Small, cheap electric cars are the best! Fun to drive, easy to maintain. I own an VW eUP 2015 model which costed me €4000 used. I do not know if they where for sale outside of Norway (I only see them here!), but it is the perfect car for 95% of our mobility needs.
I drive it to work every day (where I can charge it for free). I drive it to Oslo and can park/charge almost anywhere around town for really cheap, about €3/h, which is nothing compared to regular parking, which is usually ~€16/h.
I drive it to the Netherlands, about ~950km in two days, without a hint of range anxiety, thanks to abetterrouteplanner.com. Sure, I'm averaging 85km/h, and have to take a ~10min stop every ~2 hours to charge, but that is a welcome pause to visit the toilet or grab a bite.
I had to change a bearing that was getting noisy after 10 years of use, and it cost me €50 in parts and half an hour changing it. I was worried it was going to be a complicated affair, not having done it before, but it was as easy as changing a tire.
Oh, and there is physical buttons for everything! There is a little display that controls the music and shows consumption stats, but it is entirely optional and can be removed completely.
The battery has hardly degraded at all. I'm keeping this thing for as long as I possibly can, it is the perfect car!
boredpudding · 1h ago
What range are you getting in winter at 85km/h?
Currently trying to get rid of our petrol car but knowing realistic range up front is rough. I'm fine with driving slower.
rsolva · 36m ago
It really depends on just how cold it is outside and how much (or little) heat you are comfortable with inside. For mild winter weather (+5 to -5°C) and 18°C in the cabin, the range drops to around 80km or so. On a sunny summer day, I can easily get about 130km on Norwegian country roads, probably more.
When driving to the Netherlands in the months between March and October, the consumption has been around 8.3kW/100km. The car is light and has little tech that consumes power.
Since the car has no heat pump, heating the cabin has a noticable impact on range during cold winter days.
That said, it is a really good car to drive in the winter as the cabin gets warm in no-time and the windows in the front and back are heated and melts away thick ice in about a minute, even in really cold weahter! When doing normal commutes, the shorter range does not matter at all. But I would probably not drive to the Netherlands in -10°C during the winter!
chelmzy · 3h ago
Crazy he wouldn't go for a Bolt. I just bought a 2019 Chevy Bolt w/ 11k miles for $14.5k (so a bit over 10k after federal rebate). It has a brand new battery because all the Bolts were recalled for battery issues. Has around 250m range. Feel like I won the lottery. Still plenty of them available https://www.donohooauto.com/searchused.aspx?Make=Chevrolet&M...
cosmic_cheese · 2h ago
I have a lease end coming up and the Bolt/EUV are on my radar, but one significant advantage that Leafs have is that the lower trims can have their head unit swapped out for a nice Pioneer or Sony unit from Crutchfield, just like is possible with many ICE vehicles, which can get you a nicer infotainment experience (including wireless CarPlay/AA) that isn’t encrusted with rent-seeking gunk.
seanmcdirmid · 2h ago
> just like is possible with many ICE vehicles
Many older ICE vehicles, you mean? EVs aren't really special in their use of custom car-bound head units. BMW XDrive is the same XDrive they have in their EVs as they have in their ICEs. Mandatory backup cams is only going to accelerate that.
cosmic_cheese · 1h ago
It’s an unfortunate trend. I’m not sure mandatory backup cameras is really a driving cause, though — the bulk of third party head units have backup cam support out of the box and some even let you add a 360° overhead parking view if you’re willing to drill some holes and wire cameras.
The biggest reason for non-modular infotainment is to push people into subscription services.
Workaccount2 · 3h ago
I was so close to pulling the trigger on one of these except for 3 factors: It's driving assist platform is now deprecated and no longer receiving area expansions (I know many could not care less), it's charging speed is pretty slow by today's norms, and it will likely retain almost no value as time goes on.
blank_fan_pill · 2h ago
> it will likely retain almost no value as time goes on.
If you're buying a car as an investment I have bad news for you...
Workaccount2 · 2h ago
Sure, but you can buy one for $12k and get almost nothing back, or buy a more modern EV for $25k and maybe get $13k back. In both cases you are losing $12k in a few years, but in one of the cases you get a more modern car.
LeifCarrotson · 1h ago
Get almost nothing back from your $12k used car? Nonsense, you get a larger fraction back, the annual depreciation continuously slows down.
If a 6-year-old Bolt is still worth $14.5k, then an 8- or, say, 12-year-old Bolt isn't worth $0. Most of that depreciation happened in the first year, it's still going to be worth $12k or $9k.
For example, Jeff's 2023 Leaf originally sold for about $30k. Now, just TWO YEARS later, he probably paid $15k to $19k for it. That's a steal! Given he drives his vehicles into the ground, it probably doesn't matter, but if he wanted to sell it in a few years he could still get $10 to $15k from it.
IshKebab · 1h ago
Nah, the newer a car is the faster it deprecates.
bryanlarsen · 1h ago
Scrap value of a car is several thousand dollars these days. The OP's $12K car is likely going to last > 10 years. A $25k will likely depreciate more $12K in 10 years.
mikepavone · 2h ago
I have a 2017 Bolt as my only car and the slow L3 charging is definitely a downside, but I haven't found it to be a huge issue in practice. On a trip long enough to worry about fast-charging you're going to need to stop to eat periodically anyway so if you plan your charging around meals you don't end up waiting too long. Obviously gets a bit more annoying on trips that are long enough to require more than one fast-charge per-day, but I don't take trips that long frequently.
Day to day charging is generally all going to be L2 or even L1 depending on how far you drive and how long typically parked somewhere with a plug. That will be roughly the same speed in any car. Some cars do have higher capacity L2 chargers than the Bolt does, but most public L2 stations don't provide the higher current needed to see the difference.
cogman10 · 42m ago
This I think is the key that most non-EV drivers don't recognize. Especially if you own a home, then an EV is really fantastic. You simply plug it in whenever you are home and 99% of the time you spend 0 time waiting for a charge. The slow trickle charge is both cheaper and more convenient because you aren't making trips to a gas station on a weekly/biweekly basis.
nebula8804 · 2h ago
Are you saying SuperCruise on the Bolt stops working or just that they wont expand existing coverage?
This Bolt EUV car drives so damn good. I was very impressed when I drove it.
The Bose audio is also quite good. After testing several new cars, I learned that Bose audio is not implemented the same across manufacturers. For example Mazda Premium Bose is just plain mediocre.
For the price that you can pay for one, Bolt EUV is an amazing deal. Unfortunately the charge speed is a deal breaker for many. But I never forgot how well it handles.
I really hope these cars last, they are a hidden gem and I think a lot wouldnt care about resale value if that charge speed was a bit better.
com2kid · 1h ago
The audio really is banging. Everything from dubstep to heavy metal to classical it handles as well as any car audio system will (which is to say garbage compared to even a mediocre home audio setup, but all car audio sucks due to acoustics of being in a car going down a road!)
Sadly I live in a city now so I can't drive down curvy roads away from everyone, windows down blasting beats anymore. :( (I try to be a responsible asshole! :)
wffurr · 2h ago
"driving assist platform is now deprecated and no longer receiving area expansions"
What driving assist platform? I don't think the older Chevy Bolts have any such thing. At least I'm pretty sure my 2017 doesn't.
mikepavone · 2h ago
IIRC, the EUV had an option for normal adaptive cruise control, but I don't think any ever had a Super Cruise style option
com2kid · 2h ago
The euv does have a super cruise option, the car next to the one I bought had it. Came into the showroom the day after I signed my paperwork. :(
wlesieutre · 3h ago
If you're worried about self driving features, there's always the option of a Comma AI retrofit
com2kid · 1h ago
Lane keeping works (poorly) but Bolt's automatic cruise control implementation is really good and works in stop and go traffic and at street speeds. I've used ACS systems before that refused to work in both those scenarios.
Charging time for road trips sucks. 99% of my driving is around town. Being a smaller EV it fits city life very well and I just top it off on a 120v plug every night.
I got a 2023 fully loaded with sunroof (except super cruise) for 24k, only had 40 miles on it.
That said the app is horrible and you can see how GM just didn't give a shit all throughout the car. No AC/dog mode. If you shift too fast after turning the car on you have to reboot the car using a secret method that is buried on forums (anyone reading this, don't press break, hold down the power button until the car restarts) and you can only remotely turn climate on to its last setting from the app.
Oh and even if you pay monthly for remote access just checking the charge level through your phone probably won't work (time outs...) and locating your car really won't work.
If you turn on climate remotely, drive somewhere less than 10 minutes away and then get out, you may try to turn climate back on using the app, but that won't work because the app has a really long cool down before it even checks the car to see what the status is so you end up in an invalid state where the app thinks the car is still on even though you just stepped out and turned it off.
Resistive heating means even with Seattle's mild winters I barely have 200 miles of range.
The car isn't smart enough to close the sunroof visor on hot days to keep the car cool.
In general it feels like what it is - a mid 2010s car that was far behind Tesla at the time for thoughtful details (expected given the year and GM) that was sold into the 2020s way after other manufacturers had updated their cars electronics to have common sense features.
That said some details are nice. You can be connected to car play and Android Auto at the same time and designate one of those as primary for apps and navigation but take calls through both. Physical climate controls are appreciated, and the rain sensing wipers actually work well. ;)
The 360 camera is wonderful to have. It cost me $10k vs getting a the base trim car, totally worth it.
I bought it April 2024 and I have some 0 maintenance other than car washes. So damn cheap to own.
In the 16 months I've owned it I've only put on 6k miles and it'll never pay for itself on gas savings , but last car was totalled and I legit enjoyed test driving the EUV more than a Lexus UX 300h that cost a lot more.
So anyways happy with the purchase, great value, horrible for road trips but I do them anyway.
ddalex · 2h ago
> Has around 250m range
250 meters ? but I want to drive off my street....
ta12653421 · 28m ago
--1
pkulak · 1h ago
Well, that's certainly not the cheapest. You can find old Leafs for 5k. People love Bolts, for good reason, and bit them up.
BizarroLand · 1h ago
I've seen Leafs for $3k or less. The problem is their battery life is ~10 years max, and replacing the battery costs $5k-$15k. That old leaf may have a 30-50 mile max range.
Don't get me wrong, that would still cover 80% of my daily driving needs, but when I need to drive to the big town for work on a moments notice I may not have time to drive home and swap out for my ICE vehicle.
I have a pre-order in for the Slate, having 150 miles range would cover 99% of my driving needs, so I am not against EVs, just sharing the awareness that battery degradation is a thing to be concerned about.
pkulak · 45m ago
> The problem is their battery life is ~10 years max
Depends on how you define "life". I think for the Leaf, it's 70% capacity. But even if it gets down to 50%, it'll sill keep driving.
Also, what's really annoying, is that every seller factors in tax credits to their price. So that 3k may really be 5k. I'm actually looking forward to that no longer being possible.
ambicapter · 3h ago
There still are federal rebates?
chelmzy · 3h ago
Until September 30th so better hurry.
rogerrogerr · 2h ago
Note that many HN residents probably have too much MAGI - do your diligence on that tax credit before assuming you qualify.
cosmic_cheese · 2h ago
The way dealerships roll rebates into their advertised prices is incredibly annoying if you don’t qualify. I kind of wonder if prices aren’t being inflated somewhat by dealers being able to put numbers that are ~$10k lower than reality out there.
rogerrogerr · 2h ago
I expect to see a severe price drop in both the used and new markets when these credits evaporate.
(Which is what you’d expect - of course free government money will raise prices above where they would be.)
FireBeyond · 1h ago
Let's not pretend dealerships (for all their legitimate issues) are solely at fault here. Tesla makes you scroll down to find a light grey small text checked box "Include $7,500 Federal tax credit" that is the default.
loeg · 2h ago
There is no MAGI exclusion for the tax credit on leases, FWIW.
masklinn · 12h ago
> Lack of standards: For 'L3' DC Fast Charging, the Leaf has a CHAdeMO port. Teslas and many newer EVs have NACS. Then there's CCS1 and CCS2. And charging stations are run by multiple vendors with multiple apps and payment methods. It's not like gas stations, like with Shell, BP, Buckee's, etc. where you just drive up, stick the gas nozzle in your tank, and squeeze.
Afaik in Europe, CCS2 is the standard (and mandatory these days), when I rented an EV a few weeks back there was no location which didn’t have it. And all the spots I tried charging at except Tesla accepted card payment (though there were a pair of times it was a struggle getting a card to work).
Apps / memberships will get you cheaper prices but that’s about all I saw (and I didn’t bother with any of it).
TBH the only things that annoyed me were implementation issues of the car (a polestar 4) as well as how overly wide it is. And that the rental company (AVIS) does not provide an AC adapter, so I was not able to charge at any wallplug even though I had the opportunity to charge the car at least twice over in all (I will likely purchase one if that remains their policy and I rent more EVs).
All this is modulo it being summer and a pretty long range model so range anxiety was present but reasonably limited.
lucideer · 12h ago
Anyone who follows Jeff will know he's US-based, but I still really felt he could've highlighted that fact more in that charging port standards section.
The fact that both J1772 & CCS2 are 100% universal in Europe is huge. So much so even Tesla switched to CCS2. This doesn't help Jeff but certainly one less problem for many readers of his article.
rsynnott · 12h ago
> The fact that both J1772 & CCS2 are 100% universal in Europe is huge.
Funnily enough, not for the Leaf! Though it will be on the third generation that's coming out this year. The second-gen Leaf (a ten year old design, at this point) that the author of the article bought doesn't have it. The EU only mandates CCS2 in _charging points_; manufacturers can still sell cars without it, though I think Nissan may be the only remaining one who _does_.
masklinn · 12h ago
> The EU only mandates CCS2 in _charging points_
Right but that’s the most important one. If you have a leaf it means you know you need an adapter always, so while it’s a bit of a hassle to waste space on that there’s no question whether you’ll get a compatible charging plug.
encom · 11h ago
Euro Leaf owner here. No CCS is indeed tiresome, but not a deal breaker. Chademo is still widely available - I haven't bothered buying an adapter.
lucideer · 9h ago
I was more referring to J1772. We don't have NACS in Europe so if you have J1772 you can always charge anywhere.
This does mean Jeff's Leaf would be limited to AC without an adapter, which isn't perfectly ideal, but still better.
randunel · 4h ago
I have a 2nd gen 2019 Leaf in Europe and it came with Type 2 and another one I've never ever used which looks like J1772, both next to each other in the front of the car. No CCS2 here, indeed.
I was under the impression Type 2 was the only European standard.
Ambroos · 12h ago
It's IEC 62196-2 Type 2 (Mennekes) and CCS2 in Europe. J1772 is the North American standard that is used in CCS1.
masklinn · 12h ago
> Anyone who follows Jeff will know he's US-based
That was obvious from the article but given they specifically mentioned CCS2 bundled with the mess that is US charging I thought important to point that (anecdotally) the situations are quite distinct. Both in terms of charging hardware and payment.
Hamuko · 12h ago
Go to your local Mitsubishi dealership in Europe and you will find the 2025 Outlander PHEV with a CHAdeMO plug. And I believe if you buy a pre-2019 Tesla Model S or Model X, you will have to deal with Tesla's own plug.
formerly_proven · 11h ago
I'm guessing it skirts regulations by being a PHEV, since CCS2 is mandatory for DCFC otherwise. Skirting regulations is quite fitting for a PHEV, of course, as that is their raison d'etre.
ddalex · 2h ago
the regulations mandate the CCS2 on the charging point, not on the car
Hamuko · 11h ago
The outgoing Nissan Leaf also has CHAdeMO and that's a full BEV.
formerly_proven · 11h ago
I assume that's grandfathered in by being originally homologated in 2010.
teamonkey · 9h ago
The incoming Leaf has CCS2
boznz · 2h ago
I also rented a Jeep Avenger EV a few weeks back in the UK, several smaller, out of the way vendors still required their specific App and where contactless payments were an option it more expensive at around 80 to 90 pence per KWH. A week into the hire I found I could use my Tesla app and the supercharger network to charge my rental and the max there is only 51 pence per KWH and the supercharger network is expansive just works. An EV is a good option for the UK if you prefer automatics or EV's I will certainly hire one again.
magicalhippo · 9h ago
> And that the rental company (AVIS) does not provide an AC adapter
Here in Norway, new EVs are no longer allowed to be sold with AC adapters, due to the potential fire hazard. At least that's the reason I got when I purchased my current EV.
Perhaps a EU thing, wouldn't surprise me.
kingstnap · 3h ago
This seems like the kind of regulation that causes more harm than it saves in anyone's house actually burning down. I did a cursory search and didn't find any EU reports of a house fire caused by a L1 charger.
Sure you might burn a house down if you find one that has a plug which isn't correctly installed with loose connectors but the fire risk here wasn't the EV. Its the incorrectly installed wiring.
You don't tell people to get rid of their fridges because some people might have forgetten to plug theirs in and therefore they could get food poisoning from spoiled food inside.
magicalhippo · 31m ago
I haven't been able to find concrete stories either, though these[1] statistics might be an indication. It shows there's a few EVs per year that lead to a building fire, though sadly nothing further about source. So could be something else like battery.
