
I don't understand how North America and Europe settled on different EV charging plugs.
We are talking about electric vehicle charging, as in, cars that have electric motors and are powered by a battery.
As said not all stations provide all the standards, not every station has CCS2, hence why I carry multiple cable adapters. That's all I know really. As said I don't drive an electric car.
The AC "slow" charging in the US only needs to support two-phase power (residential power is two phase) and the EU (and others?) generally need to support three-phase power.
NACS is just better in North America (versus CCS1) because it's smaller and much easier to physically handle, but the AC "slow" charging pinning only supports two phase power.
In fact, I haven't had to use an app for a DCFC in several years. They either work with plug and charge or take payment directly on the dispenser.
At the end of the tax year I'll have paid $11k for the car, effectively.
I tacked on the price of the CHAdeMO adapter mentally to the price I offered, since I knew I'd want it for the one or two regional road trips I take per year.
- a traditional car feeling, knobs, buttons, the way cars have been for decades prior
- very very reliable. basically never needs anything except wiper fluid. no software updates or crashing. I don’t have stats but might be one of most reliable cars
- compact and easy to park
- compatible with comma.ai
- LeafSpy diagnostics to monitor it
- nice hatchback format with fold down rear seats
- ~220 mile range is plenty for around town use and trickle charge overnight
Overall I’m very happy with it and while constantly tempted by Teslas I think I wouldn’t like them as much.
Anyway, not having CarPlay has not been an issue. Although, it would have been nice to have.
I also don’t get this CCS drama, I have yet to come across an actual fast charger station that doesn’t have CHAdeMO in addition to the CCS connection. Maybe in my area of midwest all the charger stations were installed during the dual standard being the standard.
I’m dumb, of course I always see CHAdeMO because my charger app is set to that for DC fast. Duh … a friend said unset filters and yeah there are more CCS DC fast.
On the trip to Chicago, I only see 4 plugs on the way, and those are all at dealerships... which often have cars parked in front of them, so I can't really rely on those being available :D
That said having a CCS adapter working is very interesting and I will be following your experience as I have similar a Leaf to you (2021 SV Plus)
https://github.com/geerlingguy/electric-car/issues/9
I am very happy with my 2021 Leaf. It’s a very solid around town and commute vehicle. Anyone comparing it to Bolts doesn’t understand the Nissan build quality is just much better, Leaf is in a different league of design, refinement, and reliability.
One thing I would recommend is a set of winter wheels and tires if you’re in St Louis.
I’m on the fence about buying a comma.ai Comma 3x to try with it. The ProPILOT Assist built in is pretty helpful on long distance highways and the Comma 3x adds a bunch of interesting capabilities. My hesitation is partially insurance related, I’m not sure what Geico will say about it if you’re in an accident for example when it was engaged.
fwiw I’m confident after reading your post and watching you video you made the right choice for you and your objectives.
Tesla isn’t excellent with kids in back either.
Otherwise, this car is as close to a perfect daily driver I've ever owned. I hope it lasts forever: not a single touchscreen, no OTA updates, decent battery range (and DC Fast Charging at 60kW+), gas engine to fall back on (with OBD-II programming you can enable Hold State of Charge on the NA models allowing you to truly treat the i3 as a proper series-hybrid and not just an emergency limp-along range extender that will crap out going up a hill in the cold), comfy seats, and did I mention NO TOUCHSCREENS and NO OTA UPDATES?
The fuel tank is quite small, but it doesn't take long to fill.
Overall fuel consumption was around 6-8 gallons for the trip.
I found that America’s Tires charges $200 less per set than the dealership, but I get steering wheel vibration at around 75-80mph. With dealership install, there’s no vibration up till the electronic limiter hits at 93mph. I’m not sure if handling the same and sounding the same at 65 and 93 mph is a feature or a bug though. :-)
This is the only car that they couldn’t align + balance prop Our local mechanic gets the balance to work up to about 85mph. Maybe have the dealership fix the alignment?
We know some people with an old leaf. On certain points in their commute the ADAS emergency brakes every single day. It’s particularly bad if someone is tailgating them as they approach that spot, though it can’t be good for the tires either.
Used i3’s are going for way under $17K these days, fwiw. I was actually shopping for a used leaf, and ended up with an i3.
Used Chevy Volts are actually more expensive now than they were a few years back, at least on the CarMax website. Maybe a higher price because they were discontinued but I used to love my Volt. Averaged 150mpg over 3 years.
https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/used-clean-vehicle-cr...
I don't know anything about your situation, but I'm guessing quite a bit of the readers here on HN from the US won't qualify.
>You buy the vehicle from a dealer.
This is such an annoying part of the tax incentive.
It's a huge, pointless gift to car dealers (who need no help) because it means they don't have to compete for price with private sellers or buyers. If I have a used EV to sell, I basically have to sell to the dealer because no buyer wants to bother buying from me when they can get the same thing from a dealer with a $4k tax credit on top.
Jeff Geerling. Also the owner/author of the site we're discussing in this thread.
No you have not. You have paid $11k + a whole working car to get that one. I also can get a new iPhone every year "for only $500" if you consider the real price being "only $500 plus a year-old perfectly-working iPhone"
Looking at $13k (which excludes his $2k trade-in), I'm left wondering if my own conditions are favorable for switching to EV.
> $17k minus an extra $2k added to my Camry's trade-in value
This says the dealer paid a premium for the Camry to secure the deal on the Leaf. The Camry's full trade-in value was not given.
In this situation the cost works out to something like
5k + 10k - 4k = 11k
We should ourselves and should encourage others to effect less waste in our world. We should not compare someone apparently doing so to those who clearly do not.
In here a used 2022 leaf goes for about $20-22K CAD. 2016 models go as low as $8K - those had a range of about 120km when new.
Put otherwise: if the battery is so degraded you only get 30mi/50km range out of it, I see why it's selling for $2000.
400 dollars for a 2012 nissan leaf with 80% battery life and 80k miles (saved from being junked.)
MA taxes and delivery made it about 1k when it was all said and done. Insurance is 400/year.
We fit 3 kid seats in the back and have replaced all our metropolitan rides with the nissan. Ostensibly we are all < 6ft tall otherwise the 3 seats wouldn't work.
Our range is 60 miles in the summer, 50 in the winter. Because of how we use it a regular 15 amp plug works for us. Any long trip is taken with our 2018 honda HRV + Thule.
I've been monitoring the usage of our gas car and financially it makes more sense for us to rent a gas car for our trips rather than pay for the ownership + insurance of our car. The math on yearly ownership of the gas car is:
555 treasury yield when selling the car (15000 * 0.05 on a 30 less 30% taxes), 1200 insurance, 200 yearly maintenance (oil changes, amortized tires...), 375 excise tax, 40 inspection
That's about 2.2k/year or about 4 weeks of rental for an SUV. We're still holding on to the gas car for the impromptu apple picking/beach day/day trip that sets us over the 50 mile radius, but zipcar could fill that void
The second hand market for EVs is getting pretty interesting. There are lots of EV owners that are replacing their EVs every few years and because of all the growth over the last 10 years, there are now quite a few fairly nice EVs on the second hand market. Many are typically still under drive train warranty. For example, the model 3 has only been on the market for about eight years and it came with eight years of warranty on the drive train. So, most of the second hand ones would still be under warranty. And most of the EV market only started growing after that. So this is true for many second hand EVs.
