My pickup gets 16 mpg in town and my Corvette gets 24 mpg on the same drive. So now i have a good excuse to drive the performance car everyday

$3.45 in southeast PA.

Actually, that number does take into account charging losses. The 'at the battery' number is 24kwh. Also, the 99mpg figure is for combined driving (typical 55% city/45% highway). Pure city driving is at 106, while highway is at 92.



The current charging systems are designed to charge over night (which takes advantage of off-peak electricity usage). When used in this manner, there is no need to charge right before rush hour.



After 10 years the batteries are expected to maintain 70-80% of their charging capacity. However, it comes with an 8 year/100,000 mile battery warranty. The battery itself is also about 85% recyclable.

$3.47 at the station I go to. Metro Portland.

The Nissan leaf is certainly an impressive piece of design automotive engineering using cutting edge technology such as the longer life even more expensive Lithium Titanate Battery (compared to other cell technologies). The 56.5 mpg for the Fiat Panda Eco was also a combined fuel economy figure but the realities of these fuel efficiencies rarely are met. The Nissan Leaf is about as good as it gets for an electrically powered vehicle using cutting edge battery technology.

Even the Nissan Leaf is range limited to around 73 miles (EPA five-cycle tests) on a combined driving cycle and using a conventional power plug overnight drawing 1.4 KW setup will take many hours to recharge i.e. approx 22+hrs (not really a problem since the Leaf and will only get you around 1 hr 16 min use on a 55 mph highway drive anyway)

Compared this to the Panda which costs around 4 times less to purchase initially, which has a range of around 435 miles and can be refueled in around 5 minutes.


When everyone is recharging their electric car it won't be off peak anymore. Even the fast charge for the Nissan Leaf is around 30 min using a 60KW (?) charging station (certainly not a current domestic arrangement), although to gain acceptance for general use (even if the range constraints can be lived with by the end user) this might become a requirement i.e. a seriously heavy duty copper wire circuit in every home.

Again at the end of the day if petroleum fuel is replaced by electrical power in the US for automotive use (with the same milage and luxury i.e. same car vehicle sizes and weights that today's driver expect today using gasoline powered cars. Some folks will want the Electric Rolls Royce and not the vehicle for the proletariat) then the equivalent number of nuclear power stations required to be built in the US would be in the hundreds if not the thousands if no oil (all other uses including vehicle transportation) was used within the US economy.

Then there would be the problem of Uranium fuel shortages unless fast breeder designs were constructed, which then leads to the problem of plutonium proliferation throughout the world.

So I understand diesels pollute a bit more. But doesn't the fact that diesels get almost twice the mileage offset much of the difference?

I can't pretend to understand all the math on the Leaf, but I understand time. I am not going to buy a car that takes 30 minutes or more to 'fill up' at a charging station or 8 hours at home for the privilege of driving between 60-90 miles per full charge. What am I supposed to do at these stations, read a book, watch a movie? Not mention have to wait for the person in front of me get done.

You could indeed watch a movie whilst charging an EV, if charging points were installed outside movie theatres, as has been proposed.
Or you could go shopping, if charging points were provided in the parking lots of stores.
Or if your employer provided the facility you could charge at work.
Here in London there are a number of public charging points for EVs, quite well used whilst people are shopping or visiting the theatre etc.

That's just it. With a typical gasoline or diesel car, you have to go to a gas station to refill your car. You don't have any other options.

With an electric vehicle, the plan is to essentially have the gas station come to you. Charging stations in homes, in parking lots, in parking meters....with the right infrastructure most people would have no need to ever visit a gas station. There are also induction charging methods being developed that can charge the vehicle without a physical connection (just like those charging mats for phones, ipods, ect). Because of this, we aren't that far off from even being able to charge the car while it's driving.

As I've said, the technology and infrastructure isn't totally here as of 2011. We're in the infancy of it, just like we were with internal combustion engine cars back in 1911.

There's that infrastructure thingy raising its head again. . .