That said there's been a campaign for several years trying to get rid of sockets for high current or permanent installations. I recently replaced both an electric water heater and mini split AC, and in both cases the previous appliance had used a socket and that was not allowed anymore.
It could also lead to people buying cheap, potentially defective chargers online instead of getting a more reliable manufacturer-included one.
dreamcompiler · 8h ago
This surprises me, given that almost every country has safer electric plugs than the US. Heat is a function of current and car chargers limit themselves to less than the current the plug is rated for. "Less than" equals 80% in the US.
Rebelgecko · 33m ago
Dunno if it's the case here, but the charger doesn't know if it's plugged into an extension cord that isn't rated for 3kW or whatever EU plugs put out
magicalhippo · 29m ago
Concern over people using extension cords or splitters is a frequently cited reason, like in this news article[1].
It might be that the average euro is less aware of continuous draw limitations since there’s so much more power normally (compared to US residential power).
Could also be that for historical reasons you could have a house wired for 10 or 13 A and not be aware if it.
‘Course you can manage that by having the chargers limit themselves to 8A default (or even always), at 1800W that’s a very slow trickle but it’s something, and even if it does not fully cover your commute it spaces out carger stops or helps condition the battery on cold mornings.
NewJazz · 3h ago
Norway is not in the EU.
magicalhippo · 43m ago
As a Norwegian I am well aware of that. However, we're part of the European Economic Area[1], and as such import a lot of EU regulation and standards. Mostly because we're required per the EEA terms, but also because some of those make sense.
I understand how the US and EU have different electrical outlets, voltages and frequencies. The systems developed independently, standardized on compatible versions locally, and standardizing globally would be very expensive and almost impossible to do safely.
I don't understand how North America and Europe settled on different EV charging plugs.
herbst · 2h ago
I don't know how it is in the US but there is no one standard charging port here in Europe.
ddalex · 2h ago
CCS2 is mandatory in europe
herbst · 2h ago
I don't drive a RV, I just charge my campers batteries sometimes. I have 3 different connector cables from the common connectors I found in Switzerland, France and Italy only.
stavros · 10h ago
I can confirm that, here in Greece, everything is CCS2. There are also CHAdeMO ports here and there, but I don't know what car uses those.
However, I haven't seen a station that takes card yet (or they don't advertise it). They all have their own app, which is inconvenient and a hassle.
fifilura · 9h ago
> but I don't know what car uses those
It is exactly this kind of Nissan Leaf. Japanese older generation cars. Enough around to still be available, but I think it is slowly disappearing. After that only 6kW (32A/single phase) charging will be available for these cars.
floxy · 1h ago
There are fast charging adapters from CCS2 (and CCS1) to CHAdeMO:
It's not a lack of standards, it was an early proliferation of standards.
Chademo is still standard in Japan.
Also, given his comparison to the ease of the old way, in Europe at least it's fairly standard to know someone who has filled their hire car with diesel (or not diesel) by mistake. They have warning stickers on the filler flap because it happens so often.
Meanwhile knowing someone who uses the inexplicably more expensive premium fuel option also offered is maybe rarer.
Maybe EV-owning car reviewers should counter the FUD by pretending to be confused by these, always using the most expensive one in price comparisons and then breaking the car completely by using the wrong one during their test drive, like the many propaganda pieces put out about EVs.
masklinn · 11h ago
A big difference is that if you go to a gas station you’ll have both (and possibly more). At least in Europe. So while you need to fill with the right fuel unless the pump is broken or the tanks are empty the fuel you need will be available.
In the US, if you roll up to a random charging station you may or may not find a plug matching your car’s port.
soneil · 10h ago
I think the common mistake they’re alluding to is Europe and north America having conflicting standards for colour-coding the pumps. So here green is unleaded and black is diesel, which can catch American tourists unaware. (Especially so with language barriers, “sans plomb” in French is not intuitively petrol/gas/benzo)
close04 · 10h ago
You can’t easily/accidentally fill a petrol car with diesel. The diesel nozzle is too wide. Other way around is easier. But this is the drawback of ancient standards grandfathered in over a century. EVs don’t have this legacy to carry around.
msh · 8h ago
In many countries charging a car in a wallplug is a fire hazard (they are not rated for the heat).
throwaway-blaze · 6h ago
This doesn't make sense. Wall plugs (like circuit breakers) are designed for a particular max amperage draw. If I have a 10A 120V circuit and wall plug, I can't charge my car at 8A?
I have wall ovens that connect via a 50A circuit. Do I need to worry about fire hazards when I bake something for hours and hours?
Volundr · 6h ago
Not an electrician, consult a real one for any actual electrical work or questions.
It's complicated. Heat builds up over time. So for example your standard 15 amp breaker on a 14 gauge wire in the US is rated for 15 amps of intermittent use, but if you draw that continuously without letting the heat dissipate it becomes a fire hazard. IIRC circuits are generally rated for ~80% of their max load for continuous use, so that 15 amp circuit is considered good for 12 continuous. Or in your 10 amp example 8 should be ok.
Your oven and circuit should be sized such that your long cooks aren't a concern, if you look at it's label you'll probably find it has a max draw of well below 50amps, but if you have actual doubts ask a professional.
Astronaut3315 · 3h ago
Also not an electrician.
A concern for high current outlets in the US, such as NEMA 14-50, is that they weren't necessarily designed for a large number of plug/unplug cycles. Typically you'd plug your stove in and leave it there for years to decades.
If you use the same 14-50 outlet for car charging, which is not uncommon, the contacts can lose their grip over time. End users may want to take their mobile EVSE with them and incur cycles on the outlet. Properly installed but worn 14-50s have been known to melt or even catch fire under these conditions.
End users should prefer to have their EVSE(s) hardwired or installed with a higher grade outlet like Hubbell or Bryant.
That still didn't explain anything. Surely the car could limit itself to 80% of standard socket rated output for continuous draw, like they do in other countries. Are Norwegian outlets commonly installed so far below spec that that will cause them to catch fire? What was the impetus for this regulation?
msh · 2h ago
I don’t know exactly for Norway as that was the best English article I could find. A standard danish outlet (they are crap) is 16A but is not rated for more than 6A if the load is continuous for more than 2 hours.
> And since your car needs so much power stored in its battery to drive, it will probably pull more power than any other electrical appliance in your home.
Probably? No, it pulls less than my dryer which runs at 240V15A I think but also just the same as my 1500W space heater. You can totally control how much power the charger should draw.
> With that much power, there’s a risk of overheating and fire. Unlike a dedicated EV charger, a socket is simply not equipped to handle the amount of electricity needed to charge a car battery.
Wrong assumption leads to wrong conclusion. Any charger you can physically plug in will work in a house that's wired up to standard.
msh · 2h ago
Your dryer will load the socket for far less time than a car charger and will probably not use 15A for the entire drying cycle.
It’s the long charge time that leads to heat buildup, not the max amp.
Where I am from standard outlets can deliver 16A but are not rated for more than 6A if the load is longer than 2 hours.
barbazoo · 1h ago
Here it's 15A and the charger itself actually tops out at 12A as is common. Perhaps that being common is how to avoid fires. I'm actually not sure now if that's a law or just best practice here.
usui · 12h ago
How can you write "I bought the cheapest EV" in the blog title, and have a section called "Why buy Leaf?" followed by a one-liner zinger aphorism "Price." without writing... the price you bought your used Nissan Leaf for? Someone might want to reference how much it cost back in 2025 a few years down the road.
geerlingguy · 11h ago
$17k minus an extra $2k added to my Camry's trade-in value, and it's eligible for the $4k used vehicle EV tax rebate at the end of the year. So out the door $15k with 36k miles and 94% doh battery, I was satisfied with the deal.
At the end of the tax year I'll have paid $11k for the car, effectively.
I tacked on the price of the CHAdeMO adapter mentally to the price I offered, since I knew I'd want it for the one or two regional road trips I take per year.
arbuge · 3h ago
Re: the tax credit, note the income requirements here:
I don't know anything about your situation, but I'm guessing quite a bit of the readers here on HN from the US won't qualify.
mtlynch · 3h ago
>The sale qualifies only if:
>You buy the vehicle from a dealer.
This is such an annoying part of the tax incentive.
It's a huge, pointless gift to car dealers (who need no help) because it means they don't have to compete for price with private sellers or buyers. If I have a used EV to sell, I basically have to sell to the dealer because no buyer wants to bother buying from me when they can get the same thing from a dealer with a $4k tax credit on top.
bradly · 3h ago
For another data point... I purchased a used 2011 Leaf for $5k a few years ago and still use it as my daily driver. It gets between ~50-70 miles per change and charges incredibly slow, but I'm been happy with it.
brightball · 3h ago
The deals on used electric vehicles are pretty shocking.
Used Chevy Volts are actually more expensive now than they were a few years back, at least on the CarMax website. Maybe a higher price because they were discontinued but I used to love my Volt. Averaged 150mpg over 3 years.
leesec · 3h ago
kind of nuts since a used tesla is within 5k of this
pbronez · 7h ago
BMW i3 are going for about the same.
lagniappe · 3h ago
and they're an absolute -nightmare- to maintain.... even with that being the case i still want one because russ hannaman had a point- everyone loves a car with doors that open like this \[]/ not like this =[]=
klardotsh · 3h ago
My 2017 i3 REX is just fine. It needs new tires before winter hits, an alignment (it gets knocked way out really easily, especially if you've ever taken it on a less than perfect road. Washington State has many such roads), and I should probably proactively do an oil change on the REX. Oh, and drivers seat heater has a short so doesn't work (the fix from BMW would be prohibitively expensive, but I may try a DIY re-wire).
Otherwise, this car is as close to a perfect daily driver I've ever owned. I hope it lasts forever: not a single touchscreen, no OTA updates, decent battery range (and DC Fast Charging at 60kW+), gas engine to fall back on (with OBD-II programming you can enable Hold State of Charge on the NA models allowing you to truly treat the i3 as a proper series-hybrid and not just an emergency limp-along range extender that will crap out going up a hill in the cold), comfy seats, and did I mention NO TOUCHSCREENS and NO OTA UPDATES?
thijson · 2h ago
I just took mine on a fairly long trip, around 370 miles. I used the hold charge feature once the battery reached 75%. It was fun to drive through a hilly region, the battery got me up the hill, then the engine plus regen charged it back up to the set point on the way down the hill. I liked that I didn't have to touch the brakes.
The fuel tank is quite small, but it doesn't take long to fill.
Overall fuel consumption was around 6-8 gallons for the trip.
sorenjan · 1h ago
The i3 has suicide doors, the i8 is the one with three comma doors.
dzhiurgis · 10h ago
Could've bought Model 3 for this and spend $300 for third party buttons. It has software thats actually somewhat hackable and car is far more capable. But I understand it's hard to recommend Tesla these days lol.
alchemist1e9 · 10h ago
Ignoring any PR or political motivations, I’d argue the Leaf is a better choice for many people. I’m biased as I have one, quite similar, but let me give a pros from my perspective:
- a traditional car feeling, knobs, buttons, the way cars have been for decades prior
- very very reliable. basically never needs anything except wiper fluid. no software updates or crashing. I don’t have stats but might be one of most reliable cars
- compact and easy to park
- compatible with comma.ai
- LeafSpy diagnostics to monitor it
- nice hatchback format with fold down rear seats
- ~220 mile range is plenty for around town use and trickle charge overnight
Overall I’m very happy with it and while constantly tempted by Teslas I think I wouldn’t like them as much.
geerlingguy · 8h ago
Also CarPlay, which was on my shortlist of features I actually cared for in any newer car. Silly of Tesla to not support it out of the box (IMO).
lotsofpulp · 2h ago
I thought not having Carplay was a dealbreaker, then I tried shopping other brands and they wanted $15 to $25 per month for remote start, so I went with Tesla. Plus Tesla had dash cam recording, which somehow no one else has yet? And of course, don’t have to deal with a stupid dealer with Tesla, just bought sitting on the couch at home.
Anyway, not having CarPlay has not been an issue. Although, it would have been nice to have.
dzhiurgis · 1h ago
I’m picking up mine today from repairs. Some kids crashed their ute into me and left me fake details (I found them anyway via OSINT). Since I have full video insurance waived excess and going after them.
dzhiurgis · 2h ago
CarPlay is trash tho. Had a rental again last weekend. It’s core feature - google maps wrapper - is just barely useable. Sure it does other things, but it’s not worth the hassle.
mbreese · 9h ago
After dealing with Tesla service, I’d also put having a large and varied dealer network with potential third party service locations as a plus for the Leaf. The word potential is doing a lot of work here - having competitive service options is still an EV issue, IMO. But Tesla service is expensive and difficult to navigate. Texting with a mechanic can work, but a quick 2 min conversation with a person would have saved me multiple headaches. Part of the cost issue may be the ways the cars are built vs the actual shop costs, but parts costs for repair are likely to be higher for a Tesla, even with volume. I suspect getting a Leaf serviced should be easier/cheaper.
dzhiurgis · 2h ago
Tesla parts are notoriously cheap and you aren’t forced to use Tesla service.
vannevar · 8h ago
Could also have bought a used Chevy Bolt in this price range, with CCS, ~250mi range, and CarPlay.
alchemist1e9 · 54m ago
For some reason when I charge at public chargers a very common vehicle next to me are those Chevy Bolts. If you’ve never compared them side by side you will be surprised, the Leaf is a MUCH nicer car, the Bolts just look way cheaper and lower quality vehicles.
I also don’t get this CCS drama, I have yet to come across an actual fast charger station that doesn’t have CHAdeMO in addition to the CCS connection. Maybe in my area of midwest all the charger stations were installed during the dual standard being the standard.
loloquwowndueo · 11h ago
You could jump into your local used car listing site and check for yourself.
In here a used 2022 leaf goes for about $20-22K CAD. 2016 models go as low as $8K - those had a range of about 120km when new.
dzhiurgis · 10h ago
In NZ you can get a Leaf for $1-2k, about 50km range remaining.
mrkstu · 3h ago
50k is equivalent to driving around with a low fuel warning constantly on your dash
klardotsh · 3h ago
I'm guessing distances in NZ are shorter, or you're only planning to use that vehicle in the urban city core. Here in the US, 50km range barely gets me to the ferry terminal to get into Seattle, and that's assuming 50km is at 55mph rural highway speeds and isn't assuming I'm driving 25mph in the city.
Put otherwise: if the battery is so degraded you only get 30mi/50km range out of it, I see why it's selling for $2000.
anotheryou · 12h ago
I skimmed for way to long to realize it's just not in there...
matthewaveryusa · 9h ago
I literally bought the cheapest EV:
400 dollars for a 2012 nissan leaf with 80% battery life and 80k miles (saved from being junked.)
MA taxes and delivery made it about 1k when it was all said and done. Insurance is 400/year.
We fit 3 kid seats in the back and have replaced all our metropolitan rides with the nissan. Ostensibly we are all < 6ft tall otherwise the 3 seats wouldn't work.
Our range is 60 miles in the summer, 50 in the winter. Because of how we use it a regular 15 amp plug works for us. Any long trip is taken with our 2018 honda HRV + Thule.
I've been monitoring the usage of our gas car and financially it makes more sense for us to rent a gas car for our trips rather than pay for the ownership + insurance of our car. The math on yearly ownership of the gas car is:
555 treasury yield when selling the car (15000 * 0.05 on a 30 less 30% taxes),
1200 insurance,
200 yearly maintenance (oil changes, amortized tires...),
375 excise tax,
40 inspection
That's about 2.2k/year or about 4 weeks of rental for an SUV. We're still holding on to the gas car for the impromptu apple picking/beach day/day trip that sets us over the 50 mile radius, but zipcar could fill that void
plopz · 1h ago
is your excise tax really 375? my 2014 honda civic is only $50
kjkjadksj · 1h ago
Registration is usually far higher with EVs because they aren’t paying into gas taxes that go towards road work.
declan_roberts · 3h ago
I drove a 2015 Nissan Leaf for almost 10 years before upgrading this year to a Model Y.
When it comes to charging network Tesla is SO MUCH BETTER. It's hard to describe how much of a wild west other charging networks are. You have to download this app or that app, add a credit card here, add one there. De-rated charging handles absolutely everywhere.
regnull · 3h ago
To be fair, non-Tesla networks are catching up. I moved from Tesla to BMW i4 (I had a quite significant disagreement with Elon when it comes to international politics), and I was worried about finding non-Tesla charges. I took a few long distance trips so far (US Northeast), and I had zero problems. Plus, if you are lucky, you get 2 year free charging from BMW, and they've enabled plug-and-charge recently. So, you just plugin, charge and drive away, mostly for free. Not bad.
tonymet · 2h ago
which networks/providers are good?
regnull · 1h ago
Electrify America is great.
tonymet · 2h ago
I wrote this exact comment above. It's just insane when I hear how 3rd party chargers work. And I personally check charger pricing while I'm out and about. at least 30% are broken among the ones I find.
Tesla and Apple understand that the charger elegance and design is more important than the strict engineering requirements.
NACS is theoretically a worse charger, but it's more approachable to consumers.
CCS1 is clumsy , heavy and makes the car look like it's attached to an umbilical cord.
