The new electric blue Leaf is a joy to drive!
Will post a detailed video review of the whole Leaf experience this weekend.
Bascially it works like this from a money perspective.
The fully loaded vehicle costs ~36-37k (expected to drop another 3k next year)
You pay 3k (including a down pay, license, registration including first month lease payment)
You get ~10k in instant rebates (Federal etc.)
You also get a 2.5k rebate from the state.
Given the fact that this is still new technology that is rapidly improving, (used a friends advice on this) it was better to lease for 3 years with a max restriction of 12k miles / year and if you exceed you pay 15 cents/ mile to the dealer (unless you buy the car at the end of the 3 years.
The residual works out to be 17k.
12k miles/year is 1k miles/month and assuming 20 weekdays per month translates to 50 miles a day.
This car is fully electric and takes 21 hours to fully charge with 110 V or ~4 hrs to charge using a 220V outlet (which will be installed in your house if you go through an elaborate qualification process through the city and some agencies), but it can be done!
Here are the highlights and a few lowlights
Highlights :
Driving limits: You get to go 110 miles total in a charge if you average 45 mph. If you hit 60 for like 20 minutes it drops the mileage by a good extra 10 miles like when we had to drive it back from the dealership on the freeway.
I drive 27 miles round trip to work and back everyday in local freeways or expressways where the top speed is 55 mph for brief seconds when I get to press the gas pedal (errr. accelerator!). Also drive ~9 miles round trip to Yoga every day. Local trips like taking kids to Kumon or other classes, visits to Indian Grocery store, Target etc. is around 4-6 miles round trip which happens every alternate day.
In total ~40 miles during a weekday and maybe 20 miles on weekends for local trips which works out within the 12k/year limit. Anything longer like going to SFO, Livermore etc. we can take the other vehicle.
Comfort :
This car is quiet. Real quiet. Quieter than a Prius if you can believe it! The seats are amazing and have heating.. the kids call it "butt warmers" and work for all seats. The steering wheel can be heated. So if you dont want to heat the entire vehicle to save energy you heat your butt and steering wheel and can drive warm! Turning on the AC to heat or cool cuts down 10 miles out of the total 110 mile range (~ 10%) given our local Temperature differences in Cupertino.
Music system is out of the world. It has radio AM/FM, XM radio, CD, MP3, Aux port to connect devices and has bluetooth so you can just play your iPhone through the speakers.. dont have the song on your iPhone playlist? No problem. Search on youtube, play and the sound goes to the system wirelessly! The kids are loving it. Next they want the video to play in the info panel so they can watch as well ! (Nissan please take note). There is also a USB port. Have all your songs as MP3 or WMV ? No problem. Just take an 8GB pen drive, shove all your songs into folders and it just plays it! There is one downside though that I detected yesterday. Only MP3 plays. MP4 does not. So I had to go download a free utility to downgrade my MP4's to MP3's.
Navigation:
This thing comes with a nice navigation system. For a car that can only go a max of 110 miles (55 miles roundtrip) the Navigation seems like an oxymoron. But there is a good reason for it. The car tells you if you can make it back before you start anywhere and also puts nearest charging stations on the map. Given you cannot just go refill instantly, this does come in handy.
Gizmos galore :
There are fine adjustments to everything comfort related which is totally cool.The whole charging cable fits in a cute backpack which is anchored to the trunk. You can track all car stuff online as the car communicates everything to a website. It even has a name. We aptly named it PARNA !
The little one understood the meaning and the pun immediately!
At the end of the day a great ride and given my Sienna was averaging just below 20 miles a gallon for the same ~12 miles a year.. we save 600 gallons in gas which is ~2500$. This is a wash with what we pay for the car. Electricity will be ~30 bucks a month and with rebates can be as low as 10$/month.
For starters this experiment is working out great. Will keep posting updates on how this goes every few months. Thanks to all my friends who recommended this during the Xmas break! We should have a Leaf party soon..