And car batteries don't seem to spontaneously stop working right after the warranty expires either. So the risk is fairly low. They'll eventually degrade. But if you can pick up a car for a few thousand and then drive it for another 5-10 years, who cares? The fuel savings alone pay for the car after just a few years. Add the savings on maintenance and you are basically in the plus.
Gordon Gekko would buy it, break it into its constituent parts and sell them off for £5,000.
The average car journey is 8 miles. Being an average with a finite lower limit of 0 it is skewed higher by the people who for various reasons drive long distances.
You don't need a 1,000 mile range to get to the shops at the end of the street. It helps, but not that much.
So yeah, I'll keep driving rusted out minivans that make people clutch their pearls.
For people who just want a dedicated commuting vehicle used EVs with 80% battery are a pretty good option.
You are an extreme outlier, you should wait until the technology develops further. To use your parlance, no need to screech about people clutching their pearls at you.
This has different impacts depending on your local gas to electricity price ratio.
It's his weekly and monthly longer trips that complicate matters but in many jurisdictions he'd still be saving enough to make it worthwhile.
Not to pick on you personally but I think it speaks volumes about the type of people who make up HN community that I can come in here with a fairly narrow and niche critique of a product (inflexibility basically), hedge that comment with a "but it's still good for a lot of people" statement and a bunch of act like I'm dismissing the entire product category and then act like completely tangential things disprove that. It's like I've offended a religion.
> So yeah, I'll keep driving rusted out minivans that make people clutch their pearls.
These antagonistic statements are unnecessary and the reason you are being downvoted.
It's easy to forget the budget issues faced by many families when you're not facing that constantly yourself, but it's basically an existential consideration for a not insignificant proportion of the population.
You're circa $1700/year more expensive in fuel with your minivan[1] than with a comparably sized EV.
Your 5 hour / 300 mile journey takes around 30 mins more in the EV end to end (time spent stationary at a charger somewhere near the mid point of your route). Equiv of driving at 55mph average vs 60mph average over that time. I'd happily use the time to drink a flask of tea i brought with me and then go for a comfort break.
[1] assuming $4.80/gallon in a 25mpg minivan, vs an inefficient EV that only averages around 2mi/kwh at $0.30/kwh. Obv the 1700 excludes servicing, tyres and depreciation
I read a blogger say a 40-mile trip is exceptionally log for him, so why worry about EV range?
Meanwhile we put 160 miles on our EV yesterday doing ordinary errands that all got stacked on the same day. 100+ mile days happen a few times a month for us¹.
That 160 miles is 65% of our 0–100 range, or 108% of the 20–80 range. And we have a level 1 charger, so it'll take 26 hours in the driveway to recoup that charge.
¹ In my area a normal daily commute is 30–40 miles round-trip. Throw in some extra errands, or two people sharing a car, and you don't have to be an outlier to routinely have 100+ mile days.
However, I think the point of the GP is that the number of people who say this is their typical experience is going to be larger than the number of people for whom it actually is their typical experience.
By that I mean: your story is quite common in discussions like this, both online and offline. Yet, if the mean distance is 8 miles, and we know it's going to be skewed high due to the 0 bound, it can't be all that common.
To be honest, I'd be curious to see the median here.
Remember that you would usually charge at home so you start every day with a full battery.
You want to keep batteries roughly in that range to maximise their lifetime health. That doesn't mean the battery will explode if you do otherwise once in a while e.g. you charge limit the car to 80% for your daily drive and before a big trip you charge to 100%.
Route planners will generally keep you in that band anyway because charging speeds fall off a cliff as charge exceeds 80~90% (depending on the manufacturer's usable % standard), and it's rarely worth wasting 30mn charging to full to save 5~10mn extra at the next stop (the same occurs to a lower extent at very low states of charge, plus you want some spare, so the lower 10% are generally treated as a reserve).
Huh? The car isn't doing that for you? Prius hybrids sure are (the old ones using NiMH batteries tried to keep charge between 40% and 80%).
An EV can do that how exactly, refusing to run? Mugging the elderly for loose kWh?
I've read/heard about this innovation coming to the market in six months every few weeks for about ten years and it has never materialized. There are continuous, slight and consistent improvements to battery technology which add up over time, but none of the wunderwaffe battery technologies ever materialized into the market and produced any huge jumps.
It's really not a hassle at all. What's a hassle right now is finding a charger, as there aren't enough fast ones along the trip, but I've had the car for a year and have never needed to do a trip that long yet.
For most people, the vast majority of their driving takes place well within the range of the typical BEV and range anxiety is a total non-issue. The fact is, even accounting for the occasional long trip, I spend less time at charging stations than I did at gas stations when I owned an ICE car, because the vast majority of the time, I just plug the car in at my house and let it do its thing.
There are plenty of people, myself included, who routinely take trips in excess of 500 miles.
Next weekend I will be visiting family 1100 miles away - I will drive, stay 2 weeks, and then drive back.
I can fill up in about 15 minutes and drive 350 to 400 miles, so, over 1200 miles my total "recharge" time is 45 minutes.
The Leaf gets ~212 minutes and then takes 35 minutes (minimum) to charge to 80%.
To go 1100 miles will take at least 5 stops at 35 minutes each = 165 minutes; realistically, longer because you have to find your charging stations and drive to them; plus that only takes you to 80% instead of 100% (which I get when I fill up with gas) which reduces range. So I am being generous to the Leaf in my estimates.
So for 7.5 hours of actual drive time, I have to add in 2 hours (165 minutes minus 45 = 120 minutes) additional because of the EV. That's adding about 25% more time on the trip.
[0] https://newsroom.aaa.com/2024/12/year-end-forecast/
[1] https://www.tomtom.com/newsroom/explainers-and-insights/how-...
But you’re now talking about the lack of adequate charging infrastructure in an urban setting. That’s a different conversation. It’s a worthy conversation, but not all that related to making 500 mile road trips.
This summer I made two 500 mile trips (round trip each time) to drop off (and pick up) a kid at a summer camp. It was a week long camp, so I drove up and back on two weekends. I drove an electric car up the first time and a hybrid SUV up the second time.
It was fine to do in my electric car. I spent about 5 minutes making sure I had a good charging plan, which turned out to add about 10-15 extra miles to the trip. It wasn’t a problem to stop to charge, and I really wanted to stop to eat and stretch when I needed to charge, so everything worked out well timing wise. The trip in the hybrid was a little faster, but not by much. I still stopped the same number of times regardless of what car I drove.
Note: I would have happily had made the trip in my EV both times, but I had another person with me for the second trip. She hated the seats in my EV, so we took the car with more comfortable interior for the second trip. The trip in the hybrid was “nicer”, but that was because it was a more comfortable car in general, not because of the difference between an EV and hybrid.