That's why they had to dump it.
tonymet · 2h ago
aren't they all dumping it for NACS in North America?
vondur · 14m ago
The Leaf's used to be pretty bad as far as electric cars went, with no active battery cooling or heating. I was pretty tempted to get a used Bolt EV. I've seen them for sub 20k with less than 30k miles on them. I've been driving around in my wife's older Subaru Crosstrek plug in hybrid, which works fine for the limited amount of driving I do to commute to work. We plan to give that car to my son once he gets his license.
The second hand market for EVs is getting pretty interesting. There are lots of EV owners that are replacing their EVs every few years and because of all the growth over the last 10 years, there are now quite a few fairly nice EVs on the second hand market. Many are typically still under drive train warranty. For example, the model 3 has only been on the market for about eight years and it came with eight years of warranty on the drive train. So, most of the second hand ones would still be under warranty. And most of the EV market only started growing after that. So this is true for many second hand EVs.
And car batteries don't seem to spontaneously stop working right after the warranty expires either. So the risk is fairly low. They'll eventually degrade. But if you can pick up a car for a few thousand and then drive it for another 5-10 years, who cares? The fuel savings alone pay for the car after just a few years. Add the savings on maintenance and you are basically in the plus.
ACCount37 · 4h ago
Always check if that suspiciously cheap second hand EV you're buying had active battery cooling.
A lot of the crap like the early Nissan Leafs didn't. And between that and the first gen EV battery pack design being shit in general, the battery pack just cooks itself. Its capacity falls off a cliff over time. This is where a lot of those early concerns about EV battery packs being hideously expensive consumables was coming from.
If the battery pack is actively cooled, then, as a rule, it ages gracefully. If not? Oh boy.
t_tsonev · 3h ago
This is not a general rule and many non-cooled and air-cooled batteries can hold up pretty well. The battery cooling becomes a limiting factor for DC charging, especially if multiple charging sessions are required per trip.
The Leaf limited battery life is mainly to its battery chemistry (LMO), although it arguably doesn't go to great lengths to ensure thermal stability of the pack.
floxy · 1h ago
The Leaf has went through many battery changes through out the years. The Gen 2 (2018+ model years) were NMC (532?) and then there was a change again in 2023 (811?).
sillyfluke · 12h ago
Don't really follow the secondhand EV market, but it seems to me firsthand buyers are still taking on considerable risk due to the range situation. People who have bought them abroad are sometimes advised to keep the battery between 20%-80-90% full. Following this advice, one person I know told me if they drive like they did their old car they have to recharge after roughly 170 miles, which is super annoying for them if they're driving over 500 miles on a trip. They regret buying the car they bought. When and if there is a sudden jump in range innovation that reaches the entire market and not just flagship brands, I don't see how these cars driven now won't be dead weight or dirt cheap. It seems super risky to keep one of these cars more than a couple of years.
marcusb · 10h ago
I've driven an EV on 500 mile trips. Getting out and stretching your legs for 20-25 minutes once every three hours isn't "super annoying." If all I did was drive around all day, every day for 500 miles at a stretch, it might be, but not nearly as annoying as routinely driving for 500 miles.
For most people, the vast majority of their driving takes place well within the range of the typical BEV and range anxiety is a total non-issue. The fact is, even accounting for the occasional long trip, I spend less time at charging stations than I did at gas stations when I owned an ICE car, because the vast majority of the time, I just plug the car in at my house and let it do its thing.
sillyfluke · 10h ago
>Getting out and stretching your legs for 20-25 minutes once every three hours isn't "super annoying."
Nothing done by choice is annoying obviously. But a lot of people are fine with stretching their legs on a five minute bathroom break. Adding an extra an hour or hour half for unwanted stops due to forced recharging is what annoys them.
marcusb · 9h ago
> Nothing done by choice is annoying obviously.
Right, so that covers approximately 100% of EV owners.
nottorp · 10h ago
This is tiring. Not everyone lives in the suburbs with a plug at ground level and getting out and stretching your legs is great when you choose where you do it but not when you do it in the queue for charging...
marcusb · 9h ago
Maybe its tiring for you. What’s tiring for me is that in every single one of these threads, people bring up the most extreme, outlier situations (500 mile trips) as a cudgel against EVs.
shrubble · 3h ago
It’s not an outlier for a lot of people in the USA or the western part of Canada.
marcusb · 2h ago
Citation please. It takes over seven hours to drive 500 miles non-stop at 70mph. I’d love to see a credible source that documents “a lot” of people are routinely driving this far in their personal vehicles.
bryanlarsen · 2h ago
Lots of people regularly drive 500 miles. The question is, how many drive 500 miles without 15 to 30 minutes of stopping? That I suspect is the small number. Doing so is illegal for commercial drivers in many jurisdictions, for darn good reasons. It's downright dangerous.
marcusb · 1h ago
As I said before, “citation please.”
bryanlarsen · 1h ago
You know what's a lot stronger comeback than "citation please"? Doing your own Googling, and then posting the results with a "hah, you're wrong".
eptcyka · 1h ago
Without stopping.
mbreese · 7h ago
EVs (or having a car in general) aren’t for everyone. Or aren’t for everyone yet.
But you’re now talking about the lack of adequate charging infrastructure in an urban setting. That’s a different conversation. It’s a worthy conversation, but not all that related to making 500 mile road trips.
This summer I made two 500 mile trips (round trip each time) to drop off (and pick up) a kid at a summer camp. It was a week long camp, so I drove up and back on two weekends. I drove an electric car up the first time and a hybrid SUV up the second time.
It was fine to do in my electric car. I spent about 5 minutes making sure I had a good charging plan, which turned out to add about 10-15 extra miles to the trip. It wasn’t a problem to stop to charge, and I really wanted to stop to eat and stretch when I needed to charge, so everything worked out well timing wise. The trip in the hybrid was a little faster, but not by much. I still stopped the same number of times regardless of what car I drove.
Note: I would have happily had made the trip in my EV both times, but I had another person with me for the second trip. She hated the seats in my EV, so we took the car with more comfortable interior for the second trip. The trip in the hybrid was “nicer”, but that was because it was a more comfortable car in general, not because of the difference between an EV and hybrid.
msh · 8h ago
I have never been in a queue for charging in my 5 years of ev ownership. This includes 3 long roadtrips (Denmark to southern France so 1800 km to 2200 km each way) during summer vacations.
Rebelgecko · 22m ago
It's pretty common in California. Even though I was worried about charging on my first EV road trip, I've had an easier time in rural areas with lower EV ownership. Not as many Uber drivers using their freebie Electrify America charging.
masklinn · 11h ago
> People who have bought them abroad are sometimes advised to keep the battery between 20%-80-90% full.
You want to keep batteries roughly in that range to maximise their lifetime health. That doesn't mean the battery will explode if you do otherwise once in a while e.g. you charge limit the car to 80% for your daily drive and before a big trip you charge to 100%.
Route planners will generally keep you in that band anyway because charging speeds fall off a cliff as charge exceeds 80~90% (depending on the manufacturer's usable % standard), and it's rarely worth wasting 30mn charging to full to save 5~10mn extra at the next stop (the same occurs to a lower extent at very low states of charge, plus you want some spare, so the lower 10% are generally treated as a reserve).
guenthert · 8h ago
> You want to keep batteries roughly in that range to maximise their lifetime health.
Huh? The car isn't doing that for you? Prius hybrids sure are (the old ones using NiMH batteries tried to keep charge between 40% and 80%).
masklinn · 8h ago
A hybrid can do that by running the ICE (or not).
An EV can do that how exactly, refusing to run? Mugging the elderly for loose kWh?
asdff · 2h ago
No need to get sarcastic. My phone and laptop have this feature.
guenthert · 7h ago
Well, stopping the car at 40% (20% for Li-ion) capacity or alternatively at 0% with dead batteries, I know what I prefer (ideally there would be an option for emergencies, perhaps disabled in rental cars ;-} .
stavros · 10h ago
I keep the car at 20-80% when at home and driving around the city, I charge once a week. Before a trip, I let it charge to 100%, then charge to 80% on the trip (otherwise you waste time on the slow parts of the charge cycle).
It's really not a hassle at all. What's a hassle right now is finding a charger, as there aren't enough fast ones along the trip, but I've had the car for a year and have never needed to do a trip that long yet.
sillyfluke · 10h ago
Just to clarify, the hassle is needing mutiple recharges on a longish trip, not urban driving. The regret is due to unmet expectations based on advertised range as opposed to pratical range.
stavros · 10h ago
No, I know, I was just kind of detailing the general experience. Urban driving is entirely seamless (I exclusively charge at home), long trips are the only slightly inconvenient bit, but I ~never do those.
BobaFloutist · 6h ago
I mean the funny thing is that I've never driven or wanted a car with more than a 10-gallon tank, so my "ICE" (it's a Prius, so it actually does better than a full ICE car would) range is already <400 miles. Having to stop at a "gas station" for 30 minutes instead of 10 minutes every 4-6 hours really doesn't seem like that big of an ordeal, especially since I'm probably going to be stopping for meal breaks on that interval anyway. And if you just need a top-off to make the last 100 miles rather than a full charge, you can probably do it in 10-15 minutes anyway, right?
rogerrogerr · 2h ago
Less than 10-15 minutes in a decent car. Tesla charges at 200kW+ in the lower SoC ranges; that’s approaching 1000 mph.
elif · 10h ago
I did a 6500 mile ev road trip and battery capacity means next to nothing. All that matters is the charging curve between 3% and 60%. Literally all other variables disappear over a road trip.
sillyfluke · 10h ago
Nice tip. Are there lots of cars with shittier ranges but sota 3-60% charging curves? What is your acceptable target number for this metric?
ZeroGravitas · 7h ago
The P3 Charging Index attempts to quantify this, and also documents progress over the years as they've been publishing it for 6 years now:
> recharge after roughly 170 miles ... these cars won't be dead weight or dirt cheap
The average car journey is 8 miles. Being an average with a finite lower limit of 0 it is skewed higher by the people who for various reasons drive long distances.
You don't need a 1,000 mile range to get to the shops at the end of the street. It helps, but not that much.
spiffytech · 9h ago
The magnitude of person-to-person variation makes it tough to get signal out of averages.
I read a blogger say a 40-mile trip is exceptionally log for him, so why worry about EV range?
Meanwhile we put 160 miles on our EV yesterday doing ordinary errands that all got stacked on the same day. 100+ mile days happen a few times a month for us¹.
That 160 miles is 65% of our 0–100 range, or 108% of the 20–80 range. And we have a level 1 charger, so it'll take 26 hours in the driveway to recoup that charge.
¹ In my area a normal daily commute is 30–40 miles round-trip. Throw in some extra errands, or two people sharing a car, and you don't have to be an outlier to routinely have 100+ mile days.
jghn · 7h ago
I am not intending this as a backhanded way of suggesting your experience is invalid. I get that it's quite possible in some areas.
However, I think the point of the GP is that the number of people who say this is their typical experience is going to be larger than the number of people for whom it actually is their typical experience.
By that I mean: your story is quite common in discussions like this, both online and offline. Yet, if the mean distance is 8 miles, and we know it's going to be skewed high due to the 0 bound, it can't be all that common.
To be honest, I'd be curious to see the median here.
spiffytech · 7h ago
That's fair. FWIW my city lists the mean commute time as 23.6 minutes, p90 26.6. Travel in my area is dominated by freeway arteries, so 15-ish miles each way is a fair estimate for the mean.
A typical Bay Area commute (e.g. to SJ or San Mateo/Redwood City) is 40+ miles one way. A typical weekend drive (e.g. to Half Moon Bay or Sonoma) is a 100-mile roundtrip.
potato3732842 · 11h ago
You can screech about averages and means all you want but the fact of the matter is that if you're exceeding your vehicle's capabilities on a weekly or monthly basis the inconvenience of ownership goes up exponentially. I do 100mi/day but I all but need the ability to make that 200 on a weekly basis and am doing a 300 on a monthly basis. With charging at work and home those numbers become 50, 150 and 250 between charges. So a "nicer" electric car is doable in the summer for me but it still falls on its face when those longer trips involve substantial cargo.
So yeah, I'll keep driving rusted out minivans that make people clutch their pearls.
For people who just want a dedicated commuting vehicle used EVs with 80% battery are a pretty good option.
foobazgt · 1h ago
It sounds like you can't find a used minivan-like EV, with 250+mi range. A 2022 model y has 330mi range new (probably around 300mi now). You can get them for $23K after federal rebate. Seems like a good deal that would be "doable" for you.
CraigJPerry · 8h ago
Maybe you're just richer than the average person, that affluence buys you a lot of convenience that others can't access.
It's easy to forget the budget issues faced by many families when you're not facing that constantly yourself, but it's basically an existential consideration for a not insignificant proportion of the population.
You're circa $1700/year more expensive in fuel with your minivan[1] than with a comparably sized EV.
Your 5 hour / 300 mile journey takes around 30 mins more in the EV end to end (time spent stationary at a charger somewhere near the mid point of your route). Equiv of driving at 55mph average vs 60mph average over that time. I'd happily use the time to drink a flask of tea i brought with me and then go for a comfort break.
[1] assuming $4.80/gallon in a 25mpg minivan, vs an inefficient EV that only averages around 2mi/kwh at $0.30/kwh. Obv the 1700 excludes servicing, tyres and depreciation
What is that even supposed to be a rebuttal to? I didn't complain about the longevity of small EVs (they're generally quite good in that regard).
Not to pick on you personally but I think it speaks volumes about the type of people who make up HN community that I can come in here with a fairly narrow and niche critique of a product (inflexibility basically), hedge that comment with a "but it's still good for a lot of people" statement and a bunch of act like I'm dismissing the entire product category and then act like completely tangential things disprove that. It's like I've offended a religion.
noelwelsh · 5h ago
> You can screech about averages and means all you want
> So yeah, I'll keep driving rusted out minivans that make people clutch their pearls.
These antagonistic statements are unnecessary and the reason you are being downvoted.
thinkcontext · 10h ago
> I do 100mi/day
You are an extreme outlier, you should wait until the technology develops further. To use your parlance, no need to screech about people clutching their pearls at you.
ZeroGravitas · 8h ago
Counterintuitively, driving a lot of miles regularly on a daily basis is pretty much ideal for switching to EV as you maximise fuel savings (and minimise pollution if you care about that).
This has different impacts depending on your local gas to electricity price ratio.
It's his weekly and monthly longer trips that complicate matters but in many jurisdictions he'd still be saving enough to make it worthwhile.
gambiting · 11h ago
I mean, I don't disagree with you. But a lot of people have two cars if both adults work and have to drive to work - so it makes perfect sense for the second car to be electric. We have a little VW e-Up with "just" 120-150 miles of range and in day to day use we never get anywhere close to running out. In fact my wife uses it to commute every day and we charge it once a week from a regular plug at home. It saves considerable amount of money over a petrol Polo she had before, to a point where the car pays for itself(almost). But yeah, we also have another car(a PHEV Volvo) that we use for long trips.
formerly_proven · 11h ago
> When and if there is a sudden jump in range innovation that reaches the entire market and not just flagship brands
I've read/heard about this innovation coming to the market in six months every few weeks for about ten years and it has never materialized. There are continuous, slight and consistent improvements to battery technology which add up over time, but none of the wunderwaffe battery technologies ever materialized into the market and produced any huge jumps.
KaiserPro · 12h ago
Yeah that was basically my assesment.
I bought a second hand Zoe in the UK mainly because they are so common, which means parts should be still around for a while yet.
the leaf was an option, and I could have bought and upgraded the battery on an old one, but I think on balance the zoe was a better purchase for the same combined price. (for me, your mileage may vary)
In terms of practicality, for where I live (suburban, edge of a large city) it works perfectly well. We also fairly regularly do longer journeys, assuming its not getaway rush hour, charging is fine on motorways and crucially getting better
gambiting · 11h ago
We bought a VW e-Up here in the UK for the same reason - it shares all non-drivetrain parts with regular Ups so spare parts should be available forever and it's a very easy car to work on. Its easy 120-150 mile range is perfect for day to day use, I just charge it at home overnight. And I actually took it on a trip to the lake district few weeks back, no problem at all - 30 minute stop at a fast charger on the M6 both ways gave me way more juice than needed to get to my destinations. And it has an 8 year warranty on the battery, and VW lets me extend the main warranty for £200 a year, and a service is only due once ever 2 years and costs £90. What's not to like lol.
actionfromafar · 12h ago
Big Asterisk on the maintenance though.
blitzar · 12h ago
For £2,000 the maintenance plan is sending it to the scrap yard.
Gordon Gekko would buy it, break it into its constituent parts and sell them off for £5,000.
m463 · 2h ago
that's not cheap. Cheap is the older leafs, which go for $3k.
I bought a 2012 for $7500 in 2016 and drove it for several years.
1. chargers suck. there was evgo, blink, chargepoint. Most locations had 1 or most 2 DC fast chargers, but frequently they didn't work or were busy. Not reliable.
2. range was less that expected, even if you update expectations. It takes engineering to use the range you have, especially taking #1 into account. You don't want to get to a fast charger at 1% then find it doesn't work.
