Discussion on:

Nissan slashes prices, makes Leaf cheapest 5-seater EV

To truly make an impact, the Leaf will have to be truly accessible. Energy efficient vehicles in the $20K range--is this already available anywhere (Europe)??

The Total cost of ownership here is what matters. Even before the huge price cut, a Leaf is less cost over the average time that the average car is kept: http://www.pluginamerica.org/drivers-seat/why-plug-vehicles-are-so-inexpensive

Still damned expensive though.

In the UK, the UK Nissan plant manufactured Leaf is (cough) from 25,990 GBP, though assuming that is the US equivalent of the previous $35K.

As a Toyota Yaris Hybrid or Honda Jazz/Fit Hybrid is around 7-10K less, and will have better residuals, the Leaf is not a go-er yet at this price. Despite the obvious no petrol/gas fuel angle.

How much $8/gallon equavalent gas to you have to put in that smaller, less equipped Honda Jazz/Fit than a Leaf before you come out ahead? My guess is somewhere around 40K miles or less. So that "petrol/gas fuel angle" is pretty signifigant.

The long term residuals of Electric/Hybrid vehicles is still uncertain. Hybrid's especially, with their inherently complex mix of electrical and combustion power, and the myriad of sensors - I would fear for the longer term reliability and costs of running these, when a mechanic open's the lid, looks in the engine and does not know why your 5 year old Prius is a bag of sh1te and won't go, or the dash is lit up like a Christmas tree

The questionable lease/swap options/costs of some of the battery pack units is also a worry. They are phenomenally expensive parts to replace.

The Euro $8/gallon is a huge concern, but this has positively driven the market towards a huge reduction in oil consumption with much more economical cars, and the widespread use of diesel in cars/vans/SUV's - leading average gas mileage to be heading towards 40 miles per gallon, whereas in the US this is terrible - What 20mpg avaerage and in your must have v8 SUV 10mpg ?.

If you have concerns about the residuals then lease. That way you don't have to worry about the long term reliability or costs as the entire lease would be under warranty. A Leaf can be leased for less per month than the average vehicle costs just in gas. Leases are typically $99/month with $3000 down and $279/month with zero down for 36K 3 year lease, and was before the price drop.

I almost bought an Altima hybrid for my wife... However one trip to the dealer and Nissan was out of the running... Out of 34 brand new Altima Hybrids on the lot, I couldn't find a single one with a halfway decent fit and finish... The gaps on the doors, hoods, trunks, tail lights etc. were all off by a huge margin... Not a single one was straight... I looked at all the other Nissans on the lot and couldn't find a single one with a decent fit and finish... I don't know how a body and collision shop would even consider dealing with a Nissan... And don't get me started on Nissan paint... If you go to a dealership and look at any of the dark colored cars, all their paint is spider cracked (easier to see on a dark paint). Since then I started paying attention to other Nissans on the road and in parking lots and they are all cr@p... It's like someone made a bet that Americans were so incredibly stupid that they would buy anything and that person is winning the bet. All the other auto makers do a decent fit and finish... Why does Nissan do such a horrid job at it?

They could drop the leaf to 10 grand and I might consider it, but that is still a very slim might.

As a current LEAF lessee, this is terrific news.

There is the saying of "penny wise, pound foolish." As an energy professional, the industry is awash in clean energy technology that is a little more expensive but delivers significant savings over the life of a technology. The incandescent light bulb is the best example of a century-old technology that was cheap but incredibly inefficient as 90% of its energy was lost in the form of heat. There is a reason that these bulbs are being mandated to be removed. We as a society cannot afford their inefficiency any longer.

And in the near future the same will be said of internal combustion vehicles vis-a-vis EV's.

I pay less than $10/month to run the car. Granted, that is with Pacific Northwest low-cost hydroelectricity, but still, that is why this vehicle is cost effective and practically carbon-free (we offset our coal portion of electricity with solar). That is on top of the fact that there are no oil changes, lube jobs, etc. There is essentially zero maintenance other than making sure that the tires are fully inflated.

We're not talking about Europe where there are other incentives (gas taxes) to make the EV cost competitive. This is the United States we're talking about where some states like mine (Washington) actually charge me $100 a year for the gas that I am NOT burning. Short-sighted, gas company-lobbied state legislators are starting to penalize EV and hybrid car owners for doing the responsible thing and putting our money where our values are. How's THAT for a "market signal."

But I'm willing to wait out the BS because in the long run I know that I'm doing the right thing and invest in this future technology.

and that $100 penalty you're paying for using EVs, will become a lot larger.

What will happen is that, you are going to be charged by tha amount of driving you do, in order to extract an equitable amount of money from you for the amount of driving you do. Call it the "road usage" tax. In the end, you'll end up paying approximately the same in "driving taxes" as someone who is paying those taxes via gas taxes. Eventually, the taxes will be shifted from gas taxes altogether, to "road usage taxes", which will bring in more revenue to the government coffers.

than someone with a gas-guzzling SUV, since the SUV driver will want to cut down on his driving, while the owner of an EV might be tempted to use that energy-efficient vehicle a lot more, which will add to his/her number of miles driven. At that point, the EVs will have lost any advantage they might have had when it comes to saving money.

The gas guzzling SUV driver would have to reduce his/her miles/year to 1/10th of that a year to be cost equivalent to an EV. An EV like the Leaf can travel 1000 miles on $21 of electricity. That amount of gasoline in a 15 MPG SUV would get you 81 miles.

engaged.

My posts weren't comparing the relative advantages or disadvantages between EVs and SUVs.