If you do have a plug for charging, which you could have even if you live in an appartment (personal parking spot with a plug at your residence), then you're trading a small inconvenience for another.
Yes during your occasional long trip you'll have to spend 20 minutes charging instead of 5 minutes filling your tank, but when you're around your home doing short trips (most of the time for most people), you no longer have to do the occasional visits to the gas station. You just plug your car at home and be done with it.
A recent road trip I went on about a month ago, I pulled up to the place I was planning to charge (an EA station attached to a Walmart, was going to go to the deli for a snack while it charged). It was completely full and seemed like there were a few people waiting. I just drove to another charging location about 2mi away (a 7/11 station I think?) and charged there and had a snack. No big deal.
That's about the closest I've had to queue in the past few years. Other than that, there have usually been multiple open chargers available. And once again that's only when I've road tripped. I've had to waste far more of my life pumping gas in my non-EV than I've spent waiting on charging despite my ICE getting far fewer miles.
Nothing done by choice is annoying obviously. But a lot of people are fine with stretching their legs on a five minute bathroom break. Adding an extra an hour or hour half for unwanted stops due to forced recharging is what annoys them.
Right, so that covers approximately 100% of EV owners.
Porsche Kia Hyundai are currently top of the list
https://www.electrive.com/2024/12/20/p3-charging-index-2024-...
I bought a second hand Zoe in the UK mainly because they are so common, which means parts should be still around for a while yet.
the leaf was an option, and I could have bought and upgraded the battery on an old one, but I think on balance the zoe was a better purchase for the same combined price. (for me, your mileage may vary)
In terms of practicality, for where I live (suburban, edge of a large city) it works perfectly well. We also fairly regularly do longer journeys, assuming its not getaway rush hour, charging is fine on motorways and crucially getting better
A lot of the crap like the early Nissan Leafs didn't. And between that and the first gen EV battery pack design being shit in general, the battery pack just cooks itself. Its capacity falls off a cliff over time. This is where a lot of those early concerns about EV battery packs being hideously expensive consumables was coming from.
If the battery pack is actively cooled, then, as a rule, it ages gracefully. If not? Oh boy.
The Leaf limited battery life is mainly to its battery chemistry (LMO), although it arguably doesn't go to great lengths to ensure thermal stability of the pack.
(Which is what you’d expect - of course free government money will raise prices above where they would be.)
This Bolt EUV car drives so damn good. I was very impressed when I drove it.
The Bose audio is also quite good. After testing several new cars, I learned that Bose audio is not implemented the same across manufacturers. For example Mazda Premium Bose is just plain mediocre.
For the price that you can pay for one, Bolt EUV is an amazing deal. Unfortunately the charge speed is a deal breaker for many. But I never forgot how well it handles.
I really hope these cars last, they are a hidden gem and I think a lot wouldnt care about resale value if that charge speed was a bit better.
Sadly I live in a city now so I can't drive down curvy roads away from everyone, windows down blasting beats anymore. :( (I try to be a responsible asshole! :)
What driving assist platform? I don't think the older Chevy Bolts have any such thing. At least I'm pretty sure my 2017 doesn't.
If you're buying a car as an investment I have bad news for you...
If a 6-year-old Bolt is still worth $14.5k, then an 8- or, say, 12-year-old Bolt isn't worth $0. Most of that depreciation happened in the first year, it's still going to be worth $12k or $9k.
For example, Jeff's 2023 Leaf originally sold for about $30k. Now, just TWO YEARS later, he probably paid $15k to $19k for it. That's a steal! Given he drives his vehicles into the ground, it probably doesn't matter, but if he wanted to sell it in a few years he could still get $10 to $15k from it.
Day to day charging is generally all going to be L2 or even L1 depending on how far you drive and how long typically parked somewhere with a plug. That will be roughly the same speed in any car. Some cars do have higher capacity L2 chargers than the Bolt does, but most public L2 stations don't provide the higher current needed to see the difference.
Charging time for road trips sucks. 99% of my driving is around town. Being a smaller EV it fits city life very well and I just top it off on a 120v plug every night.
I got a 2023 fully loaded with sunroof (except super cruise) for 24k, only had 40 miles on it.
That said the app is horrible and you can see how GM just didn't give a shit all throughout the car. No AC/dog mode. If you shift too fast after turning the car on you have to reboot the car using a secret method that is buried on forums (anyone reading this, don't press break, hold down the power button until the car restarts) and you can only remotely turn climate on to its last setting from the app.
Oh and even if you pay monthly for remote access just checking the charge level through your phone probably won't work (time outs...) and locating your car really won't work.
If you turn on climate remotely, drive somewhere less than 10 minutes away and then get out, you may try to turn climate back on using the app, but that won't work because the app has a really long cool down before it even checks the car to see what the status is so you end up in an invalid state where the app thinks the car is still on even though you just stepped out and turned it off.
Resistive heating means even with Seattle's mild winters I barely have 200 miles of range.
The car isn't smart enough to close the sunroof visor on hot days to keep the car cool.
In general it feels like what it is - a mid 2010s car that was far behind Tesla at the time for thoughtful details (expected given the year and GM) that was sold into the 2020s way after other manufacturers had updated their cars electronics to have common sense features.
That said some details are nice. You can be connected to car play and Android Auto at the same time and designate one of those as primary for apps and navigation but take calls through both. Physical climate controls are appreciated, and the rain sensing wipers actually work well. ;)
The 360 camera is wonderful to have. It cost me $10k vs getting a the base trim car, totally worth it.
I bought it April 2024 and I have some 0 maintenance other than car washes. So damn cheap to own.
In the 16 months I've owned it I've only put on 6k miles and it'll never pay for itself on gas savings , but last car was totalled and I legit enjoyed test driving the EUV more than a Lexus UX 300h that cost a lot more.
So anyways happy with the purchase, great value, horrible for road trips but I do them anyway.
The camera is super useful when parking in narrow spaces in those parking garages where each space is flanked by concrete pillar on both sides (why design it like that? Those pillars are covered in car paint...) or when parallel parking on a one lane road that has cars parked on both sides (always fun!).
There is actually one underground parking garage I have to use occasionally that has a hairpin turn to get out, and the wall is an interesting mish-mash of car paint colors. I've turned on the cameras for that curve as well, absolutely horrible garage and having a top down view really helps out.
Many older ICE vehicles, you mean? EVs aren't really special in their use of custom car-bound head units. BMW XDrive is the same XDrive they have in their EVs as they have in their ICEs. Mandatory backup cams is only going to accelerate that.
The biggest reason for non-modular infotainment is to push people into subscription services.
I've been tempted to get a larger car but the Bolt is so much more fun to drive compared to the Equinox.
250 meters ? but I want to drive off my street....
Don't get me wrong, that would still cover 80% of my daily driving needs, but when I need to drive to the big town for work on a moments notice I may not have time to drive home and swap out for my ICE vehicle.
I have a pre-order in for the Slate, having 150 miles range would cover 99% of my driving needs, so I am not against EVs, just sharing the awareness that battery degradation is a thing to be concerned about.