3. the battery health wasn't great, but because the battery capacity/range was less, the number of battery cycles was significantly more. I charged to a higher %, discharged low each day, and cycled daily.
4. the leaf was a perfect "around town" car. Not for trips.
Tesla has basically solved all of this and their cars are usable like a regular car*
* don't be pedantic, in 99% of situations/locations
SlowTao · 1h ago
Here in southern Australia we would endlessly see this one guy with his broken down leaf on the side of the road. If I recall it was one of the very first generation models and they did not handle our summers well at all. To be fair to Nissan a lot of their issues did get resolved in come generations but it was funny to see that, yeah, they didn't do too great on those first few rounds.
As to your Tesla *. I do endless tire of folks who are like "But what if you want to circle the planet!?! Check mate EV dorks!". For 99% of the time they are absolutely fine.
A friend of mine had one as a work car and drove the 940km (580 miles)from Melbourne to Sydney with only a single charge up of $20 half way through, got lunch at the same time. I mean yes if you really stretch it, you could do it on a single tank of fuel on a combustion engine but it would be a tight run. Also to the recharge time, that drive takes about 9 hours if you do not stop. I have never done it in less than 12 hours because you end up having a lot of down time on trips like that. There is plenty of time to charge if needed. Like you say, for the most part these are solved issues.
nebula8804 · 54m ago
The charging situation is a fast moving target. Massive expansions since 2016.
Meanwhile Tesla build quality is still mixed bag in 2025. The used ones suffer from previous lapses in QA which is a darn shame. These are cars that could be usable for years but because their mentality of pushing junk out to meet end of quarter numbers, many of these cars won't be able to fulfill their true potential. They are disposable junk even if they drive well.
nartho · 2h ago
A while ago I bought an older leaf because I had an expensive commute. Battery was ok when I bought it but it degraded very quickly. Doing my commute in winter with the heater and radio off going 10 under hoping to make it to my job where I could charge it was not fun.
I now own a corolla hybrid and I enjoy cheap commutes without the fear of running out of juice
thorncorona · 2h ago
+1 i was thinking of getting a bolt but it’s not a viable option if you like doing road trips.
either you get 2 cars or a fast charging ev. i chose the latter
Bairfhionn · 12h ago
My Problem was always the Range Anxiety.
Until I got an EV and realized it's not really an issue. There is always an App for that (and even on my car the software gets improved in that regard).
Infrastructure is getting better, even companies starting to see it as a benefit to have cheap/free chargers at their offices to get people back.
I see more and more electric trucks on the roads. It feels good.
PaulKeeble · 10h ago
I think until you have one you don't realise quite what having a range of 200+ miles means in practice. You don't actually drive for 500 miles without a break, that is 8-10 hours of constant motorway speed driving and its not safe to drive that long. So when you take 30 - 60 minutes for lunch on a long drive like that and charge the vehicle you are going another 200 miles before again really taking a break. As it stands the breaks will have to be a bit longer than you might like and it could add 30 minutes to your journey but that is about it for most people.
The other part that not a lot of people realise is if your journey is 300 miles and your car does 200 you don't charge another 200 miles into the battery, you charge 100 and then charge at the destination instead. With ICE vehicles if your going to get fuel typically you fuel it to the top but you don't do that with battery cars you want to charge them as little as possible while mid travelling and charge them while they are sat still at home or destination.
Its charging at home that really changes the experience too. The weekly trip to the fuel station disappears, depending on how often you exceed the range of the car you only really get exposed to the charging network and times when doing those journeys, you spend a lot less of your life in fuel stations!
hellisothers · 5h ago
I would add one thing my family has complained about wrt road trip charging is it’s not just the time you wait to charge, it’s the time and games/anger dealing with all the people in line waiting to charge.
asdff · 2h ago
And this is with marginal EV adoption. Imagine if it was full scale the headaches that would come. I mean think of the current amount of gas stations around, that would be insufficient to cover EV demand due to the fact EVs need to linger for so much longer. So good bye to whatever in your town needs to be destroyed in order to park more cars and charge them. So much for walkable cities.
MandieD · 2h ago
The big difference between public EV chargers and gas stations: you can put an EV charger anywhere you have electricity, and with far lower space requirements. My city is slowly converting a few street parking spots in busy areas to EV charging, and it takes very little room - I have no complaints as someone who mostly uses sidewalks and bike lanes. Where did you think people were parking their cars in cities before?
Parking garages are also getting EV chargers. My office garage just added a couple dozen, and I don't think it would be hard for them to convert more once the demand shows up.
And I've seen them starting to go in at the little rest stops on the Autobahn that up to now only had unattended toilets; they're being added to the big, nice rest stops with gas stations, too, of course.
ivanche · 51m ago
You forgot just one teeny tiny thingy - it's illegal to park ICE car on EV charging spot on the streets, in garages etc. So if the number of EVs grow the number of EV spots would grow which would take more space, not less.
loeg · 1h ago
Admittedly I don't use public chargers often, but I have yet to experience any kind of line.
laughing_man · 2h ago
I agree with you on the drive time. A buddy of mine has a Model X, and he occasionally will make the 400 mile drive to visit. He stops about halfway to stretch his legs and eat lunch, the same thing he did when he had an ICE powered SUV. The only difference is now the car is charging while he eats.
richwater · 3h ago
> that is 8-10 hours of constant motorway speed driving and its not safe to drive that long
[citation needed] considering plenty of people do it all the time (truck drivers)
BLKNSLVR · 27m ago
I think having to resort to citing such a niche as truck drivers kinda makes the opposite point fairly well.
Having said that, I've taken lots of road trips in my day and it would be a change up to how they're planned, and I would have some concern about placement / availability. But then that's why, when we bought an EV for the 99% of our family use case we didn't immediately scrap yard our previous cars, which seemed to be what some family members expected when we told them we were considering getting an electric car.
laughing_man · 2h ago
Aren't truck drivers required to take breaks by law?
somerandomqaguy · 1h ago
By Canadian law IIRC it's 30 minutes every 8 hours or so. However it can still be split up to 2x 15 minute breaks, and it's only a break from driving; loading/unloading, inspections, hooking up or unhook, paperwork, etc is counted as as taking a break.
The lower provinces allow up to 13 hours per day of driving and a total 14 hours per day on duty time before you're required to take a 10 hour rest in a single 24 hour period. The northern territories I believe legally allow up to 15 hours driving per day.
That's just what I've read so take it for what it's worth.
fusslo · 9h ago
is there a term like 'charge anxiety'?
I was debating an electric vehicle in 2023. There are maybe 10 people (out of about 200) at work that have electric cars. My teammate is one of the ten. He wakes up early to get a charger. He tracks down the other owners to ask them to use the charger after lunch. They started a group chat about the chargers.
My local grocery store has a bank of superchargers right in the middle of the parkinglot next to the main road. Some days the bank is full and teslas hang out waiting, but they have to wait half in the road to make sure they're close enough to be next in line.
My apartment complex has 2 chargers, and we get people coming in who don't live in the complex to use them. People wait next to the strangers to be sure to get the charger before walking home for the night.
This kind of social interaction and situations gives me huge anxiety.
I get gas once a week, dont wait in line, always works, don't talk to anyone, and I'm gone in less than 5 minutes.
decimalenough · 9h ago
EV charging is hassle-free if and only if you have a home charger, which typically means you have to own a house as well.
Workplace charging gets extra competitive because it's often free, meaning all sorts of bad behavior is incentivized. It's weird how wound up people with $50,000 cars can get about $5 in free electricity.
jgilias · 9h ago
I only got an EV after getting a house for this exact reason. I really like EVs, but I wouldn’t buy one, if I don’t have a convenient place for routine charging.
An apartment complex being built next door offers you to buy a parking lot together with the apartment, and optionally equip it with an EV charger. This is the way.
ruperthair · 9h ago
I have the same issue with a lack of charging at home, and totally identify with what you say here. The lack of an organised queue (could be in the provider's app, rather than a physical one) at oversubscribed charging stations is the worst thing about EV driving for me.
joeyh · 8h ago
I have driven 20 thousand EV miles in the past year, with 50% of my charging being at public chargers (and 50% at home). I have never needed to wait in line, and have never needed to interact with anyone regarding charging.
No comments yet
dreamcompiler · 7h ago
EVs make less sense for people who don't have a dedicated home or work charger. But if you're lucky enough to have one, EVs make a great deal of sense.
Xenoamorphous · 13h ago
* Limiting the number of QCs (Quick Charges / DC Fast Charge), as this heats up the uncooled Leaf battery, degrading it slightly each time, especially on hotter days
* Keeping the charge between 50-80% when manageable
* Charging up to 100% at least once a month, and letting it 'top off' to rebalance the pack for at least a few hours afterwards
* Not driving like a maniac, despite having more torque in this car than I've ever had in any of my previous cars
This kind of thing (minus the driving like a maniac bit) is what puts me off EVs. I guess it's unavoidable? My experience with laptop and phone batteries (holding much less charge pretty quickly) doesn't help. My phone (iPhone 12) says battery health is at 81% but it doesn't feel like it so I'm not sure I'd trust that Leaf saying it's got 93%.
guepe · 13h ago
This is completely avoided and not my experience.
This is only because the leaf is not actively cooled.
Most ev do not suffer from such difficult management of battery and have a computer dedicated to cool / heat and keep battery in healthy temps.
They do degrade over time but very, very slowly. Absolutely not like phones.
Mine has 25k miles and zero degradation yet.
formerly_proven · 11h ago
Even then the Leaf stands out with seemingly unusually high battery degradation compared to the uncooled battery competitors from 2014.
dzhiurgis · 10h ago
Not a battery expert, but I did recently look at using old leaf battery cells to build home battery. Their modules are 2s2p which make them impossible to balance.
gambiting · 11h ago
A VW e-Up(and its siblings, Skoda Citigo EV and Seat Mii Electric) all have passively cooled batteries but owners don't report much if any battery degradation even on the first gen models which are over 10 years old now. I can only assume it's the battery chemistry or cell composition compared to the Leaf. Our own is 4 years old and I haven't noticed any range loss compared to when it was new.
arpinum · 10h ago
Could be due to American climate and Leafs getting sold heavily in America. Jeff lives in a place hotter and sunnier than Málaga. Cars can roast in their huge unshaded parking lots with black tarmac.
dzhiurgis · 10h ago
> Mine has 25k miles and zero degradation yet.
Let me guess - Hyundai? They are notoriously lying about degradation.
guepe · 10h ago
Rivian
I think it’s eating the extra buffer but that also means that the worse degradation that happens in first year is « free ».
Then stats are a few percents per 100k miles….
There are articles about stats on long term degradation - it’s a non issue. Buy used if you can in USA - people perceive them as degraded so price is cheap but they don’t degrade fast
carstenhag · 12h ago
This is, as the title mentions, the cheapest EV. It's really old. It did not have tech that pretty much all EVs have nowadays.
Nowadays you don't have to do this. You can. Just like with your phone or laptop.
nicce · 12h ago
> It's really old.
Funny, how 2 years old car is really old. For combustion engines, old is like 15+?
EVs will have the same problems as mobile phones. Maybe manufactures want that. But software will define the age of your car and I don’t like it. What if the car requires internet connection and the company dies?
rsynnott · 12h ago
For practical purposes it is a 15 year old design; it had a minor update 8 years ago, but was not brought up to date with the norms of the time (in particular, the passively cooled battery).
This was the very first mass-market electric car, with only minor tweaks. It's not surprising that it's a bit rough around the edges. That's part of why they're cheap second-hand (along with the fact that the 3rd gen, which actually is a proper redesign, is coming out this year).
nicce · 10h ago
I don't think that we can use the general "old" here. The statement should have been more explicit and include the design of the battery.
If the model gets even minor updates, manufacturing is happening right now, the car is either good enough or new enough in general, and we cannot use old as negative quality.
Electric motors existed before the combustion engine, and people keep talking about "rapidly evolving area", while the only thing that is rapidly evolving and specific to EVs is the power source. A battery, to be precise. It is all about battery, and nothing else.
rsynnott · 9h ago
The problems with this car are all around the battery pack (though honestly these problems are a little exaggerated). The battery pack is, for practical purposes, a 15 year old design. This car is no longer made. When it was being made, it was the only electric car you could buy with such an old battery pack design.
Buying a 2nd-gen Leaf in 2025 would be a bit silly, unless you were getting a major discount.
illegalsmile · 7h ago
I have a 2025 2nd gen on lease because the deals in Colorado were insane and the previous cost of my gas basically pays for the lease + insurance + electricity. That said, unless they give me a killer deal with a major discount at the end of the lease it's going back to the dealer. I love the car and it's been perfect for around town and the region but with 70% of the lease left they want $18000 for buy out. For that price you're well within a nice used EV with active thermal management, modern charge connectors not requiring an expensive adapter, etc...
There's probably going to be a surplus of off-lease Leafs coming up over the next one to three years which might make a great deal for people who can charge at home.
floxy · 1h ago
I got 42% off of the MSRP when buying a new 2025 SV+.
numpad0 · 12h ago
ZE1 Leaf(2017) was electronically a big minor update over ZE0(2010). IIRC so much so that ZE1 battery packs almost work on ZE0 body with only minor hack efforts.
So they're basically 15 years old, technologically older than the Model S. Windows 7 was 1 year old when its basic systems shipped.
Tade0 · 12h ago
To add to what others said: back in 2017 40kWh was the standard, now people scoff at 55kWh. Cars also charge faster, which greatly increases their highway driving potential.
> What if the car requires internet connection and the company dies?
That's not a problem specific to EVs and with Chinese combustion car brands coming and going all the time, it's obvious.
padjo · 12h ago
First generation Leaf was launched in 2010 second gen in 2017. That’s quite an old design for any tech that’s still advancing.
tpm · 12h ago
It's a 2 years old car, but the model and technology (2nd generation Nissan Leaf) is from 2017, so it's 8 years old in a rapidly evolving field.
numpad0 · 12h ago
Those were comporomises Nissan made in 2010s to build an EV that will be under $30k new in 2025. Not all of it are fundamental limitations of Li-ion BEV technology.
Tangential trivia: BYD Dolphin Baseline is 20k new before subsidies in some places.
kbos87 · 12h ago
I don't think about any of this and never have. My 2022 Model Y has 60,000 miles on it and the battery has only lost a negligible amount of health/range since I bought it.
jimnotgym · 6h ago
What was the purchase cost difference between a Model Y and a Leaf in 2022?
rsynnott · 12h ago
A lot of this is either over-caution, or related to the Leaf's specific quirks (though it's not uncooled, it's passively cooled by airflow).
fifilura · 12h ago
My understanding is that 2 & 3 are problems with the original (20kWh) Leaf model. Which possibly led to a rumour about the 40kWh models, that the OP has.
My Leaf from 2019 has 100% battery health and I always charge it to 100%. I almost never use fast charging though since it is a commute kind of car.
geerlingguy · 11h ago
Is that the health reported by the car dashboard, or by LeafSpy? The dash has some wiggle room in its 1-10 display an IIRC it will display 100% until the SoH is below like 90%...
floxy · 1h ago
Obviously they are reporting the dashboard number. The first bar drops at 85%. For a 2019, it is probably getting close to dropping its first dashboard bar.
KaiserPro · 11h ago
All of those problems are solved in non-leaf cars.
The leaf is a terrible steward if its battery. virtually every other car is better in virtually every single way.
sevenseacat · 12h ago
I just checked my phone (an iPhone 11) and it says 72%. There is absolutely no way the capacity is anywhere near 72% anymore lol
ruperthair · 9h ago
The performance/battery life of a phone can be seriously affected by the software (each new iOS being built for newer CPUs), whereas this is less of a factor for cars.
mschuster91 · 12h ago
Limiting QC events is easy enough. A daily commuter vehicle can easily trickle charge over night, and even the measly 40 kWh old used Leaf can get you 200km a charge - assuming an average commute of 20 km for Germany, that's a whole work week worth of battery life. The only time you as an average person actually "need" QC is for the yearly vacation road trip, but as the author writes, renting an ICE or chungus electric vehicle for that occasion is way more cost effective. Admitted: if you don't have access to trickle charge at either the workplace or your home, the situation looks different.
As for the battery health rating, it's easy enough to measure. Go on the highway, keep it at 80 km/h straight and note how much range you get out of it. In practical commute settings, range will be longer than that anyway due to regenerative braking in all that start-stop-start-stop dance.
theshrike79 · 12h ago
This is the thing that ICE people need to internalise.
You THINK you're driving long distances every day and you THINK charging is a massive hassle where you have to drive to a Charging Site and wait for the car to charge for HOURS.
When in reality you plug in at home and have a full battery every morning.
And when the infrastructure is properly built (yay Finland), you can get a week's charge when you're getting groceries as the shop has multiple 100kW chargers along with a fleet of Level 2 (22kW) chargers.
