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Comment by sremani | Hacker News Reader

For 10K (+3) if you live in USA, you can buy a Nissan Leaf that came out the 3 year lease, and it is a decent car that seats 5 people with a range of about 80+ miles. Batteries are expensive and will continue to be till the turn of this decade and not a whole lot can be done. The better analogy would be laptops vs desktops, laptops gave mobility but they were heavy did not have the power etc. but by 2004 - 2006 they started to eclipse the desktops, EVs will slowly eclipse, they are expensive with range limitations but as they mature over couple of generations the efficiency gains coupled with economy of scale would make them eclipse ICE. 10 years from now, you will not find a Pure ICE vehicle in new cars, every car will have battery of some meaningful size.

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We just bought a used leaf for 12k at carmax. It was a 2013 with 16,000 miles on it and it easily gets 80 miles to a charge. All of the great things you read about them have all been true for us, super quiet, surprising acceleration, convenience of charging at home. It was hard to get our hands on one as they kept selling them as soon as they'd come in at carmax.

Second hand electric cars, as long as the battery is solid, should be an excellent deal if you're in the sweet spot for commuting distance. 50 miles a day equates to $1000 a year in US gas costs, and £2000 ($3000) in UK petrol costs. Especially in the UK, if you can get a used Leaf for £10-12k* , that's going to be by far the most economical way of running a second/commuting car.

* That seems to be the going rate for a two year old Leaf on Autotrader.

a used leaf will likely only have <50 miles of range. My dad has one and it has been a disaster for him -- the range keeps decreasing and he can do less and less with it.

The 2011 and 2012 were disasters for Nissan. Never buy one of those, especially in a hot climate. I've had my 2013 for two years now and haven't noticed any drop in range at all.

We were one of the first in line to pre-order our 2011 Leaf. The battery capacity bar hasn't budged in four years, and there has been no noticeable drop in range. But we also live in Seattle, where 90F is considered to be unbearably hot.

The $8,000 price I quoted is after heavy subsidies. I imagine that used Nissan Leaf price is also after subsidies. If electric cars become mainstream I wonder what will happen with subsidies.

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