Depends on how you define "life". I think for the Leaf, it's 70% capacity. But even if it gets down to 50%, it'll sill keep driving.
Also, what's really annoying, is that every seller factors in tax credits to their price. So that 3k may really be 5k. I'm actually looking forward to that no longer being possible.
The fact that the range is so ass means you HAVE to charge to 100% every single time, and 80 to 100 takes ages. She’d spend 45min charging for 45min of driving.
Until I got an EV and realized it's not really an issue. There is always an App for that (and even on my car the software gets improved in that regard).
Infrastructure is getting better, even companies starting to see it as a benefit to have cheap/free chargers at their offices to get people back.
I see more and more electric trucks on the roads. It feels good.
The other part that not a lot of people realise is if your journey is 300 miles and your car does 200 you don't charge another 200 miles into the battery, you charge 100 and then charge at the destination instead. With ICE vehicles if your going to get fuel typically you fuel it to the top but you don't do that with battery cars you want to charge them as little as possible while mid travelling and charge them while they are sat still at home or destination.
Its charging at home that really changes the experience too. The weekly trip to the fuel station disappears, depending on how often you exceed the range of the car you only really get exposed to the charging network and times when doing those journeys, you spend a lot less of your life in fuel stations!
Parking garages are also getting EV chargers. My office garage just added a couple dozen, and I don't think it would be hard for them to convert more once the demand shows up.
And I've seen them starting to go in at the little rest stops on the Autobahn that up to now only had unattended toilets; they're being added to the big, nice rest stops with gas stations, too, of course.
Depending on EV adoption and how much charging people want/need, you can start with a couple spots that are active charging only, and see what that looks like. If the chargers are always full, consider adding more and/or having several spots for each charger and standards and practices to move your car and the charging plug when yours is full, etc. If the chargers are underused, consider making the spot open when the lot is full, etc.
https://la.streetsblog.org/2015/12/01/18-6-million-spaces-an...
Service stations on my route in the UK went from having 2-3 medium-speed chargers total in 2019 to having 2 rows of 20 high-speed chargers, and another parking doubling that is under construction. The same happened all over Western Europe - grew from a few singular chargers at supermarkets and hotels to many large charging hubs along highways.
Reliability and ease of payment also got better, partly because regulations started requiring it, but also because the stations don't sit idle any more, and it started to matter for revenue.
Also in EU there's enough charger coverage now that there's competition. I don't have to sit in line to the only charger in town, I can drive few miles to the next station.
The real problem with public charger lines is that there is no social protocol for them yet. At a gas station, it is fine to pull up behind a car currently fueling to indicate that you would like to fuel at the pump next. Charging stations, however, are not built with pull-through spots. There's no place to form a queue at all, so people park nearby, circle, and sometimes snipe a spot when it isn't their turn (because who can tell whose turn it is?).
The thing that actually bothered me the most is needing a different stupid app for every one of the ~5 different networks to pay, instead of just inserting or tapping a credit card. But this is mostly an occasional-user problem; the pain probably falls off dramatically once you've already registered for everything.
Charging at home is a great experience.
I would agree, though, that if you do run into a situation where you have to wait, the current system does not deal with it well. They need a better way to fairly manage a queue if it forms.
[citation needed] considering plenty of people do it all the time (truck drivers)
The lower provinces allow up to 13 hours per day of driving and a total 14 hours per day on duty time before you're required to take a 10 hour rest in a single 24 hour period. The northern territories I believe legally allow up to 15 hours driving per day.
That's just what I've read so take it for what it's worth.
Having said that, I've taken lots of road trips in my day and it would be a change up to how they're planned, and I would have some concern about placement / availability. But then that's why, when we bought an EV for the 99% of our family use case we didn't immediately scrap yard our previous cars, which seemed to be what some family members expected when we told them we were considering getting an electric car.
I find EV charging on road trips to be annoying, and I can't wait until technology improves to the point where I don't have to worry about missing a charging station and being hosed and I don't have to worry about adding an hour to an hour and a half onto a road trip.
I think that gas vehicles are irresponsible for most uses and the charging at home makes having an EV great, but gas vehicles are better at road trips if only for the fact that those of us who don't want to take longer don't have to.
Definitely a very minor inconvenience. And, compared with frequent trips to the gas station vs charging at home overnight, a total net positive in time saved (if you want to measure it that way).
I was debating an electric vehicle in 2023. There are maybe 10 people (out of about 200) at work that have electric cars. My teammate is one of the ten. He wakes up early to get a charger. He tracks down the other owners to ask them to use the charger after lunch. They started a group chat about the chargers.
My local grocery store has a bank of superchargers right in the middle of the parkinglot next to the main road. Some days the bank is full and teslas hang out waiting, but they have to wait half in the road to make sure they're close enough to be next in line.
My apartment complex has 2 chargers, and we get people coming in who don't live in the complex to use them. People wait next to the strangers to be sure to get the charger before walking home for the night.
This kind of social interaction and situations gives me huge anxiety.
I get gas once a week, dont wait in line, always works, don't talk to anyone, and I'm gone in less than 5 minutes.
Workplace charging gets extra competitive because it's often free, meaning all sorts of bad behavior is incentivized. It's weird how wound up people with $50,000 cars can get about $5 in free electricity.
In France there is a "right to charge", meaning even if you're a tenant the landlord/building manager can't refuse you the installation of a plug. (But you might have to pay for it)
An apartment complex being built next door offers you to buy a parking lot together with the apartment, and optionally equip it with an EV charger. This is the way.
It wasn't great, even if we had no queues and fast chargers 5 minutes away. In some parts of Denmark I suspect charging infrastructure is overbuilt.
But even with good infrastructure, having to drive to a charger and wait 10-15 minutes is a hassle.
Charging at home is the killer feature. You just always have 80% charge by default.
And I definitely didn't factor in skiing, my favorite mountain has 4 charging stations in one of the hotel's parking lots.
* Keeping the charge between 50-80% when manageable
* Charging up to 100% at least once a month, and letting it 'top off' to rebalance the pack for at least a few hours afterwards
* Not driving like a maniac, despite having more torque in this car than I've ever had in any of my previous cars
This kind of thing (minus the driving like a maniac bit) is what puts me off EVs. I guess it's unavoidable? My experience with laptop and phone batteries (holding much less charge pretty quickly) doesn't help. My phone (iPhone 12) says battery health is at 81% but it doesn't feel like it so I'm not sure I'd trust that Leaf saying it's got 93%.
TL;DR is many EVs and hybrids (especially European ones) have tonnes of design faults with e-motors and power-electronics that not only make them ticking time bombs(not in the explosive sense) out of warranty, but also have malicious DRM making third party parts impossible to source, and repairs difficult and eye watering expensive even if theoretically EVs should be more reliable on paper than ICE cars.
Maybe the EU should focus more on EV/auto repairability regulations instead of smartphones and USB-C widgets.