The only times I need to actively think about charging are over 200-250km day trips (my old Ioniq EV has a WLTP of 300km on a warm summer day). And even then the kids an dogs need a bathroom break anyway and I need to walk around a bit to freshen up. 20-30 minutes gets us 100-150km of charge (old car, slow charging) and we're off again.
jimnotgym · 6h ago
I had a leaf on demonstration for 24 hours. I was impressed with it. I drove the 50 miles to work and back, and put it on slow charge knowing I had 16 hours until I needed it. No problem. When I came to drive it in the morning it hadn't charged. It was actually a problem with the plug in the garage, it must have gone off a few minutes after I plugged it in. Now what? Wait 16 more hours?
A couple of weeks later I went on holiday. I wouldn't be able to charge where I was stopping, and there were no chargers within 15 miles. I kept my diesel.
mschuster91 · 4h ago
> It was actually a problem with the plug in the garage, it must have gone off a few minutes after I plugged it in. Now what? Wait 16 more hours?
So what, that's something you find out once that your electric installation is shoddy enough to most likely be a fire risk (because the charger plug has a thermal protection built in!), fix it and then you won't have that problem again. And as the Leaf should have 150 miles worth of range, you still should have way more than enough range on the battery to do two days worth of commute even if you suddenly find out the trickle charge didn't work.
jimnotgym · 2h ago
50 miles each way...150 miles range turned into 10 miles left. So no.
ponector · 9h ago
>> When in reality you plug in at home and have a full battery every morning
Right, but I should buy a house with a garage first.
>> charge when you're getting groceries as the shop has multiple 100kW
Unless you do groceries in unusual time, those chargers are occupied. Will you wait in line then?
theshrike79 · 4h ago
You just need an outlet that is close to the car, but it’s mostly an American issue.
We get 230V/16A from a bog standard outlet, three phase is triple that.
stanski · 8h ago
I thought about this too - own a small electric vehicle for 90% of the family needs and rent a bigger SUV when the need arises.
Until you do the math and realize that the 3-4 annual trips of multiple days would end up costing thousands of dollars in rental fees per year.
Plus the usual inconveniences around renting.
Suddenly the math does not look so appealing.
theyinwhy · 4h ago
No idea what numbers you are crunching. I am doing this for 10 years now and able to afford luxurious cars for holidays because of it.
mschuster91 · 4h ago
> Until you do the math and realize that the 3-4 annual trips of multiple days would end up costing thousands of dollars in rental fees per year.
First, 3-4 annual multi-day trips that go for longer than 300 km? If one has that amount of disposable income to afford that, go for whatever the biggest Tesla is and use Superchargers along the route, even drives so long they're a safety issue on its own due to fatigue don't get that much longer due to charging because kids will need to go to the toilet every so often even with an ICE.
As for the rental fees: here in Germany, I just checked - a Mercedes Benz Vito, so up to 8 people (or 6 people plus a ton of luggage), that's 50€ a day here. Crossing four digits takes 20 days of rental, that's a lot of vacation time even by European standards.
bluGill · 11h ago
Renting a car for vacations / road trips is expensive. sure you can but expect to pay $100 per day. Also expect to arrive and be told they can't fill your reservation as they are out of cars.
kjkjadksj · 1h ago
Seems expensive but in the grand scheme of a road trip that is only like a 33% increase in price when you factor in a motel room for $100 a night, maybe $100 spend on gas a day filling up twice, $100 on three meals coffee and snacks for one. Give or take of course.
That is probably why the american road trip is a dying animal. Past a days drive you are coming way behind just flying straight there.
mschuster91 · 10h ago
> Renting a car for vacations / road trips is expensive. sure you can but expect to pay $100 per day.
Indeed... but now, think of the price difference between a small-ish commute EV and a chungus EV or ICE. Easily tens of thousands of dollars, that's a lot of days worth of rent.
> Also expect to arrive and be told they can't fill your reservation as they are out of cars.
That's extremely fucking rare to happen. In the eventuality your reservation can't be filled, you'll usually get upgraded for free. Personally, got upgraded from a small VW Golf class to a VW Phaeton once, plus a day for free. And automatic, no stick shift like the Golf.
bluGill · 9h ago
Over the life of a car tens of thousands of dollars isn't that hard to build up though if the car cannot do anything. And there is value in having the vehicle that does what you need when the inspiration strikes.
Not having any rental cars is very common in my experience. I'm often renting in smaller cities though (like the rental car place just a couple miles from my house), I've never heard of problems in big tourist destinations or large cities.
FirmwareBurner · 13h ago
If you think this is what puts you off EVs, then you haven't read the horror stories from EV Clinic.
TL;DR is many EVs and hybrids (especially European ones) have tonnes of design faults with e-motors and power-electronics that not only make them ticking time bombs(not in the explosive sense) out of warranty, but also have malicious DRM making third party parts impossible to source, and repairs difficult and eye watering expensive even if theoretically EVs should be more reliable on paper than ICE cars.
Maybe the EU should focus more on EV/auto repairability regulations instead of smartphones and USB-C widgets.
Luckily EV Clinic is working hard on breaking the DRM and reverse engineering parts to make and sell aftermarket ones, but this shouldn't be needed in the first place if the OEMs weren't so bad at design, greedy and hostile to consumers and aftermarket repairs.
Seriously, we need regulations here ASAP. The free market doesn't work here for the consumer when OEMs all do the same anti consumer things.
mort96 · 12h ago
The DRM thing unfortunately has nothing to do with EVs and everything to do with the computerization of cars. All cars have gotten more and more computerized and harder to repair with more DRM. EVs arguably fundamentally require heavy computerization more than ICE cars, but you're not gonna avoid it in a brand new diesel car either.
jimnotgym · 6h ago
That is why I keep fixing up my old Diesels. No DPF, basic EGR, basic computer, no worries.
FirmwareBurner · 12h ago
That's why I said repair regulations are needed for all cars not just EVs.
arpinum · 10h ago
The EU did put in regulations, but they did the opposite and essentially mandated DRM. They want to prevent owners from turning off nanny devices or overriding pollution controls.
FirmwareBurner · 9h ago
Can you share what car repairability regulations did the EU put into place? Because following the posts of EV Clinic it seems like the opposite.
mort96 · 8h ago
I don't think there's disagreement here:
> The EU did put in regulations, but they did the opposite and essentially mandated DRM
is the same statement as:
> following the posts of EV Clinic it seems like [the EU did] the opposite
Where both posts use "the opposite" to mean "the opposite of creating in regulations to enforce repairability" .
theshrike79 · 11h ago
Hybrids are a different breed, they're very very bad. Don't ever buy one out of warranty and be REALLY sure what the warranty covers.
FYI: Mercedes Benz hybrids have a full(*) battery warranty. What's the asterisk you ask? The warranty only covers repairs up to the car's current value. Which has plummeted over the few years you've owned it and the cost of the battery is absolutely ridiculous. Like "buy 3 used Leafs" ridiculous.
Most hybrid batteries are also blobs of molten plastic and silicone that can't be repaired at all. EV batteries are constructed of semi-standard cells and can be opened and repaired piecemeal by specialist shops. Official repairs usually just swap the whole thing - again for a massive cost.
jacquesm · 12h ago
> Maybe the EU should focus more on EV/auto repairability regulations instead of smartphones and USB-C widgets.
Maybe they should do both.
jampa · 3h ago
> And charging stations are run by multiple vendors with multiple apps and payment methods.
I rented a PHEV in Spain, and this was the biggest issue. Every charger has an app. They want all your information, even your home address, before charging. Most of them error out after you try to make it work in the 44 °C / 110 °F Spanish sun.
After trying five charging apps and only succeeding in one, I gave up charging completely because of the horrible experience. I wonder why EVs don't save credit information in the vehicle and negotiate payment with them via some sort of "Cable API" or something. Or even you know, use tap to pay PoS like every normal transaction does.
duskwuff · 3h ago
"Plug and charge" is a thing, and is supported by some vehicles and charging stations. Unfortunately, it's not universal (yet), but the standards are there.
cheema33 · 3h ago
This is my experience as well with regular EV chargers. Tesla chargers on the other hand work seamlessly and reliably. You walk up, you plug it in and it works. No fuss.
syntaxing · 36m ago
I want one just as a “house battery backup” and beater car. Something along the lines of 800W ecoflow inverter in the leaf to delta pro to house. But I don’t fully know how the air cooled aspect of the leaf would impact this idea.
dreamcompiler · 8h ago
> I want an EV that looks like a Camry. Just blend in and don't stand out.
Drag coefficient matters a lot for EVs. Air resistance reduces the range of all cars, but you notice the decrease in an EV. (When I plan a long trip, I use windy.com to see if I'll have a headwind or a tailwind and I plan accordingly.)
That's why EVs look different. And why EV trucks often have terrible range, even though they have more room for batteries.
loeg · 1h ago
The coefficient isn't what matters; it's CdA (coefficient of drag times frontal area). (And what it matters for is efficiency at highway speeds.) Like, my Kia EV9 has a Cd of 0.28, but the frontal area of a schoolbus. My mi/kWh at highway speeds is much worse than what an electrified Camry with a 0.36 Cd would get.
Something the size of a Camry would be totally fine as an EV. Lucid Air is approximately this shape and is a great EV.
(And at lower speeds, drivetrain and tire friction become bigger factors.)
ForOldHack · 7h ago
Agree. Drag coefficient is significant as well as waxing. I think almost almost a clear third was due to waxing. And it really is not that hard to do once a week.
kccqzy · 13h ago
> they shouldn't do 16 on a 15A circuit but it seems like some do
There are 20A 120V circuits too! Called NEMA 5-20, one of its prongs is rotated. You plug that into a receptacle where one of the slots is T-shaped instead of straight. And it's standard practice for EVs to draw 80% of the maximum current, so 16A it is. I see this plug in larger machines in the office, like a large photocopier or a large vacuum.
dreamcompiler · 7h ago
I wish I could buy an electric kettle in the US that took advantage of the 20A outlets I have all over my house. Sigh.
kccqzy · 3h ago
You'd be better off buying a British kettle and using that on a 6-15 socket, if your goal is to boil water quicker.
dreamcompiler · 2h ago
I'd do that if I had two convenient hots for 240v going into my kitchen, but I don't. What I do have is a 20A 120v circuit.
fragmede · 2h ago
Get a Japanese water boiler. They keep the water at boiling in a reservoir, so it's already hot when you want it, no waiting.
seanmcdirmid · 1h ago
Chinese offer this also. My wife just got one a few months ago, I think these are new things.
220V has a real advantage in boiling water fast in traditional kettles though (I used to live in china and they were twice as fast as the ones in America). It is almost worth getting a 220V outlet in a kitchen just to support fast water kettles.
bryanlarsen · 1h ago
There are an insignificant number of kitchens with unused 220V outlets. 220V was wired in in case the owner wanted to install an electric stove, but a gas stove was installed instead. The problem is that it's in an inconvenient location and running a 220V/30A extension cord beside a stove is a really bad idea.
fragmede · 1h ago
Japanese water boilers have been around for decades by this point. As far as 220 V being faster, absolutely, but a Zojirushi is like $150 and an electrician far more.
bluGill · 11h ago
Legaly kitchen and garrages need 20 amp circuits but they allow nema 5-15 outlets there.
geerlingguy · 11h ago
Most older homes (like mine) only had 5-15, so over time I've added a couple 20A circuits with the horizontal blade outlets.
sgt101 · 13h ago
EV's look like EV's because they don't have the same constraints on space that ICEV's do. There is no engine in the front/back, no water pump, no oil pump, no water cooled radiator, no starter motor... so on so on. There's also a great big battery under the floor pan and no gas tank.
They are also heavier, so need different set ups in order to handle decently.
But, that's why they look so different.
HPsquared · 13h ago
They tend to handle better than ICE cars due to the low centre of mass (also the fact the big mass - the battery - is firmly bolted to the frame and not wobbling around on rubber mounts like an engine does). These are both big advantages in terms of dynamics. Couple that with the much faster powertrain response and many options to do torque vectoring to each wheel (individual motors on sports models) and it's an easy win for EVs. Then we get to the potential for fan-assisted downforce (e.g. McMurtry Spéirling) and it's even more blatant. ICEs are still better at endurance, though.
jonfw · 3h ago
People way overstate the "dynamics" advantages of EVs
Yes EVs can keep their weight low, but it's a lot more weight to deal with.
Yes EVs have excellent 0-60, but that's just because they have a great launch. Even doing a 5-60 pull removes the EV advantage. Starting from highway speeds? EVs start to look real slow.
There are some good traits to EVs but, outside of launching hard in street car trim, performance is not one of them.
HPsquared · 1h ago
I find highway acceleration is their main strength actually. Going from "just cruising" to max acceleration is basically instant, unlike a gearbox having to go down 2-3 gears (depending on how hard you press the pedal) and hope it chose the right gear, or manually downshifting (block shifts work with a proper manual gearbox but that's a pain the rest of the time; going down 3 gears sequentially on an automatic is usually not a good time).
asdff · 2h ago
That 0-10mph response is way too twitchy in most EVs i've ridden. The old teslas were not like this. I'm not sure what package my friends model 3 is or if it comes down to his lead foot but I feel nauseous in that car. Its a combination of that instant torque and the suspension sort of feeling like one of those play horses on a spring you see in playgrounds.
sgt101 · 2h ago
There's something wrong with your friend's model 3. If I stand on my accelerator it goes straight (if set straight) and the suspension (set on sport) is hard.
It's not M5 BMW hard, but it's hard. I guess that if you have a performance variant then maybe it would be.
squigz · 12h ago
Now I want street versions of the Speirling.
clysm · 9h ago
No. It’s 100% a design choice by the manufacturer to make them look weird.
Even with the benefits of EV packaging, manufacturers chose to make them “different” on purpose, which really put off the vast majority of buyers. Tesla had so much success because they were practically the first manufacturer to make something look somewhat normal and have good stats.
Now, BMW finally learned and has their 4 and 5 series EV cars share a common platform with the ICE. There is no physical difference in style other than the front grill.
ZeroGravitas · 12h ago
This is just what the contemporary Nissan ICE cars looked like.
The first gen leaf got a lot of commentary about this "EV look" and the contemporary Nissan Note had a similar front end. And then both got 2nd gens that evolved similarly.
Their Juke could be an overinflated Leaf at a glance etc.
The only difference between EV and ICE is less holes in front as they need less air for cooling the radiator. All other things looks similar. How car looks is a design choice not related to the type of engine.
bzzzt · 12h ago
That wouldn't explain the unorthodox color schemes lots of smaller EVs like the i3 have. It really seems they are made uglier 'on purpose'.
Also, a Tesla model S or 3 looks like a normal car so it's not other brands can't do that.
rsynnott · 11h ago
VW's first-gen EVs, the eGolf and later eUp, looked basically just like the Golf and Up. This lead people to believe that VW did not make electric cars (a lot of people thought the ID.3/4 were their first). The market _wants_ electric cars to be a bit weird-looking.
VBprogrammer · 12h ago
I think the Tesla looking like a normal car is because their design language hasn't changed in forever.
I've found myself taking a second look at a bunch of ICE cars recently as they've all started trying to copy elements from electric car design...
bluGill · 11h ago
They still have similar constrains - crumple zones for crash protection mean they will never make a 'flat front' again. aerodynamics is also a factor and again places limits on design.
prmoustache · 12h ago
> and I found myself with a very short commute, only driving a few miles a day, and a family minivan we use for nearly all the 'driving around the kids' stuff.
>
> So I wanted a smaller car (get back a foot or so of garage space...) that was also more efficient.
All this to say what he really needs was an electrically assisted bicycle instead of a huge and heavy energy wasting vehicle.
zubiaur · 3m ago
Some cities have seasons. Some cities lack bike infra. Some people don't like bikes.
geerlingguy · 11h ago
Bike would be amazing if the city I live in weren't a death trap for bikes. I had considered it but I do need a way to get 10-20 miles for things like kids' events or to pick up things from stores for my YT work, at least once or twice a week.
prmoustache · 5h ago
I've transported large stuff with my bike mind you, including furnitures and a small tree (in a trailer) and 20 miles is smaller than my longest commute on my bicycle which was 24miles each way.
And that was without electric assist. When I look at the low average speed and time spent in car when I use one in an urban area, it just doesn't make any sense in most cities.
But the safety issue is another story though. Every time I relocated I took that parameter into account before choosing a new place.
nkingsy · 3h ago
I briefly owned a gen 1 leaf. It went from 70 miles of “range” (more like 25) at 100% to 50 in a couple of years of very light driving. Poor guy who bought it from me had all kinds of trouble trying to get it home.
asdff · 2h ago
Ebike would be nicer at that point. Battery takes far less time to charge over 110v. You can simply hot swap a charged battery. No insurance or registration requirements. Far lower base cost. Far lower maintenance costs. About the same range. Probably similar cargo volume compared to a cargo ebike. Just need a rain coat and rain pants and you are probably set for most conditions. Call an uber when you actually need to transport 4 people and you'd come out well ahead.
The big secret with bike commuting is that in urban setting on surface streets, its actually the fastest way to get around short of a motorcycle or helicopter. Yes, much faster than cars, thanks to lane splitting.
BizarroLand · 1h ago
I have an ebike, it's very nice, and I live ~9 miles from my job, so it's well within range.
