EV still have a long way to go; we are no where near their potential with the EV we have now. You could almost call this the prototype testing stage.
I saw in here talk about the Leaf; great idea, executed poorly. I read a story about a woman that had an early one; drove it to the airport, parked and went on her business trip. When she gets back a day later we had an unexpected cold snap and her flight was 3 hours late. This put her home when it was dark; not a problem she thought, I have a 65% charge, that will get me the 20 miles to home. So lights on, heater on, music on (of course) and off to the freeway. Going north on I-5 she runs into a construction bottleneck; adds 25 minutes to her trip of 20 miles. Gets to the south end of Seattle, 10 miles from home and she sees she only has 18% charge left, another 4 miles, the car shuts down.
So her expensive Nissan Leaf is now waiting for a tow; guy shows up and asks the problem, she says "dead battery", he offers to give it a jump but doesn't understand it's a total EV; she has to have it towed to the dealer to get it recharged and the computers re-set.
She get's charged for this because she ignored the warnings and let the battery go dead. She sold it 2 days later and swears she will never buy another EV. News outlets get the story and blow it out of proportion so now the Nissan dealer can't give these cars away.
I think Nissan really made a mistake offering it as a non hybrid, electric only.
I saw in here talk about the Leaf; great idea, executed poorly. I read a story about a woman that had an early one; drove it to the airport, parked and went on her business trip. When she gets back a day later we had an unexpected cold snap and her flight was 3 hours late. This put her home when it was dark; not a problem she thought, I have a 65% charge, that will get me the 20 miles to home. So lights on, heater on, music on (of course) and off to the freeway. Going north on I-5 she runs into a construction bottleneck; adds 25 minutes to her trip of 20 miles. Gets to the south end of Seattle, 10 miles from home and she sees she only has 18% charge left, another 4 miles, the car shuts down.
So her expensive Nissan Leaf is now waiting for a tow; guy shows up and asks the problem, she says "dead battery", he offers to give it a jump but doesn't understand it's a total EV; she has to have it towed to the dealer to get it recharged and the computers re-set.
She get's charged for this because she ignored the warnings and let the battery go dead. She sold it 2 days later and swears she will never buy another EV. News outlets get the story and blow it out of proportion so now the Nissan dealer can't give these cars away.
I think Nissan really made a mistake offering it as a non hybrid, electric only.