Luckily EV Clinic is working hard on breaking the DRM and reverse engineering parts to make and sell aftermarket ones, but this shouldn't be needed in the first place if the OEMs weren't so bad at design, greedy and hostile to consumers and aftermarket repairs.
Seriously, we need regulations here ASAP. The free market doesn't work here for the consumer when OEMs all do the same anti consumer things.
> The EU did put in regulations, but they did the opposite and essentially mandated DRM
is the same statement as:
> following the posts of EV Clinic it seems like [the EU did] the opposite
Where both posts use "the opposite" to mean "the opposite of creating in regulations to enforce repairability" .
Maybe they should do both.
FYI: Mercedes Benz hybrids have a full(*) battery warranty. What's the asterisk you ask? The warranty only covers repairs up to the car's current value. Which has plummeted over the few years you've owned it and the cost of the battery is absolutely ridiculous. Like "buy 3 used Leafs" ridiculous.
Most hybrid batteries are also blobs of molten plastic and silicone that can't be repaired at all. EV batteries are constructed of semi-standard cells and can be opened and repaired piecemeal by specialist shops. Official repairs usually just swap the whole thing - again for a massive cost.
They do degrade over time but very, very slowly. Absolutely not like phones. Mine has 25k miles and zero degradation yet.
Let me guess - Hyundai? They are notoriously lying about degradation.
As for the battery health rating, it's easy enough to measure. Go on the highway, keep it at 80 km/h straight and note how much range you get out of it. In practical commute settings, range will be longer than that anyway due to regenerative braking in all that start-stop-start-stop dance.
You THINK you're driving long distances every day and you THINK charging is a massive hassle where you have to drive to a Charging Site and wait for the car to charge for HOURS.
When in reality you plug in at home and have a full battery every morning.
And when the infrastructure is properly built (yay Finland), you can get a week's charge when you're getting groceries as the shop has multiple 100kW chargers along with a fleet of Level 2 (22kW) chargers.
The only times I need to actively think about charging are over 200-250km day trips (my old Ioniq EV has a WLTP of 300km on a warm summer day). And even then the kids an dogs need a bathroom break anyway and I need to walk around a bit to freshen up. 20-30 minutes gets us 100-150km of charge (old car, slow charging) and we're off again.
Right, but I should buy a house with a garage first.
>> charge when you're getting groceries as the shop has multiple 100kW
Unless you do groceries in unusual time, those chargers are occupied. Will you wait in line then?
We get 230V/16A from a bog standard outlet, three phase is triple that.
A couple of weeks later I went on holiday. I wouldn't be able to charge where I was stopping, and there were no chargers within 15 miles. I kept my diesel.
So what, that's something you find out once that your electric installation is shoddy enough to most likely be a fire risk (because the charger plug has a thermal protection built in!), fix it and then you won't have that problem again. And as the Leaf should have 150 miles worth of range, you still should have way more than enough range on the battery to do two days worth of commute even if you suddenly find out the trickle charge didn't work.
Indeed... but now, think of the price difference between a small-ish commute EV and a chungus EV or ICE. Easily tens of thousands of dollars, that's a lot of days worth of rent.
> Also expect to arrive and be told they can't fill your reservation as they are out of cars.
That's extremely fucking rare to happen. In the eventuality your reservation can't be filled, you'll usually get upgraded for free. Personally, got upgraded from a small VW Golf class to a VW Phaeton once, plus a day for free. And automatic, no stick shift like the Golf.
Not having any rental cars is very common in my experience. I'm often renting in smaller cities though (like the rental car place just a couple miles from my house), I've never heard of problems in big tourist destinations or large cities.
E.g. a family with two cars, where the smaller car is preferred because it's easier to park in the limited space available in a European city.
That is probably why the american road trip is a dying animal. Past a days drive you are coming way behind just flying straight there.
Until you do the math and realize that the 3-4 annual trips of multiple days would end up costing thousands of dollars in rental fees per year. Plus the usual inconveniences around renting.
Suddenly the math does not look so appealing.
First, 3-4 annual multi-day trips that go for longer than 300 km? If one has that amount of disposable income to afford that, go for whatever the biggest Tesla is and use Superchargers along the route, even drives so long they're a safety issue on its own due to fatigue don't get that much longer due to charging because kids will need to go to the toilet every so often even with an ICE.
As for the rental fees: here in Germany, I just checked - a Mercedes Benz Vito, so up to 8 people (or 6 people plus a ton of luggage), that's 50€ a day here. Crossing four digits takes 20 days of rental, that's a lot of vacation time even by European standards.
The EU minimum is 20 days annual leave per year.
Nowadays you don't have to do this. You can. Just like with your phone or laptop.
Funny, how 2 years old car is really old. For combustion engines, old is like 15+?
EVs will have the same problems as mobile phones. Maybe manufactures want that. But software will define the age of your car and I don’t like it. What if the car requires internet connection and the company dies?
So they're basically 15 years old, technologically older than the Model S. Windows 7 was 1 year old when its basic systems shipped.
> What if the car requires internet connection and the company dies?
That's not a problem specific to EVs and with Chinese combustion car brands coming and going all the time, it's obvious.
This was the very first mass-market electric car, with only minor tweaks. It's not surprising that it's a bit rough around the edges. That's part of why they're cheap second-hand (along with the fact that the 3rd gen, which actually is a proper redesign, is coming out this year).
If the model gets even minor updates, manufacturing is happening right now, the car is either good enough or new enough in general, and we cannot use old as negative quality.
Electric motors existed before the combustion engine, and people keep talking about "rapidly evolving area", while the only thing that is rapidly evolving and specific to EVs is the power source. A battery, to be precise. It is all about battery, and nothing else.
Buying a 2nd-gen Leaf in 2025 would be a bit silly, unless you were getting a major discount.
There's probably going to be a surplus of off-lease Leafs coming up over the next one to three years which might make a great deal for people who can charge at home.
Tangential trivia: BYD Dolphin Baseline is 20k new before subsidies in some places.
My Leaf from 2019 has 100% battery health and I always charge it to 100%. I almost never use fast charging though since it is a commute kind of car.
Either way, the car is 6 years old. At this rate the battery will still be pretty fine when it is 15 years old and ready for retirement.
Never charging it above 80% is not worth the hassle. It is like never using your left hand for the fear of hurting your left hand. You are crippling your car by overthinking.
The leaf is a terrible steward if its battery. virtually every other car is better in virtually every single way.
When it comes to charging network Tesla is SO MUCH BETTER. It's hard to describe how much of a wild west other charging networks are. You have to download this app or that app, add a credit card here, add one there. De-rated charging handles absolutely everywhere.
NACS is theoretically a worse charger, but it's more approachable to consumers.
CCS1 is clumsy , heavy and makes the car look like it's attached to an umbilical cord.
That's why they had to dump it.
One thing they did right was require a credit card scanner right on the machine. No app!!!
https://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/cta?auto_make_model=niss...
I bought a 2012 for $7500 in 2016 and drove it for several years.
1. chargers suck. there was evgo, blink, chargepoint. Most locations had 1 or most 2 DC fast chargers, but frequently they didn't work or were busy. Not reliable.