But I would not want to be caught in the ever changing weather here on an ebike. Maybe if it had a shell to protect the rider, but then we're getting into it being too pricey for an ebike range.
jhallenworld · 2h ago
So here's the thing that's coming for EVs, and I finally started to see it for the Leaf: driveway DIY battery replacement:
Yes, this involves lying on your back with a 700 lb battery held up by jacks just inches above your head. But heck, services are expensive these days so it's going to happen.
foobarian · 1h ago
This makes me wonder, if you can replace one, can't you add one on top of the old one? Or two or three? There goes the range anxiety
Okkef · 12h ago
Nice, we did the same recently.
The choice was
2016 100k km Golf Plus for 16k eur
2020 50k km e-Golf for 13k eur
I'm so glad we picked the e-golf! It's so fast and nice to drive and cheap to run. Only downside is the limited range (200km on a summer day) but even my commute (100km one-way) is OK as I can charge at work and home.
That said, we still have a Touran for when we need to drive further or with lots of luggage.
If only the chairs in the eGolf were a bit better...
ahartmetz · 12h ago
Bad seats in a VW? Yeah, I guess they really saved too much on the interior in that generation.
haunter · 11h ago
If that were me then for that much money I'd just buy a used Tesla Model 3
seszett · 3h ago
For many people in Europe, Tesla is just out of question now.
Okkef · 10h ago
A used tesla model 3 in the Netherlands is upwards of 20k euro, so quite a different price bracket.
haunter · 6h ago
I see them for 14-15k€ on mobile.de, even as low as 12k€
sandos · 7h ago
Also, guessing here, the insurance is quite a bit higher.
The 400+hp Teslas are super-expensive to insure here in Sweden. Like 3x the price of only slightly cheaper, but less powerful EVs.
doawoo · 2h ago
I ended up grabbing an Ioniq fully electric 2019 and i absolutely love it. Got it for a decent used cost, interior wise it was like new, no huge touch screen, but a decent one for CarPlay and Android Auto, real knobs and buttons, and the online portion is entirely obsolete since it used 3G so it has no connection to the internet! It’s perfect for me
tonymet · 2h ago
My neighbor has an Ioniq 5, styling-wise it's cooler than my Tesla. Reminds me of Corrado -- one of my favorite cars. But we have had night and day experiences with charging our EVs.
The supercharger network seems effortless & flawless -- almost too good. No payments, planning. The stations are clean, quiet & secluded. Just follow the Nav and charge.
The third-party network has been a disaster for my neighbor. He's had to back track many times, even on ~ 2 hr trips. The chargers are broken, causing him to double-back even more. On a recent trip the only working charger was next to a gas station and the fumes made his wife sick. He has 4+ apps to manage charging payments .
How on earth do people tolerate other EVs?
mort96 · 2h ago
People tolerate other EVs in two ways:
1. You charge at home and typically drive relatively short distances, meaning you almost never have to interact with a commercial charger; or
2. If you need to rely on commercial chargers, you live in a part of the world where Tesla was never allowed to build a charging network monopoly (i.e anywhere outside the US), or in a part of the US where there's decent fast charging infrastructure
It sounds like your neighbour is unfortunate to require relatively frequent charging at commercial charging stations, in a part of the world where Tesla was allowed to build out a charging network monopoly.
tonymet · 1h ago
He has home Level 2 (11kw) charging. But his EV is his primary road trip car.
It's not a "part of the world" it's Portland Metro area where millions live.
mort96 · 1h ago
Is the Portland Metro area not a part of the world?
tonymet · 1h ago
do you live in some communist country where businesses need to get approval ?
mort96 · 1h ago
I live in some communist country where there are rules companies need to follow, one of those rules is "EVs must use the standard charging mechanism"
cosmic_cheese · 2h ago
I love how the Ioniq 5 looks, but it’s too long. I wish they sold a Bolt-sized cousin in the US, that would be perfect.
tonymet · 2h ago
a true Corrado clone, below 3500 lbs , would be sick
dreamcompiler · 8h ago
CHAdeMO is Betamax all over again. It's the best standard because it supports bidirectional power flow, which theoretically allows EVs to support the grid during demand spikes.
But if course CHAdeMO is dying. NACS is second best because it's less bulky than CCS, and NACS is winning in the US so the situation is less bad than it might have been.
qwerpy · 3h ago
My electric truck supports bidirectional power flow through NACS. Currently only usable with Tesla-specific vehicle and hardware, but the connector itself does support it. It was very useful during a few multi-day power outages.
Am I blind or he doesn't the mention the price anywhere in the post?!
1970-01-01 · 9h ago
Its fun to witness EVs living up to their original promise. Yes, the 1st generation of EVs without battery heating and cooling were mostly disposable experiments to catch-up with Tesla. That much is fact. However, the late model, new-wave of EVs (with proper battery technology) have crushed every excuse, except for variety.
pryelluw · 3h ago
@Jeff:
Are you worried or thought about resale value?
Do you plan to keep it for long?
lowwave · 9h ago
> They seem to not require an Internet connection for their cars
That would be the only reason to get that car now days! Can the car just drive without Internet. I want my car to be my not connected to cloud for all kinds crap.
jagermo · 12h ago
Huh, i see a bunch of used Renault Zoes for about 5k or less in my area. I wonder if they hold up as well.
KaiserPro · 11h ago
Zoes are fine, so long as they have fast charge and are the last generation (52kwhr)
The software is pretty shit. Lagging and annoying. But apple/android play stops that.
As a car its smooth, quiet, and fast if you need to be. The only annoyance driving wise is that it doesn't have adaptive cruise control, and the reverse/drive/neutral switch always returns to the middle, so you can't tell what mode its set to without looking at it
yourusername · 10h ago
A lot of Zoes i see for sale are with a rental or lease battery. So be sure to check if that 5k includes a battery or not.
wazoox · 12h ago
It depends. Zoés come in many flavours, with different sizes of battery (52kWh is the best, the same size as current Renault models R4 and R5), rented or bought (don't buy a Zoé with a rental battery!!!), and the CCS2 port is in option (no CCS-2 effectively means no day trip longer than full range, unless you have the 22kW AC option, but still... you'll need to find a 22 kW charger en route, not that easy).
Battery management on Zoés is fine ; it doesn't have the overheating problem that plagues the Leaf and the VW e-Up in particular; it doesn't have the "very slow charge when cold" problem of many cheap EVs with LiFePO4 batteries, though it charges up quite slowly (10-80% in 50 minutes).
Someone I know recently bought a 135HP 52kWh Zoé without CCS-2 and 22kW AC charge for 7500€. That's a real bargain, it'sequivalent for all practical purposes (but long travel) to a brand new 30000€ R5 :)
cillian64 · 12h ago
The trick with neutral in the leaf is that you have to hold the gear selector in the neutral direction for about a second. No relation to brake pedal timing as far as I can tell. No idea why neutral has that delay given none of the other “gears” do.
potato3732842 · 8h ago
Because neutral isn't a thing they expect the lowest common denominator consumer the car is designed to be usable for to be using on the daily so they gate it behind some stupid extra motions.
It's like a "lite" version of how some cars make you enter a stupid cheat code to reset your oil change reminder or some other thing that should just be in settings.
tfrutuoso · 13h ago
(...)I'm trying to do some things to extend the battery's life as long as possible (...) Not driving like a maniac.
Oops. My work daily is the same Leaf, my personal car is a '95 1.8 Turbo Miata. The Leaf suffers.
girvo · 12h ago
I agree with the ugly comments, which is why I went with the Cupra Born (2024)! It’s like a sporty space egg and I love it haha
jama211 · 3h ago
2023 is new wow
mangecoeur · 10h ago
As European it really struck me how poor the second hand ev market must be in the US. For the “cheap second hand car to do short distances” we have a lot of options really cheap - older gen Renault Zoe and Peugeot e208s, leafs, even the old hyundai Ioniq which is a bit of a cult favourite for its efficiency
bluGill · 3h ago
If you buy used cars you are limited to what someone else bought 3 or more years ago. new didn't have many options then. Even now there are not many good options for a new car buyer but most niches have something. I wanted an used id.buzz, but that won't be an option for 2 more years and so I'm stuck with the current minivan. my truck is dieing and a silverado could do but I can't afford payments on it new so again 2 more years and I need something else in the meantime.
ponector · 9h ago
I don't think it's an EV issue. It's rather "How poor the second hand small car market must be in the US". I guess alternatives in the same class in US are only two cars: Fiat 500 and Yaris.
tinyhouse · 3h ago
I was thinking about buying the leaf but I have a 2012 Honda Fit and my monthly gas expense is so cheap that I didn't bother. I use the car often but for mainly short drives within the city.
ForOldHack · 7h ago
Good job. I have driven ( for at least 2 trips ) a TeslaS a TeslaX, a Leaf, and EV-1... The Leaf was the easiest to use the regenerative breaking, and the very most efficient at it. Using the 80Mile model, and hand waxing the outside ( a favorite of the 100Mpg Prius group ) I was able to go 69.5 Miles, with 22% remaining. 28% more efficient than rated. This was a mostly highway traveled trip, with a bunch of city errand running at the end.
Both I and the owner were very impressed. They ordered the 100mile battery pack, which was very expensive, but it has been great in the long run.
I think it was like 81% cheaper than a gasoline trip at the time not including long term wear and tear. ( Ware and Tare?$#).
I think the Nissan Leaf is the very best of the bunch.
donatj · 13h ago
Hmm, my friend had a 2015 Leaf, the interior seemed much nicer and more modern than this 2023 model.
> There is no 'play/pause' button. Anywhere. At least not on the steering wheel or the display area. You have to go into the music section on the entertainment display, then press the software play/pause button. That's dumb.
My new to me 2023 Honda Odyssey has the same stupid issue. It's my first vehicle with a touch screen, and I have a lot of trouble hitting the pause button especially when I'm trying to mute it because I need to pay extra attention to the road. WHY is there not just a Play/Pause button on the wheel!? Or at least a physical button on the dashboard.
dwood_dev · 3m ago
On my 2021 Nissan Kicks, the volume knob is the only play/pause button. It's not a mute button only, it does pause your media coming through CarPlay.
Also, this is my last Nissan. I have been thoroughly disappointed with the super buggy and laggy head unit in this thing and it is apparently a common theme for Nissan.
My 2016 Ford with CarPlay was rock solid.
InsideOutSanta · 10h ago
Fortunately, the play/pause button problem is easily solved. Aliexpress sells play/pause buttons. Search for something like "Auto Wireless Media Button". They connect via Bluetooth, you can stick them anywhere on your dashboard, and they use a button cell that lasts about a year. There are also ring-shaped ones you can attach to the steering wheel.
marcusb · 10h ago
Your friend probably had an SL-trimmed Leaf. The car in the video is an SV, which has cloth seats, etc. Interestingly, it looks like Nissan no longer offers the nicer trim levels for the Leaf, only S and SV PLus (at least as of 2025.)
wara23arish · 9h ago
i think lowering the volume down to zero now constitutes as play/pause
i hate it too
mschuster91 · 12h ago
> And charging stations are run by multiple vendors with multiple apps and payment methods. It's not like gas stations, like with Shell, BP, Buckee's, etc. where you just drive up, stick the gas nozzle in your tank, and squeeze.
The "how to juice your car" question is pretty much solved on the electrical and communications side... but the "how do you pay for the juice" question is indeed absurd. I understand that providers of high capacity charging stations wish to charge a bit extra because a single 200 kW+ DC charger quickly reaches 40k € in pure hardware cost, in addition to the installation cost and the regular swapping of cables due to thieves. But why the EU and the US governments haven't stepped in yet and mandated either a "roaming" standard (where my primary billing contact would be a regular electric utility with a set base price per kWh and optional surcharges for high-capacity chargers or stations in high demand) or acceptance of all common credit and debit cards is way beyond me.
Instead, it's not just multiple vendors, apps and payment methods - it's also a (sometimes wild) difference in price depending on how you pay, at the same station. In contrast, at each gas station there is a sign that's visible from afar stating the exact price for your fuel, with the only thing one might hope for is a 1 cent discount for high volume diesel fuel pumps (aka, your truck's hole is big enough to fit a truck diesel nozzle) and a further 1 cent discount from some sort of loyalty reward scheme.
- card acceptance is only required for 50 kW+ chargers. All the relatively low power chargers at supermarkets, shopping malls and other public venues? They can get by with offering QR codes that are all too often abused for phishing campaigns [2][3] and still have the issue with requiring some sort of app.
- the "card acceptance" may also be fulfilled by PSD2 compliant mobile banking apps, so if you got a rooted phone (where Google Pay is a cat-and-mouse game), a phone whose vendor is under sanctions and thus doesn't get the Google ecosystem or don't want to involve Google Pay, Apple Pay, PayPal or the likes in your daily life, you're screwed just as well at these charger points
On top of that, the standard to publish pricing information to the public coordination exchange is a hot XML/SOAP mess [4].
Looks like you bought a faulty computer which happens to have 4 wheels buddy.
The neutral and parking brake issues: that just by itself should make Nissan stocks plummet. 2025 and we have these issues? It definitely looks an involution to me.
Things we humans are still lame at: adapters. Power adapters, cable data adapters. Why do we have bazillions adapters?
Can't we just design one adapter for the whole world that makes happy both manufacturers and customers? If not governments should step in and force manufacturers to include all adapters ever needed as part of a car purchase. That you have to spend more money just to charge a car because of the adapter is ridiculous.
If EVs are in this line of quality/user experience in general, thanks I'll pass and get something reliable and old school that actually works as expected.
Edit: And we don't need mobile apps to control our cars. Another really stupid and ridiculous idea that has been pushed to customers when no-one actually asked for that.
numpad0 · 12h ago
EU solved it years ago by mandating CCS2. Even Tesla in EU uses that plug and reportedly just works, except Tesla have no access to DCFC without carrying an adapter because they adamantly reject Combo2. I believe China does the same, only stricter, and some of Model S/X in China reportedly has fuel doors to fit the port.
As if regulations work. They seem to have very strange situations over there.
rsynnott · 11h ago
Strictly speaking, the EU only mandates CCS2 on _chargers_; the second gen Leaf sold in Europe didn't have CCS2, though I think it was about the last car not to have it.
bluGill · 11h ago
Everyone in the us has now agreed to use teslas NACS so this problem will go away with new cars over the next 5 years or so. If you have an older car good luck. And many parking garrages won't update their chargers. Still with NACS and ev's taking off you will see a lot more chargers going up as investors try to get this new market for charging:
sitharus · 9h ago
What is the neutral issue? It sounds annoying to switch in to, but when do you even need neutral in an EV? The reasons I’ve needed it while driving ICE cars aren’t there in an EV, because it’s the same as the car being off.
Come to think of it, I have no idea how to get my car in to neutral.
illegalsmile · 7h ago
I don't know about the neutral issue... The only time I use the neutral is to go through an automatic car wash. Hold the brake and push the selector to the left/neutral for ~3 seconds.
sitharus · 1h ago
Huh, today I learnt about continuous automatic car washes. Never seen one of those, the ones over here you park in and it moves around you, they’ve been that way since the 90s at least.
"In 2020, the Mini EV had a price starting at US$4,162, and topped out at US$5,607 for a fully loaded model, making it China's cheapest electric car."
lan321 · 12h ago
He's not in China though.
ForOldHack · 5h ago
Oh thank God. The cheapest EV in China is little more than a flashlight with a wind up propeller, (joking/not joking) but not as safe. No one it their right mind could compare it to a leaf to a tesla.
quitit · 11h ago
Something which this article highlights is the lack of reliable rail in the USA.
Where I am there is a decent rail network, and the rail provider has a fleet of EVs for rent, where the cost of the electricity is included. This provides a "green" last mile solution even if the public transport itself in each area may be lacking (often it's not however).
So a trip looks like this:
Hop on the train which quickly takes the lion's-share of the travelling distance, then switch to an EV that fills the gap to the final destination/s. Then do this process in reverse to get home.
This approach solves the largest problems presented by the author.
1970-01-01 · 10h ago
High speed rails would involve large scale manufacturing and long-term planning. This is the one thing the US simply cannot do anymore (unless it's military, then they will make 300ish in a decade)
quitit · 2h ago
High speed rail is definitely not a requirement. Ordinary trains are still faster than driving.
What the USA lacks is a robust network. The spread of rail is too thin to be useful for everyday use.
behnamoh · 13h ago
You should never purchase EVs, only lease them. That's what I did. This saves you from the terrible depreciation they have.
The only time it makes sense to buy an EV is if it's used.
Edit: He bought used.
andsoitis · 13h ago
> Mistake #1: He bought an EV.
> You should never purchase EVs, only lease them. That's what I did. This saves you from the terrible depreciation they have.
> The only time it makes sense to buy an EV is if it's used.
Coming in too hot, friend! The headline, and opening line, is that it is a used EV.
rjtavares · 13h ago
Also, leasing does not prevent you from paying for the depreciation. It's just included in the fee.
andsoitis · 13h ago
With these things, it is helpful to place oneself on the other end of the transaction and think how you would price things. When you think about it critically, you notice that it can get pretty sophisticated.
jstanley · 13h ago
How does leasing save you from depreciation? Surely the company leasing you the car has a good idea of what the depreciation will be, and they want to make money.
bluGill · 11h ago
That depends on what real depreciation is. Sometimes those experts get it wrong. This can be for or against you though.
the artile is a guy who drives his cars 'into the ground' - he wouldn't care about value he cares about how long it will run.
prmoustache · 12h ago
From a purely economic point of view, buying a new car is always a bad idea, regardless of the drivetrain technology.
