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Anecdote about someone I know who was broadsided in his brand new Leaf: The battery saved their lives. They spun around 4-5 times and landed upright. The highway patrol told them they would have died if not for the weight of the vehicle. The car of course was a complete, ugly loss.
Side note: With a new vehicle (not this thread's situation, obviously) always get gap (new car) insurance. Saves thousands of dollars.
Some or many metro areas don't have adequate charging stations. This person had to install a home charger. That still doesn't help when out and about. Trips have to be carefully planned. That situation may have improved since 2 years ago.
Leaf is one of those big depreciation EVs, they are worth less than the batteries inside the car after 5 years. Not worth it. Rather lease it and give it back. If you buy you will lose 80% of it's value in just 5-7 yrs.
Some or many metro areas don't have adequate charging stations. This person had to install a home charger. That still doesn't help when out and about. Trips have to be carefully planned. That situation may have improved since 2 years ago.
This matters in an early Leaf or early EV that was basically a "compliance car" (Spark EV, Fiat 500 EV, BMW i3, Ford Focus EV). They have relatively short ranges (100 miles or less) and need charging often (though if you drive the US average of 30-40 miles a day, you won't need to have any more than a 120v outlet at home to satay topped off overnight). A home EVSE will add 0-100% state of charge in a few hours, so you can replenish a few days worth of driving while you sleep. And actually, so will a simple NEMA 14-50, 240v dryer outlet that most modern EVs can plug into as the charging cable they come with can use both 120v or 240v:
This stays in the car and you can switch the ends, depending on whether you're plugging into 120v or 240v.
If you have a new Leaf or any one of the newer 200-300 mile range EVs (like a Bolt at a rated 259 miles) there's definitely no need for using a public charger to get across town and back and run errands in most Metro areas, even in a place like New York City. As an example, New York City to Baltimore is 200 miles. A modern EV can do that easily starting with a 100% charge. You wouldn't need a charger in the NY metro area, just charge out on I95 if you want to have a good amount of juice left after getting to Baltimore, or charge in Baltimore to get home again.
If you wanted to go from, say Ann Arbor, MI to Chicago, it's about 280 miles. Kind of pushing it in one charge for most EVs. But there's a ton of Tesla Superchargers along that route to choose from, and a bunch of DC Fast charge for non-Teslas. If you were in a Bolt, for example, you could stop halfway at the Electrify America station in Portage (at the Sam's Club) to get enough charge to finish the trip and have enough to drive around Chicago a bit before charging up to get back to Portage, then finish up back home in Ann Arbor. Pretty much all metro areas in the US (and a lot of rural and suburban areas) have DC fast charge stations, and Tesla Supercharger stations are pretty much everywhere you'd need them.
But as you can see, if you lived in Ann Arbor or Chicago, NY or Seattle, you could drive all over those metro areas without issue on one charge. That's why you install a home EVSE (we need to stop calling them "chargers", as the actual battery charger is bult into the car itself, and the thing the cable comes from is simply a smart switch that allows power to flow to the car). And as I mentioned a home EVSE can range from a $50 dryer outlet to a $300-500 EVSE station. If you have the dryer in the garage or on the opposite side of the wall from the car, you can install a smart switch that automatically switches from the car to the dryer off that one outlet, so you don't even need to rewire anything or add a new panel or anything:
The person I mentioned upthread bought a 2022 model. It had a range of 200 miles. With careful planning, he was able to Uber with it living 30 miles from the best Uber-ing area.
The person I mentioned upthread bought a 2022 model. It had a range of 200 miles. With careful planning, he was able to Uber with it living 30 miles from the best Uber-ing area.
Uber drivers are different that the average buyer, and have zero bearing on this conversation, or pretty much any conversation about buying an EV for most people. Don't know why you even brought it up.
I brought it up because of needing to calculate percentage of charge carefully while determining how many jobs to take. Duh.
One could state the same thing for running to the city to do errands and having to calculate same. The owner lived in a semi-rural area outside a metro, with ZERO places to charge in the small town, hence the need for an at-home charging station.
Uber drivers are different that the average buyer, and have zero bearing on this conversation, or pretty much any conversation about buying an EV for most people. Don't know why you even brought it up.
Half of them drive EVs around here so I wouldn't say that.
I just paid a deposit on a 2022 Leaf S (11K miles, 180 mile range, $12K after state+federal incentives).
My daughter and I test drove it and it's a fun little car. Very peppy. The range is more than sufficient; we have other cars for trips out of town and this one is for her to get to classes 20 miles away, and for bopping about town with friends, and for me to run over to the hardware store on Saturday mornings, and so forth.
We'll be installing a level 2 (220 volt) socket in the garage.
There are some used Bolts out there as well but I didn't get around to test driving one. The Leaf will meet our needs just fine for the next couple of years, hopefully.
Leaf is one of those big depreciation EVs, they are worth less than the batteries inside the car after 5 years. Not worth it. Rather lease it and give it back. If you buy you will lose 80% of it's value in just 5-7 yrs.
Hmm...or just buy a greatly depreciated EV that still has plenty of utility? Case in point, I bought a 20K miles old lease return 2013 Fiat 500e for $7,300 out the door. I'm pretty sure the used car dealership bought it for less than $5K the day before at auction (when Fiat dealerships were flooded with lease returns). We have 96K miles on that car now. A few years later we bought a CPO Tesla Model S85 for 60% less than the original MSRP and have added 80K miles to that car so far.
Yes, you run the risk of having a high-cost component failure out of warranty. So far it's worked out well for us and we planned for this should the worse happen...at high point I'll be repurposing the battery modules and motor for a residential battery bank and electric boat project. The Fiat motor is only 80lbs!
Half of them drive EVs around here so I wouldn't say that.
Doesn't matter, the usual buyer of an EV (or any car) is NOT to rideshare. Rideshare requirements are different than normal use, regardless of whether the car is an EV or gasser. So bringing it up in a conversation about a commuter/errand runner is completely irrelevant and less than helpful.
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