2. range was less that expected, even if you update expectations. It takes engineering to use the range you have, especially taking #1 into account. You don't want to get to a fast charger at 1% then find it doesn't work.
3. the battery health wasn't great, but because the battery capacity/range was less, the number of battery cycles was significantly more. I charged to a higher %, discharged low each day, and cycled daily.
4. the leaf was a perfect "around town" car. Not for trips.
Tesla has basically solved all of this and their cars are usable like a regular car*
* don't be pedantic, in 99% of situations/locations
either you get 2 cars or a fast charging ev. i chose the latter
I now own a corolla hybrid and I enjoy cheap commutes without the fear of running out of juice
As to your Tesla *. I do endless tire of folks who are like "But what if you want to circle the planet!?! Check mate EV dorks!". For 99% of the time they are absolutely fine.
A friend of mine had one as a work car and drove the 940km (580 miles)from Melbourne to Sydney with only a single charge up of $20 half way through, got lunch at the same time. I mean yes if you really stretch it, you could do it on a single tank of fuel on a combustion engine but it would be a tight run. Also to the recharge time, that drive takes about 9 hours if you do not stop. I have never done it in less than 12 hours because you end up having a lot of down time on trips like that. There is plenty of time to charge if needed. Like you say, for the most part these are solved issues.
Meanwhile Tesla build quality is still mixed bag in 2025. The used ones suffer from previous lapses in QA which is a darn shame. These are cars that could be usable for years but because their mentality of pushing junk out to meet end of quarter numbers, many of these cars won't be able to fulfill their true potential. They are disposable junk even if they drive well.
All this to say what he really needs was an electrically assisted bicycle instead of a huge and heavy energy wasting vehicle.
And that was without electric assist. When I look at the low average speed and time spent in car when I use one in an urban area, it just doesn't make any sense in most cities.
But the safety issue is another story though. Every time I relocated I took that parameter into account before choosing a new place.
There are 20A 120V circuits too! Called NEMA 5-20, one of its prongs is rotated. You plug that into a receptacle where one of the slots is T-shaped instead of straight. And it's standard practice for EVs to draw 80% of the maximum current, so 16A it is. I see this plug in larger machines in the office, like a large photocopier or a large vacuum.
220V has a real advantage in boiling water fast in traditional kettles though (I used to live in china and they were twice as fast as the ones in America). It is almost worth getting a 220V outlet in a kitchen just to support fast water kettles.
They are also heavier, so need different set ups in order to handle decently.
But, that's why they look so different.
Yes EVs can keep their weight low, but it's a lot more weight to deal with.
Yes EVs have excellent 0-60, but that's just because they have a great launch. Even doing a 5-60 pull removes the EV advantage. Starting from highway speeds? EVs start to look real slow.
There are some good traits to EVs but, outside of launching hard in street car trim, performance is not one of them.
It's not M5 BMW hard, but it's hard. I guess that if you have a performance variant then maybe it would be.
Yes. Some people are binary drivers, regardless of drivetrain. But a very responsive EV, especially something like a Tesla Performance trim in sport mode or F-150 Lightning in sport mode, with an unskilled driver can definitely make you seasick. Most drivers who can modulate the pedal do just fine, though.
The only real problem with Teslas is that they don't have an option to go without one pedal driving. Some drivers really aren't suited for 1PD, frankly.
It is noticeable, though.
> Yes EVs can keep their weight low, but it's a lot more weight to deal with.
Define a lot? It's a few hundred pounds, excepting pickups.
> Starting from highway speeds? EVs start to look real slow.
Maybe a Leaf or a Bolt. But I would be happy to put my Model 3LR or F-150 Lightning up against something like a Camaro SS or Mustang GT from a highway roll -- I'll still win.
Most people don't take their old Toyota to a race track, so they don't need their Leaf to beat a Lambo either.
The instant 0-30mph is the biggest advantage in day to day driving.
I've found myself taking a second look at a bunch of ICE cars recently as they've all started trying to copy elements from electric car design...
What the market wants is cars that are cheap to drive, practical and fast. While there are people wanting to make a statement with their car I can't believe that's a majority. The overwhelming amount of cars in my city belongs to the cheap/practical category.
The first gen leaf got a lot of commentary about this "EV look" and the contemporary Nissan Note had a similar front end. And then both got 2nd gens that evolved similarly.
Their Juke could be an overinflated Leaf at a glance etc.
Wikipedia photos:
1st gen:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Note#/media/File:2005_N...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Leaf#/media/File:2017_N...
2nd gen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Note#/media/File:Nissan...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Leaf#/media/File:Nissan...
Even with the benefits of EV packaging, manufacturers chose to make them “different” on purpose, which really put off the vast majority of buyers. Tesla had so much success because they were practically the first manufacturer to make something look somewhat normal and have good stats.
Now, BMW finally learned and has their 4 and 5 series EV cars share a common platform with the ICE. There is no physical difference in style other than the front grill.
I rented a PHEV in Spain, and this was the biggest issue. Every charger has an app. They want all your information, even your home address, before charging. Most of them error out after you try to make it work in the 44 °C / 110 °F Spanish sun.
After trying five charging apps and only succeeding in one, I gave up charging completely because of the horrible experience. I wonder why EVs don't save credit information in the vehicle and negotiate payment with them via some sort of "Cable API" or something. Or even you know, use tap to pay PoS like every normal transaction does.
The Camry has a drag coefficient of about 0.36.
The Leaf is about 0.28.
https://ecomodder.com/wiki/Vehicle_Coefficient_of_Drag_List
Drag coefficient matters a lot for EVs. Air resistance reduces the range of all cars, but you notice the decrease in an EV. (When I plan a long trip, I use windy.com to see if I'll have a headwind or a tailwind and I plan accordingly.)
That's why EVs look different. And why EV trucks often have terrible range, even though they have more room for batteries.
Something the size of a Camry would be totally fine as an EV. Lucid Air is approximately this shape and is a great EV.
(And at lower speeds, drivetrain and tire friction become bigger factors.)
> Range Anxiety: Yes, it's overblown, but no, it's not non-existent. The day I bought my used EV, the dealership (which doesn't sell many EVs, even new) didn't have a 'Level 3' DC fast charger—and they had only charged it to about 16%. Letting it top off at L2 while I was dealing with finance, we got to 23%. I wasn't quite sure I'd make it home off the lot! Luckily I did, with 12 miles of range remaining.
Never heard of a Tesla going home with 12% battery.
Depends on the EV. My Tesla can chew on a lot of battery with Sentry mode. My Lightning, on the other hand, goes into deep sleep and loses essentially zero energy while parked. It can sit for months without a meaningful loss of charge.
Not sure which areas you're referring to but in the Northeast EV infrastructure around the metro areas is not the best. In my experience, I would have to plan out my stops if I was driving between Philly and NYC if I didn't have a 90+% charge and even then I would be worried that there would be a line or chargers would be out of order.
Taking a look at an EV map, there's only half a dozen stations around NYC with 100+ kW chargers and almost all of those chargers are in-use at 2 pm on a Saturday. Sure you can go to a slower charger or just wait, but it's a pain in the ass if you are trying to plan out a trip and show up on time.