1970-01-01 · 9h ago
Exception being those buying new cars, leaving them in storage for a decade or two, and then selling them at auction for 10x.
yen223 · 5h ago
Over a decade, that storage space will 10x more reliably than the car
ponector · 9h ago
I'm curious how much you can get for a brand new 2005 Corolla. And don't forget to add storage costs.
1970-01-01 · 8h ago
They're not doing it with Corollas. They're doing it with Porsches and other sports cars.
ForOldHack · 5h ago
Exactly what Tesla first did. Well, they a first did not have an existing ICE vehicle and based the styling off a Lotus Elise sports car.
prmoustache · 2h ago
They didn't based the styling only. They were using gliders[1] built by Lotus.
[1] chassis+body+suspension basically a car without powertrain and interior trim
conradev · 12h ago
I still agree with OP in that purchasing an EV, used or not, is brutal with depreciation.
You can lease a used Tesla Model 3 for $5k/24mo. Say the used Leaf was $15k, it would need to be worth at least $10k in 2027.
kccqzy · 13h ago
He bought a used EV. The cost of depreciation is borne by the previous owner.
sejje · 10h ago
He paid 17k and it's still a long way to zero.
4pkjai · 13h ago
Regarding your last sentence, it seems like he did buy a used EV.
dzhiurgis · 10h ago
Datapoint: once in a century pandemic event where car prices spiked and crashed back 2 years later
I drive it to work every day (where I can charge it for free). I drive it to Oslo and can park/charge almost anywhere around town for really cheap, about €3/h, which is nothing compared to regular parking, which is usually ~€16/h.
I drive it to the Netherlands, about ~950km in two days, without a hint of range anxiety, thanks to abetterrouteplanner.com. Sure, I'm averaging 85km/h, and have to take a ~10min stop every ~2 hours to charge, but that is a welcome pause to visit the toilet or grab a bite.
I had to change a bearing that was getting noisy after 10 years of use, and it cost me €50 in parts and half an hour changing it. I was worried it was going to be a complicated affair, not having done it before, but it was as easy as changing a tire.
Oh, and there is physical buttons for everything! There is a little display that controls the music and shows consumption stats, but it is entirely optional and can be removed completely.
The battery has hardly degraded at all. I'm keeping this thing for as long as I possibly can, it is the perfect car!
Currently trying to get rid of our petrol car but knowing realistic range up front is rough. I'm fine with driving slower.
When driving to the Netherlands in the months between March and October, the consumption has been around 8.3kW/100km. The car is light and has little tech that consumes power.
Since the car has no heat pump, heating the cabin has a noticable impact on range during cold winter days.
That said, it is a really good car to drive in the winter as the cabin gets warm in no-time and the windows in the front and back are heated and melts away thick ice in about a minute, even in really cold weahter! When doing normal commutes, the shorter range does not matter at all. But I would probably not drive to the Netherlands in -10°C during the winter!
Many older ICE vehicles, you mean? EVs aren't really special in their use of custom car-bound head units. BMW XDrive is the same XDrive they have in their EVs as they have in their ICEs. Mandatory backup cams is only going to accelerate that.
The biggest reason for non-modular infotainment is to push people into subscription services.
If you're buying a car as an investment I have bad news for you...
If a 6-year-old Bolt is still worth $14.5k, then an 8- or, say, 12-year-old Bolt isn't worth $0. Most of that depreciation happened in the first year, it's still going to be worth $12k or $9k.
For example, Jeff's 2023 Leaf originally sold for about $30k. Now, just TWO YEARS later, he probably paid $15k to $19k for it. That's a steal! Given he drives his vehicles into the ground, it probably doesn't matter, but if he wanted to sell it in a few years he could still get $10 to $15k from it.
Day to day charging is generally all going to be L2 or even L1 depending on how far you drive and how long typically parked somewhere with a plug. That will be roughly the same speed in any car. Some cars do have higher capacity L2 chargers than the Bolt does, but most public L2 stations don't provide the higher current needed to see the difference.
This Bolt EUV car drives so damn good. I was very impressed when I drove it.
The Bose audio is also quite good. After testing several new cars, I learned that Bose audio is not implemented the same across manufacturers. For example Mazda Premium Bose is just plain mediocre.
For the price that you can pay for one, Bolt EUV is an amazing deal. Unfortunately the charge speed is a deal breaker for many. But I never forgot how well it handles.
I really hope these cars last, they are a hidden gem and I think a lot wouldnt care about resale value if that charge speed was a bit better.
Sadly I live in a city now so I can't drive down curvy roads away from everyone, windows down blasting beats anymore. :( (I try to be a responsible asshole! :)
What driving assist platform? I don't think the older Chevy Bolts have any such thing. At least I'm pretty sure my 2017 doesn't.
Charging time for road trips sucks. 99% of my driving is around town. Being a smaller EV it fits city life very well and I just top it off on a 120v plug every night.
I got a 2023 fully loaded with sunroof (except super cruise) for 24k, only had 40 miles on it.
That said the app is horrible and you can see how GM just didn't give a shit all throughout the car. No AC/dog mode. If you shift too fast after turning the car on you have to reboot the car using a secret method that is buried on forums (anyone reading this, don't press break, hold down the power button until the car restarts) and you can only remotely turn climate on to its last setting from the app.
Oh and even if you pay monthly for remote access just checking the charge level through your phone probably won't work (time outs...) and locating your car really won't work.
If you turn on climate remotely, drive somewhere less than 10 minutes away and then get out, you may try to turn climate back on using the app, but that won't work because the app has a really long cool down before it even checks the car to see what the status is so you end up in an invalid state where the app thinks the car is still on even though you just stepped out and turned it off.
Resistive heating means even with Seattle's mild winters I barely have 200 miles of range.
The car isn't smart enough to close the sunroof visor on hot days to keep the car cool.
In general it feels like what it is - a mid 2010s car that was far behind Tesla at the time for thoughtful details (expected given the year and GM) that was sold into the 2020s way after other manufacturers had updated their cars electronics to have common sense features.
That said some details are nice. You can be connected to car play and Android Auto at the same time and designate one of those as primary for apps and navigation but take calls through both. Physical climate controls are appreciated, and the rain sensing wipers actually work well. ;)
The 360 camera is wonderful to have. It cost me $10k vs getting a the base trim car, totally worth it.
I bought it April 2024 and I have some 0 maintenance other than car washes. So damn cheap to own.
In the 16 months I've owned it I've only put on 6k miles and it'll never pay for itself on gas savings , but last car was totalled and I legit enjoyed test driving the EUV more than a Lexus UX 300h that cost a lot more.
So anyways happy with the purchase, great value, horrible for road trips but I do them anyway.
250 meters ? but I want to drive off my street....
Don't get me wrong, that would still cover 80% of my daily driving needs, but when I need to drive to the big town for work on a moments notice I may not have time to drive home and swap out for my ICE vehicle.
I have a pre-order in for the Slate, having 150 miles range would cover 99% of my driving needs, so I am not against EVs, just sharing the awareness that battery degradation is a thing to be concerned about.
Depends on how you define "life". I think for the Leaf, it's 70% capacity. But even if it gets down to 50%, it'll sill keep driving.
Also, what's really annoying, is that every seller factors in tax credits to their price. So that 3k may really be 5k. I'm actually looking forward to that no longer being possible.
(Which is what you’d expect - of course free government money will raise prices above where they would be.)
Afaik in Europe, CCS2 is the standard (and mandatory these days), when I rented an EV a few weeks back there was no location which didn’t have it. And all the spots I tried charging at except Tesla accepted card payment (though there were a pair of times it was a struggle getting a card to work).
Apps / memberships will get you cheaper prices but that’s about all I saw (and I didn’t bother with any of it).
TBH the only things that annoyed me were implementation issues of the car (a polestar 4) as well as how overly wide it is. And that the rental company (AVIS) does not provide an AC adapter, so I was not able to charge at any wallplug even though I had the opportunity to charge the car at least twice over in all (I will likely purchase one if that remains their policy and I rent more EVs).
All this is modulo it being summer and a pretty long range model so range anxiety was present but reasonably limited.
The fact that both J1772 & CCS2 are 100% universal in Europe is huge. So much so even Tesla switched to CCS2. This doesn't help Jeff but certainly one less problem for many readers of his article.
Funnily enough, not for the Leaf! Though it will be on the third generation that's coming out this year. The second-gen Leaf (a ten year old design, at this point) that the author of the article bought doesn't have it. The EU only mandates CCS2 in _charging points_; manufacturers can still sell cars without it, though I think Nissan may be the only remaining one who _does_.
Right but that’s the most important one. If you have a leaf it means you know you need an adapter always, so while it’s a bit of a hassle to waste space on that there’s no question whether you’ll get a compatible charging plug.
This does mean Jeff's Leaf would be limited to AC without an adapter, which isn't perfectly ideal, but still better.
I was under the impression Type 2 was the only European standard.
That was obvious from the article but given they specifically mentioned CCS2 bundled with the mess that is US charging I thought important to point that (anecdotally) the situations are quite distinct. Both in terms of charging hardware and payment.
Here in Norway, new EVs are no longer allowed to be sold with AC adapters, due to the potential fire hazard. At least that's the reason I got when I purchased my current EV.
Perhaps a EU thing, wouldn't surprise me.
Sure you might burn a house down if you find one that has a plug which isn't correctly installed with loose connectors but the fire risk here wasn't the EV. Its the incorrectly installed wiring.
You don't tell people to get rid of their fridges because some people might have forgetten to plug theirs in and therefore they could get food poisoning from spoiled food inside.
That said there's been a campaign for several years trying to get rid of sockets for high current or permanent installations. I recently replaced both an electric water heater and mini split AC, and in both cases the previous appliance had used a socket and that was not allowed anymore.
Could well be they're just being proactive.
[1]: https://brannstatistikk.no/search?searchId=6EB5433C-AC28-4F6...
[1]: https://www.ba.no/lader-du-elbilen-din-i-stikkontakt-det-bor...
Could also be that for historical reasons you could have a house wired for 10 or 13 A and not be aware if it.
‘Course you can manage that by having the chargers limit themselves to 8A default (or even always), at 1800W that’s a very slow trickle but it’s something, and even if it does not fully cover your commute it spaces out carger stops or helps condition the battery on cold mornings.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Economic_Area
I don't understand how North America and Europe settled on different EV charging plugs.
However, I haven't seen a station that takes card yet (or they don't advertise it). They all have their own app, which is inconvenient and a hassle.
It is exactly this kind of Nissan Leaf. Japanese older generation cars. Enough around to still be available, but I think it is slowly disappearing. After that only 6kW (32A/single phase) charging will be available for these cars.
https://www.electway-charger.com/CCS2_to_CHAdeMO_adapter.htm...
Chademo is still standard in Japan.
Also, given his comparison to the ease of the old way, in Europe at least it's fairly standard to know someone who has filled their hire car with diesel (or not diesel) by mistake. They have warning stickers on the filler flap because it happens so often.
Meanwhile knowing someone who uses the inexplicably more expensive premium fuel option also offered is maybe rarer.
Maybe EV-owning car reviewers should counter the FUD by pretending to be confused by these, always using the most expensive one in price comparisons and then breaking the car completely by using the wrong one during their test drive, like the many propaganda pieces put out about EVs.
In the US, if you roll up to a random charging station you may or may not find a plug matching your car’s port.
I have wall ovens that connect via a 50A circuit. Do I need to worry about fire hazards when I bake something for hours and hours?
It's complicated. Heat builds up over time. So for example your standard 15 amp breaker on a 14 gauge wire in the US is rated for 15 amps of intermittent use, but if you draw that continuously without letting the heat dissipate it becomes a fire hazard. IIRC circuits are generally rated for ~80% of their max load for continuous use, so that 15 amp circuit is considered good for 12 continuous. Or in your 10 amp example 8 should be ok.
Your oven and circuit should be sized such that your long cooks aren't a concern, if you look at it's label you'll probably find it has a max draw of well below 50amps, but if you have actual doubts ask a professional.
A concern for high current outlets in the US, such as NEMA 14-50, is that they weren't necessarily designed for a large number of plug/unplug cycles. Typically you'd plug your stove in and leave it there for years to decades.
If you use the same 14-50 outlet for car charging, which is not uncommon, the contacts can lose their grip over time. End users may want to take their mobile EVSE with them and incur cycles on the outlet. Properly installed but worn 14-50s have been known to melt or even catch fire under these conditions.
End users should prefer to have their EVSE(s) hardwired or installed with a higher grade outlet like Hubbell or Bryant.
Probably? No, it pulls less than my dryer which runs at 240V15A I think but also just the same as my 1500W space heater. You can totally control how much power the charger should draw.
> With that much power, there’s a risk of overheating and fire. Unlike a dedicated EV charger, a socket is simply not equipped to handle the amount of electricity needed to charge a car battery.
Wrong assumption leads to wrong conclusion. Any charger you can physically plug in will work in a house that's wired up to standard.
It’s the long charge time that leads to heat buildup, not the max amp.
Where I am from standard outlets can deliver 16A but are not rated for more than 6A if the load is longer than 2 hours.
At the end of the tax year I'll have paid $11k for the car, effectively.
I tacked on the price of the CHAdeMO adapter mentally to the price I offered, since I knew I'd want it for the one or two regional road trips I take per year.
https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/used-clean-vehicle-cr...
I don't know anything about your situation, but I'm guessing quite a bit of the readers here on HN from the US won't qualify.
>You buy the vehicle from a dealer.
This is such an annoying part of the tax incentive.
It's a huge, pointless gift to car dealers (who need no help) because it means they don't have to compete for price with private sellers or buyers. If I have a used EV to sell, I basically have to sell to the dealer because no buyer wants to bother buying from me when they can get the same thing from a dealer with a $4k tax credit on top.
Used Chevy Volts are actually more expensive now than they were a few years back, at least on the CarMax website. Maybe a higher price because they were discontinued but I used to love my Volt. Averaged 150mpg over 3 years.
Otherwise, this car is as close to a perfect daily driver I've ever owned. I hope it lasts forever: not a single touchscreen, no OTA updates, decent battery range (and DC Fast Charging at 60kW+), gas engine to fall back on (with OBD-II programming you can enable Hold State of Charge on the NA models allowing you to truly treat the i3 as a proper series-hybrid and not just an emergency limp-along range extender that will crap out going up a hill in the cold), comfy seats, and did I mention NO TOUCHSCREENS and NO OTA UPDATES?
The fuel tank is quite small, but it doesn't take long to fill.
Overall fuel consumption was around 6-8 gallons for the trip.
- a traditional car feeling, knobs, buttons, the way cars have been for decades prior
- very very reliable. basically never needs anything except wiper fluid. no software updates or crashing. I don’t have stats but might be one of most reliable cars
- compact and easy to park
- compatible with comma.ai
- LeafSpy diagnostics to monitor it
- nice hatchback format with fold down rear seats
- ~220 mile range is plenty for around town use and trickle charge overnight
Overall I’m very happy with it and while constantly tempted by Teslas I think I wouldn’t like them as much.
Anyway, not having CarPlay has not been an issue. Although, it would have been nice to have.
I also don’t get this CCS drama, I have yet to come across an actual fast charger station that doesn’t have CHAdeMO in addition to the CCS connection. Maybe in my area of midwest all the charger stations were installed during the dual standard being the standard.
In here a used 2022 leaf goes for about $20-22K CAD. 2016 models go as low as $8K - those had a range of about 120km when new.
Put otherwise: if the battery is so degraded you only get 30mi/50km range out of it, I see why it's selling for $2000.
400 dollars for a 2012 nissan leaf with 80% battery life and 80k miles (saved from being junked.)
MA taxes and delivery made it about 1k when it was all said and done. Insurance is 400/year.
We fit 3 kid seats in the back and have replaced all our metropolitan rides with the nissan. Ostensibly we are all < 6ft tall otherwise the 3 seats wouldn't work.
Our range is 60 miles in the summer, 50 in the winter. Because of how we use it a regular 15 amp plug works for us. Any long trip is taken with our 2018 honda HRV + Thule.
I've been monitoring the usage of our gas car and financially it makes more sense for us to rent a gas car for our trips rather than pay for the ownership + insurance of our car. The math on yearly ownership of the gas car is:
555 treasury yield when selling the car (15000 * 0.05 on a 30 less 30% taxes), 1200 insurance, 200 yearly maintenance (oil changes, amortized tires...), 375 excise tax, 40 inspection
That's about 2.2k/year or about 4 weeks of rental for an SUV. We're still holding on to the gas car for the impromptu apple picking/beach day/day trip that sets us over the 50 mile radius, but zipcar could fill that void
When it comes to charging network Tesla is SO MUCH BETTER. It's hard to describe how much of a wild west other charging networks are. You have to download this app or that app, add a credit card here, add one there. De-rated charging handles absolutely everywhere.