My comments referred to the savings of money that people seek with their EVs or hybrids. I'm talking about how, no matter what you drive, you'll still end up paying more or the same as you do now, but, with the budgets of the country and states and communities not getting the amount of funding needed to run those governments, the taxes will be going up. Even if you were to get a vehicle which costs nothing when it comes to "fueling" it up, you will end up paying more, because the governments are running out of money, and they need to make up that loss of revenue somewhere, and that somewhere will iniclude the number of miles that people drive, no matter if it's in SUVs or EVs or hybrids.

My comments above referred to those who use EVs and hybrids, where those owners might be tempted to drive more, because their fuels costs will be a lot less than for SUVs. And, with the schemes which governments are drawing up, those who drive more, will pay more, so the EVs and hybrids might end up paying more than the SUV owners, because those SUV owners might decide to drive less, not just because they would consume more fuel, but because, governments might decide that, the bigger vehicles are more destructive to roads and therefore, need to pay more for "road repair and maintenance". But, the revenue collected for those repair and maintenance costs would get redirected towards funding of other government functions. It's like what happened with Social Security funding, which was supposed to be kept in separate accounts for payments to those in need after retiring, but, that funding ended up getting tossed into the general funds for use in all other areas of government functions.

Next time, try to understand what you read. I had to expand on my comments here, just for your edification.

Ah ok, a road tax question. I apologize I, most detractors are arguing total cost per mile. It doesn't matter how much taxes are levied on hybrids or EVs, PV plus EV will always be cheaper per mile. Gas prices are going to always go up in the long term, and if governments think that they are losing revenue then they will raise taxes. However if you eliminate the fuel cost portion by combining an EV and solar, even if taxes doubled, tripled, quadrupled, it wouldn't matter, the cost of the fuel of a conventional vehicle of any type will still be more than an EV per mile and TCO. This is when all the averages are taken into account, average miles per day, average miles per year, average time a car is kept, average mpg, average cost of gas, average cost of maintenance, EV still comes out ahead. Washington state just started charging EV owners $100 a year, that is fine I am happy to pay, as the typical woman--sheeple driving a Camry pays that in fuel in 2 fill-ups, and the typical man-sheeple in a F150 pays more than that in 1 fill-up.
I am fine paying the extra tax/fee but if they go with a per-mile fee, it needs to be fee-rate * weight = fee. 15K miles a year in an EV is a whopping $315 worth of electricity, same distance in a 26MPG car would be $2,221. That is 576 gallons of gas @ $3.85/gallon. Of that $0.24 is federal and here in Wa $0.36 is state for a total $0.60/gallon or a total of $346 in taxes a year. They would have to raise the effective taxes/fees on an EV almost 650% before it would just equal the total fuel +taxes costs of the average mileage vehicle. Would this encourage people to drive more/less? I don't think it matters much either way, people will drive if they need to drive, how much money comes out of their pocket will ultimately make them decide if they should get a more fuel efficient vehicle, or take that ultimate step and choose a vehicle that doesn't use any gasoline/diesel.
Questioning how much taxes/fees will increase is not a good enough excuse to not adopt the technology. Your costs are still less on a daily basis than any other internal combustion vehicle on the road today and the foreseeable future.

Guessing you did not take the lease option on the battery pack. How much is the swap costs of this, when it reaches the end of it's life ?

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/136894-will-high-mileage-nissan-leafs-need-costly-battery-replacements-soon
http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/nissan-leaf-sale-1-september

Battery prices continue to fall. The longer you can nurse your original battery pack along, the lower the replacement cost will be.

We got our Leaf in June of 2011, 19K trouble free miles so far. It is powered by our home solar array so we have spent zero on electricity. We have made some long trips using the West Coast Green Highway network of fast charge stations. 676 miles round trip though the Christmas holiday. Mostly it just does my wife's 28 mile commute which is easily done. This big price cut will make the Leaf even more affordable to the masses. The Leaf can become your primary vehicle for 95% of all your trips, 100% of your trips if you live in the Northwest. Take your other gas car for longer trips. We have two EVs now and don't own any internal combusion cars. We put about 25K miles on our EVs a year, all on sunshine.

when the government decides to tax people depending on miles driven.

Washington state has a $100/year fee on EVs now, still THOUSANDS less than the average car per year in fuel. Even tax per mile will still be far less than actual fuel costs, this is because taxes only make up a small portion of the total fuel cost.

Way to go Turbofroggy! People like you are hopefully the wave of the future! Kudos for taking the initiative and doing the right thing.

They moved production from Japan to the U.S. I thought it was too expensive to build cars in the US. Isn't that why most maufacturing moved overseas?

and that it's not regular union labor involved either.

Very interesting. Some 435,000 hybrid electric vehicles were sold in the USA in 2012. Just about 14,200 battery electric vehicles were sold in the same time. About 10,000 of those were Nissan Leaf electric cars.

Consumers appear to be affected by both price and range. The price drop would seem to remove up to one half of the barrier to EV sales. it will be interesting to see what 2013 brings in terms of Leaf sales in the USA.

EVsRock!

I live in Indonesia where we host some of the biggest (and also fastest diminishing) rainforests in the world. 'Going Green' is still a new concept here but the general public are catching on fast and are keen to be part of a 'Green' community.
I bought a Nissan Grand Lavina five years ago. There was a brochure for the Leaf in the showroom. I said to the salesperson 'I want one of THOSE !' I'm sure the demand for the first hybrid to enter the market here would be big. a lot of people here pride themselves on 'standing out from the crowd'. In Jakarta we have 20 million plus so the first few thousand hybrids will still 'stand out'.
I was told 'It's on the way.' but also that I could not place an order. Five years later... I'm still waiting.....