That seems low. Even looking only at Tesla Superchargers, there are something like a dozen just right around NYC itself. Not including EA or any other providers.
Heck, even sleeping Portland, Oregon has 10 Tesla Superchargers in the metro area.
The choice was
2016 100k km Golf Plus for 16k eur
2020 50k km e-Golf for 13k eur
That said, we still have a Touran for when we need to drive further or with lots of luggage.
If only the chairs in the eGolf were a bit better...
The 400+hp Teslas are super-expensive to insure here in Sweden. Like 3x the price of only slightly cheaper, but less powerful EVs.
But if course CHAdeMO is dying. NACS is second best because it's less bulky than CCS, and NACS is winning in the US so the situation is less bad than it might have been.
Both I and the owner were very impressed. They ordered the 100mile battery pack, which was very expensive, but it has been great in the long run.
I think it was like 81% cheaper than a gasoline trip at the time not including long term wear and tear. ( Ware and Tare?$#).
I think the Nissan Leaf is the very best of the bunch.
This is is such a weird take. Most EVs weigh a lot more than a ICE car (although the Leaf is about the same as most normal sized sedans) so the brake pads wear more quickly. And anyone that takes the time to change their brakes is likely doing their own oil changes because it takes 15 minutes.
The rest of the write-up is pretty spot on though. I leased a Hyundai Ioniq 6 2 years ago because I thought I would enjoy the driving experience. I was living in Philly and at the time it was my only car so I used it for trips to other parts of the city as well as any driving around the northeast to see friends and family. It's amazing for local driving, but doing any kind of drive that was more than 100 miles was a logistical pain. Even if you plan out the stops, you are still constantly worrying about whether or not there will be a long line to charge or the chargers themselves are broken even if they are reported as working in the apps.
I've since moved to the suburbs and my partner uses the Ioniq to commute to work because it's perfect for that. For any longer trips, we opt for our ICE car.
The only future foray I would consider with EVs is doing something like an EV conversion on my kei truck. Hopefully the Slate and Telo are the start of a wave of small EV trucks because I love the idea of a small truck that I can use to bring to Home Depot or to pick up larger FB Marketplace purchased.
I don't think so. With regen on a Bolt, I regularly drive dozens of miles (in traffic, and with full stops) without touching the break pedal.
Some lexus things used chademo too.
Ended up getting a used VW id.3 which ticks a lot of the leaf's boxes, but has CCS2 and 100+kw dc charging
The "how to juice your car" question is pretty much solved on the electrical and communications side... but the "how do you pay for the juice" question is indeed absurd. I understand that providers of high capacity charging stations wish to charge a bit extra because a single 200 kW+ DC charger quickly reaches 40k € in pure hardware cost, in addition to the installation cost and the regular swapping of cables due to thieves. But why the EU and the US governments haven't stepped in yet and mandated either a "roaming" standard (where my primary billing contact would be a regular electric utility with a set base price per kWh and optional surcharges for high-capacity chargers or stations in high demand) or acceptance of all common credit and debit cards is way beyond me.
Instead, it's not just multiple vendors, apps and payment methods - it's also a (sometimes wild) difference in price depending on how you pay, at the same station. In contrast, at each gas station there is a sign that's visible from afar stating the exact price for your fuel, with the only thing one might hope for is a 1 cent discount for high volume diesel fuel pumps (aka, your truck's hole is big enough to fit a truck diesel nozzle) and a further 1 cent discount from some sort of loyalty reward scheme.
- card acceptance is only required for 50 kW+ chargers. All the relatively low power chargers at supermarkets, shopping malls and other public venues? They can get by with offering QR codes that are all too often abused for phishing campaigns [2][3] and still have the issue with requiring some sort of app.
- the "card acceptance" may also be fulfilled by PSD2 compliant mobile banking apps, so if you got a rooted phone (where Google Pay is a cat-and-mouse game), a phone whose vendor is under sanctions and thus doesn't get the Google ecosystem or don't want to involve Google Pay, Apple Pay, PayPal or the likes in your daily life, you're screwed just as well at these charger points
On top of that, the standard to publish pricing information to the public coordination exchange is a hot XML/SOAP mess [4].
[1] https://nationale-leitstelle.de/ladeinfrastruktur-im-eu-kont...
[2] https://www.adac.de/news/verkehr-quishing-parkautomaten/
[3] https://www.adac.de/news/auto-quishing-betrug-ladesaeule/
[4] https://nationale-leitstelle.de/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/M...
- Nissan Leaf -15% (Select "Small" & "4-door Cars" on the page)
- Chevy Bolt -34%
- Subaru Crosstrek -28% ("Station wagons" & "Small")
- Tesla Model 3 +26% ("Luxury cars" & "Midsize")
That's how we ended up with a Chevy Volt in 2017. 100K trouble-free miles later, we still have it and my wife still loves the car.
Probably need to be careful with this because flooring it is addictive and you'll waste a lot of energy doing it.
For me the feeling of an electric car gave me a strange feeling. I just felt like I was in an electric wheelchair. It really hammered home the ridiculousness of able-bodied people travelling around town in these huge electric wheelchairs. I don't hold much hope for the future but I'd love to be able to live in a town without these things around.
The big secret with bike commuting is that in urban setting on surface streets, its actually the fastest way to get around short of a motorcycle or helicopter. Yes, much faster than cars, thanks to lane splitting.
But I would not want to be caught in the ever changing weather here on an ebike. Maybe if it had a shell to protect the rider, but then we're getting into it being too pricey for an ebike range.
Also, it's really incredible that the dealer only had the leaf charged to 16% at the time of sale.
However, it is an amazing commuter car. Being able to charge it at home is fantastic.
We already put 14k miles on it since we got it last year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIQ-RROpls0
Yes, this involves lying on your back with a 700 lb battery held up by jacks just inches above your head. But heck, services are expensive these days so it's going to happen.
Before buying this car I didn't like driving.
Now I like driving.
Actually, I like it so much that I began doing something I never did before with any car I had: I read the whole owner's manual, I wash and clean the car every month and I pay attention to maintenance routine.
That's how good it feels to drive electric.
I enjoy driving good cars that roar nice, so bought a new disel car that can drive 180/h without sweating much.
I value my time more than anything else.
_ANY_ gas car? 100% of manual transmission cars (and now PDK/DSG/DCT) have this.
Battery management on Zoés is fine ; it doesn't have the overheating problem that plagues the Leaf and the VW e-Up in particular; it doesn't have the "very slow charge when cold" problem of many cheap EVs with LiFePO4 batteries, though it charges up quite slowly (10-80% in 50 minutes).
Someone I know recently bought a 135HP 52kWh Zoé without CCS-2 and 22kW AC charge for 7500€. That's a real bargain, it'sequivalent for all practical purposes (but long travel) to a brand new 30000€ R5 :)
The software is pretty shit. Lagging and annoying. But apple/android play stops that.
As a car its smooth, quiet, and fast if you need to be. The only annoyance driving wise is that it doesn't have adaptive cruise control, and the reverse/drive/neutral switch always returns to the middle, so you can't tell what mode its set to without looking at it
It's like a "lite" version of how some cars make you enter a stupid cheat code to reset your oil change reminder or some other thing that should just be in settings.
No insurance, fun, repair it yourself, etc
This was right in the middle of a major city. It was so nice to just basically not have to deal with traffic. I was faster than cars at that point.
I never got a fat tire enough to do the snow, so I would ride until I absolutely couldn't anymore. If it was 15° or Fahrenheit or less, I'd still ride. I would just bundle up like I was skiing.
It was a pretty small office, so I could just roll my bike up to my cube and leave it in there.
And when it was lunch I could go further faster.
Modern e bikes are even better. Commute farther, carry more stuff, sweat less, hills/headwinds don't matter.
There should be so much more bicycle commuting these days with e-bikes.
Rain does suck though.
It's not an either-or. You can have streets which are car-friendly, bike-friendly, and pedestrian-friendly at the same time. Just look at the Dutch, they've been doing it for years. That is until recently in some big cities, though, where some less knowledgeable politicians have also adopted this false populist either-car-or-bike concept. Though the traditional principle still applies to about 99% of the country's roadworks, and it works really well.
OMG this may have just saved my life that this is a thing
though it looks like there are ones with much better reviews
Oops. My work daily is the same Leaf, my personal car is a '95 1.8 Turbo Miata. The Leaf suffers.
The supercharger network seems effortless & flawless -- almost too good. No payments, planning. The stations are clean, quiet & secluded. Just follow the Nav and charge.
The third-party network has been a disaster for my neighbor. He's had to back track many times, even on ~ 2 hr trips. The chargers are broken, causing him to double-back even more. On a recent trip the only working charger was next to a gas station and the fumes made his wife sick. He has 4+ apps to manage charging payments .
How on earth do people tolerate other EVs?
1. You charge at home and typically drive relatively short distances, meaning you almost never have to interact with a commercial charger; or 2. If you need to rely on commercial chargers, you live in a part of the world where Tesla was never allowed to build a charging network monopoly (i.e anywhere outside the US), or in a part of the US where there's decent fast charging infrastructure
It sounds like your neighbour is unfortunate to require relatively frequent charging at commercial charging stations, in a part of the world where Tesla was allowed to build out a charging network monopoly.
It's not a "part of the world" it's Portland Metro area where millions live.
I charge my Lightning at the same Tesla Superchargers I use with my Model 3. Works the same, plug in and walk away.
Of course if you look at the used market, older models like Renault Zoe can also be found for cheap... But considering EV technology have been evolving fast, I wouldn't buy a model older than 5 years old.
I also wouldn't want anything that doesn't have a CCS2. All my small electronics are finally USB-C, I don't want to deal with obsolete plug types and adapters again.
Are you worried or thought about resale value? Do you plan to keep it for long?
And the range is overkill for me, really. I could live with 100 miles or so and not worry, so even if the battery wears down to 50% SoH (right now it's 93% after 36k miles), I'll still be happy.
Apart from battery degradation, the other thing that may be the final nail in the coffin for an old EV (other than Leaf) is failure of HVAC. Temperature management is important for keeping batteries healthy when fast charging, and to prevent motors from overheating when you send them a quarter of a megawatt of power.
And the rest of the problems is the same like in any other car of the same era.
That would be the only reason to get that car now days! Can the car just drive without Internet. I want my car to be my not connected to cloud for all kinds crap.
> There is no 'play/pause' button. Anywhere. At least not on the steering wheel or the display area. You have to go into the music section on the entertainment display, then press the software play/pause button. That's dumb.
My new to me 2023 Honda Odyssey has the same stupid issue. It's my first vehicle with a touch screen, and I have a lot of trouble hitting the pause button especially when I'm trying to mute it because I need to pay extra attention to the road. WHY is there not just a Play/Pause button on the wheel!? Or at least a physical button on the dashboard.
i hate it too
Also, this is my last Nissan. I have been thoroughly disappointed with the super buggy and laggy head unit in this thing and it is apparently a common theme for Nissan.
My 2016 Ford with CarPlay was rock solid.
You know what is unmatched for joyful travel through space, with occasional bursts of adrenaline? Especially practical over short distances of a few miles?
A bicycle! Especially when you already have one vehicle for family obligations.
I snicker when I see those ads that promise you'll be just whooshing around through rolling hills in your newest automotive purchase. No, buddy, you'll be gnashing teeth in traffic most of the time.
That's what I've been doing for ~1 year and have lost over 14 lbs.
The neutral and parking brake issues: that just by itself should make Nissan stocks plummet. 2025 and we have these issues? It definitely looks an involution to me.
Things we humans are still lame at: adapters. Power adapters, cable data adapters. Why do we have bazillions adapters?
Can't we just design one adapter for the whole world that makes happy both manufacturers and customers? If not governments should step in and force manufacturers to include all adapters ever needed as part of a car purchase. That you have to spend more money just to charge a car because of the adapter is ridiculous.
If EVs are in this line of quality/user experience in general, thanks I'll pass and get something reliable and old school that actually works as expected.
Edit: And we don't need mobile apps to control our cars. Another really stupid and ridiculous idea that has been pushed to customers when no-one actually asked for that.
As if regulations work. They seem to have very strange situations over there.
Come to think of it, I have no idea how to get my car in to neutral.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuling_Hongguang_Mini_EV
"In 2020, the Mini EV had a price starting at US$4,162, and topped out at US$5,607 for a fully loaded model, making it China's cheapest electric car."
Where I am there is a decent rail network, and the rail provider has a fleet of EVs for rent, where the cost of the electricity is included. This provides a "green" last mile solution even if the public transport itself in each area may be lacking (often it's not however).
So a trip looks like this:
Hop on the train which quickly takes the lion's-share of the travelling distance, then switch to an EV that fills the gap to the final destination/s. Then do this process in reverse to get home.
This approach solves the largest problems presented by the author.
What the USA lacks is a robust network. The spread of rail is too thin to be useful for everyday use.
Side lanes are also a feature of these networks, and exist not just to overtake freight or behind schedule trains, but also enable different levels of service, such as express trains versus “all stops” style services.
The optics of this thread are telling.
The only time it makes sense to buy an EV is if it's used.
Edit: He bought used.
> You should never purchase EVs, only lease them. That's what I did. This saves you from the terrible depreciation they have.
> The only time it makes sense to buy an EV is if it's used.
Coming in too hot, friend! The headline, and opening line, is that it is a used EV.
I'm happy with that.
the artile is a guy who drives his cars 'into the ground' - he wouldn't care about value he cares about how long it will run.
You can lease a used Tesla Model 3 for $5k/24mo. Say the used Leaf was $15k, it would need to be worth at least $10k in 2027.
[1] chassis+body+suspension basically a car without powertrain and interior trim
Even then, most individuals don't buy new cars. Most of the cars on the used market come from company cars, rentals, leasing...