NACS is theoretically a worse charger, but it's more approachable to consumers.
CCS1 is clumsy , heavy and makes the car look like it's attached to an umbilical cord.
That's why they had to dump it.
The second hand market for EVs is getting pretty interesting. There are lots of EV owners that are replacing their EVs every few years and because of all the growth over the last 10 years, there are now quite a few fairly nice EVs on the second hand market. Many are typically still under drive train warranty. For example, the model 3 has only been on the market for about eight years and it came with eight years of warranty on the drive train. So, most of the second hand ones would still be under warranty. And most of the EV market only started growing after that. So this is true for many second hand EVs.
And car batteries don't seem to spontaneously stop working right after the warranty expires either. So the risk is fairly low. They'll eventually degrade. But if you can pick up a car for a few thousand and then drive it for another 5-10 years, who cares? The fuel savings alone pay for the car after just a few years. Add the savings on maintenance and you are basically in the plus.
A lot of the crap like the early Nissan Leafs didn't. And between that and the first gen EV battery pack design being shit in general, the battery pack just cooks itself. Its capacity falls off a cliff over time. This is where a lot of those early concerns about EV battery packs being hideously expensive consumables was coming from.
If the battery pack is actively cooled, then, as a rule, it ages gracefully. If not? Oh boy.
The Leaf limited battery life is mainly to its battery chemistry (LMO), although it arguably doesn't go to great lengths to ensure thermal stability of the pack.
For most people, the vast majority of their driving takes place well within the range of the typical BEV and range anxiety is a total non-issue. The fact is, even accounting for the occasional long trip, I spend less time at charging stations than I did at gas stations when I owned an ICE car, because the vast majority of the time, I just plug the car in at my house and let it do its thing.
Nothing done by choice is annoying obviously. But a lot of people are fine with stretching their legs on a five minute bathroom break. Adding an extra an hour or hour half for unwanted stops due to forced recharging is what annoys them.
Right, so that covers approximately 100% of EV owners.
But you’re now talking about the lack of adequate charging infrastructure in an urban setting. That’s a different conversation. It’s a worthy conversation, but not all that related to making 500 mile road trips.
This summer I made two 500 mile trips (round trip each time) to drop off (and pick up) a kid at a summer camp. It was a week long camp, so I drove up and back on two weekends. I drove an electric car up the first time and a hybrid SUV up the second time.
It was fine to do in my electric car. I spent about 5 minutes making sure I had a good charging plan, which turned out to add about 10-15 extra miles to the trip. It wasn’t a problem to stop to charge, and I really wanted to stop to eat and stretch when I needed to charge, so everything worked out well timing wise. The trip in the hybrid was a little faster, but not by much. I still stopped the same number of times regardless of what car I drove.
Note: I would have happily had made the trip in my EV both times, but I had another person with me for the second trip. She hated the seats in my EV, so we took the car with more comfortable interior for the second trip. The trip in the hybrid was “nicer”, but that was because it was a more comfortable car in general, not because of the difference between an EV and hybrid.
You want to keep batteries roughly in that range to maximise their lifetime health. That doesn't mean the battery will explode if you do otherwise once in a while e.g. you charge limit the car to 80% for your daily drive and before a big trip you charge to 100%.
Route planners will generally keep you in that band anyway because charging speeds fall off a cliff as charge exceeds 80~90% (depending on the manufacturer's usable % standard), and it's rarely worth wasting 30mn charging to full to save 5~10mn extra at the next stop (the same occurs to a lower extent at very low states of charge, plus you want some spare, so the lower 10% are generally treated as a reserve).
Huh? The car isn't doing that for you? Prius hybrids sure are (the old ones using NiMH batteries tried to keep charge between 40% and 80%).
An EV can do that how exactly, refusing to run? Mugging the elderly for loose kWh?
It's really not a hassle at all. What's a hassle right now is finding a charger, as there aren't enough fast ones along the trip, but I've had the car for a year and have never needed to do a trip that long yet.
Porsche Kia Hyundai are currently top of the list
https://www.electrive.com/2024/12/20/p3-charging-index-2024-...
The average car journey is 8 miles. Being an average with a finite lower limit of 0 it is skewed higher by the people who for various reasons drive long distances.
You don't need a 1,000 mile range to get to the shops at the end of the street. It helps, but not that much.
I read a blogger say a 40-mile trip is exceptionally log for him, so why worry about EV range?
Meanwhile we put 160 miles on our EV yesterday doing ordinary errands that all got stacked on the same day. 100+ mile days happen a few times a month for us¹.
That 160 miles is 65% of our 0–100 range, or 108% of the 20–80 range. And we have a level 1 charger, so it'll take 26 hours in the driveway to recoup that charge.
¹ In my area a normal daily commute is 30–40 miles round-trip. Throw in some extra errands, or two people sharing a car, and you don't have to be an outlier to routinely have 100+ mile days.
However, I think the point of the GP is that the number of people who say this is their typical experience is going to be larger than the number of people for whom it actually is their typical experience.
By that I mean: your story is quite common in discussions like this, both online and offline. Yet, if the mean distance is 8 miles, and we know it's going to be skewed high due to the 0 bound, it can't be all that common.
To be honest, I'd be curious to see the median here.
https://raleighnc.gov/planning/services/city-profile
So yeah, I'll keep driving rusted out minivans that make people clutch their pearls.
For people who just want a dedicated commuting vehicle used EVs with 80% battery are a pretty good option.
It's easy to forget the budget issues faced by many families when you're not facing that constantly yourself, but it's basically an existential consideration for a not insignificant proportion of the population.
You're circa $1700/year more expensive in fuel with your minivan[1] than with a comparably sized EV.
Your 5 hour / 300 mile journey takes around 30 mins more in the EV end to end (time spent stationary at a charger somewhere near the mid point of your route). Equiv of driving at 55mph average vs 60mph average over that time. I'd happily use the time to drink a flask of tea i brought with me and then go for a comfort break.
[1] assuming $4.80/gallon in a 25mpg minivan, vs an inefficient EV that only averages around 2mi/kwh at $0.30/kwh. Obv the 1700 excludes servicing, tyres and depreciation
Not to pick on you personally but I think it speaks volumes about the type of people who make up HN community that I can come in here with a fairly narrow and niche critique of a product (inflexibility basically), hedge that comment with a "but it's still good for a lot of people" statement and a bunch of act like I'm dismissing the entire product category and then act like completely tangential things disprove that. It's like I've offended a religion.
> So yeah, I'll keep driving rusted out minivans that make people clutch their pearls.
These antagonistic statements are unnecessary and the reason you are being downvoted.
You are an extreme outlier, you should wait until the technology develops further. To use your parlance, no need to screech about people clutching their pearls at you.
This has different impacts depending on your local gas to electricity price ratio.
It's his weekly and monthly longer trips that complicate matters but in many jurisdictions he'd still be saving enough to make it worthwhile.
I've read/heard about this innovation coming to the market in six months every few weeks for about ten years and it has never materialized. There are continuous, slight and consistent improvements to battery technology which add up over time, but none of the wunderwaffe battery technologies ever materialized into the market and produced any huge jumps.
I bought a second hand Zoe in the UK mainly because they are so common, which means parts should be still around for a while yet.
the leaf was an option, and I could have bought and upgraded the battery on an old one, but I think on balance the zoe was a better purchase for the same combined price. (for me, your mileage may vary)
In terms of practicality, for where I live (suburban, edge of a large city) it works perfectly well. We also fairly regularly do longer journeys, assuming its not getaway rush hour, charging is fine on motorways and crucially getting better
Gordon Gekko would buy it, break it into its constituent parts and sell them off for £5,000.
https://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/cta?auto_make_model=niss...
I bought a 2012 for $7500 in 2016 and drove it for several years.
1. chargers suck. there was evgo, blink, chargepoint. Most locations had 1 or most 2 DC fast chargers, but frequently they didn't work or were busy. Not reliable.
2. range was less that expected, even if you update expectations. It takes engineering to use the range you have, especially taking #1 into account. You don't want to get to a fast charger at 1% then find it doesn't work.
3. the battery health wasn't great, but because the battery capacity/range was less, the number of battery cycles was significantly more. I charged to a higher %, discharged low each day, and cycled daily.
4. the leaf was a perfect "around town" car. Not for trips.
Tesla has basically solved all of this and their cars are usable like a regular car*
* don't be pedantic, in 99% of situations/locations
As to your Tesla *. I do endless tire of folks who are like "But what if you want to circle the planet!?! Check mate EV dorks!". For 99% of the time they are absolutely fine.
A friend of mine had one as a work car and drove the 940km (580 miles)from Melbourne to Sydney with only a single charge up of $20 half way through, got lunch at the same time. I mean yes if you really stretch it, you could do it on a single tank of fuel on a combustion engine but it would be a tight run. Also to the recharge time, that drive takes about 9 hours if you do not stop. I have never done it in less than 12 hours because you end up having a lot of down time on trips like that. There is plenty of time to charge if needed. Like you say, for the most part these are solved issues.
Meanwhile Tesla build quality is still mixed bag in 2025. The used ones suffer from previous lapses in QA which is a darn shame. These are cars that could be usable for years but because their mentality of pushing junk out to meet end of quarter numbers, many of these cars won't be able to fulfill their true potential. They are disposable junk even if they drive well.
I now own a corolla hybrid and I enjoy cheap commutes without the fear of running out of juice
either you get 2 cars or a fast charging ev. i chose the latter
Until I got an EV and realized it's not really an issue. There is always an App for that (and even on my car the software gets improved in that regard).
Infrastructure is getting better, even companies starting to see it as a benefit to have cheap/free chargers at their offices to get people back.
I see more and more electric trucks on the roads. It feels good.
The other part that not a lot of people realise is if your journey is 300 miles and your car does 200 you don't charge another 200 miles into the battery, you charge 100 and then charge at the destination instead. With ICE vehicles if your going to get fuel typically you fuel it to the top but you don't do that with battery cars you want to charge them as little as possible while mid travelling and charge them while they are sat still at home or destination.
Its charging at home that really changes the experience too. The weekly trip to the fuel station disappears, depending on how often you exceed the range of the car you only really get exposed to the charging network and times when doing those journeys, you spend a lot less of your life in fuel stations!
Parking garages are also getting EV chargers. My office garage just added a couple dozen, and I don't think it would be hard for them to convert more once the demand shows up.
And I've seen them starting to go in at the little rest stops on the Autobahn that up to now only had unattended toilets; they're being added to the big, nice rest stops with gas stations, too, of course.
[citation needed] considering plenty of people do it all the time (truck drivers)
Having said that, I've taken lots of road trips in my day and it would be a change up to how they're planned, and I would have some concern about placement / availability. But then that's why, when we bought an EV for the 99% of our family use case we didn't immediately scrap yard our previous cars, which seemed to be what some family members expected when we told them we were considering getting an electric car.
The lower provinces allow up to 13 hours per day of driving and a total 14 hours per day on duty time before you're required to take a 10 hour rest in a single 24 hour period. The northern territories I believe legally allow up to 15 hours driving per day.
That's just what I've read so take it for what it's worth.
I was debating an electric vehicle in 2023. There are maybe 10 people (out of about 200) at work that have electric cars. My teammate is one of the ten. He wakes up early to get a charger. He tracks down the other owners to ask them to use the charger after lunch. They started a group chat about the chargers.
My local grocery store has a bank of superchargers right in the middle of the parkinglot next to the main road. Some days the bank is full and teslas hang out waiting, but they have to wait half in the road to make sure they're close enough to be next in line.
My apartment complex has 2 chargers, and we get people coming in who don't live in the complex to use them. People wait next to the strangers to be sure to get the charger before walking home for the night.
This kind of social interaction and situations gives me huge anxiety.
I get gas once a week, dont wait in line, always works, don't talk to anyone, and I'm gone in less than 5 minutes.
Workplace charging gets extra competitive because it's often free, meaning all sorts of bad behavior is incentivized. It's weird how wound up people with $50,000 cars can get about $5 in free electricity.
An apartment complex being built next door offers you to buy a parking lot together with the apartment, and optionally equip it with an EV charger. This is the way.
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* Keeping the charge between 50-80% when manageable
* Charging up to 100% at least once a month, and letting it 'top off' to rebalance the pack for at least a few hours afterwards
* Not driving like a maniac, despite having more torque in this car than I've ever had in any of my previous cars
This kind of thing (minus the driving like a maniac bit) is what puts me off EVs. I guess it's unavoidable? My experience with laptop and phone batteries (holding much less charge pretty quickly) doesn't help. My phone (iPhone 12) says battery health is at 81% but it doesn't feel like it so I'm not sure I'd trust that Leaf saying it's got 93%.
They do degrade over time but very, very slowly. Absolutely not like phones. Mine has 25k miles and zero degradation yet.
Let me guess - Hyundai? They are notoriously lying about degradation.
Nowadays you don't have to do this. You can. Just like with your phone or laptop.
Funny, how 2 years old car is really old. For combustion engines, old is like 15+?
EVs will have the same problems as mobile phones. Maybe manufactures want that. But software will define the age of your car and I don’t like it. What if the car requires internet connection and the company dies?
This was the very first mass-market electric car, with only minor tweaks. It's not surprising that it's a bit rough around the edges. That's part of why they're cheap second-hand (along with the fact that the 3rd gen, which actually is a proper redesign, is coming out this year).
If the model gets even minor updates, manufacturing is happening right now, the car is either good enough or new enough in general, and we cannot use old as negative quality.
Electric motors existed before the combustion engine, and people keep talking about "rapidly evolving area", while the only thing that is rapidly evolving and specific to EVs is the power source. A battery, to be precise. It is all about battery, and nothing else.
Buying a 2nd-gen Leaf in 2025 would be a bit silly, unless you were getting a major discount.
There's probably going to be a surplus of off-lease Leafs coming up over the next one to three years which might make a great deal for people who can charge at home.
So they're basically 15 years old, technologically older than the Model S. Windows 7 was 1 year old when its basic systems shipped.
> What if the car requires internet connection and the company dies?
That's not a problem specific to EVs and with Chinese combustion car brands coming and going all the time, it's obvious.
Tangential trivia: BYD Dolphin Baseline is 20k new before subsidies in some places.
My Leaf from 2019 has 100% battery health and I always charge it to 100%. I almost never use fast charging though since it is a commute kind of car.
The leaf is a terrible steward if its battery. virtually every other car is better in virtually every single way.
As for the battery health rating, it's easy enough to measure. Go on the highway, keep it at 80 km/h straight and note how much range you get out of it. In practical commute settings, range will be longer than that anyway due to regenerative braking in all that start-stop-start-stop dance.
You THINK you're driving long distances every day and you THINK charging is a massive hassle where you have to drive to a Charging Site and wait for the car to charge for HOURS.
When in reality you plug in at home and have a full battery every morning.
And when the infrastructure is properly built (yay Finland), you can get a week's charge when you're getting groceries as the shop has multiple 100kW chargers along with a fleet of Level 2 (22kW) chargers.
The only times I need to actively think about charging are over 200-250km day trips (my old Ioniq EV has a WLTP of 300km on a warm summer day). And even then the kids an dogs need a bathroom break anyway and I need to walk around a bit to freshen up. 20-30 minutes gets us 100-150km of charge (old car, slow charging) and we're off again.
A couple of weeks later I went on holiday. I wouldn't be able to charge where I was stopping, and there were no chargers within 15 miles. I kept my diesel.
So what, that's something you find out once that your electric installation is shoddy enough to most likely be a fire risk (because the charger plug has a thermal protection built in!), fix it and then you won't have that problem again. And as the Leaf should have 150 miles worth of range, you still should have way more than enough range on the battery to do two days worth of commute even if you suddenly find out the trickle charge didn't work.
Right, but I should buy a house with a garage first.
>> charge when you're getting groceries as the shop has multiple 100kW
Unless you do groceries in unusual time, those chargers are occupied. Will you wait in line then?
We get 230V/16A from a bog standard outlet, three phase is triple that.
Until you do the math and realize that the 3-4 annual trips of multiple days would end up costing thousands of dollars in rental fees per year. Plus the usual inconveniences around renting.
Suddenly the math does not look so appealing.
First, 3-4 annual multi-day trips that go for longer than 300 km? If one has that amount of disposable income to afford that, go for whatever the biggest Tesla is and use Superchargers along the route, even drives so long they're a safety issue on its own due to fatigue don't get that much longer due to charging because kids will need to go to the toilet every so often even with an ICE.
As for the rental fees: here in Germany, I just checked - a Mercedes Benz Vito, so up to 8 people (or 6 people plus a ton of luggage), that's 50€ a day here. Crossing four digits takes 20 days of rental, that's a lot of vacation time even by European standards.
That is probably why the american road trip is a dying animal. Past a days drive you are coming way behind just flying straight there.
Indeed... but now, think of the price difference between a small-ish commute EV and a chungus EV or ICE. Easily tens of thousands of dollars, that's a lot of days worth of rent.
> Also expect to arrive and be told they can't fill your reservation as they are out of cars.
That's extremely fucking rare to happen. In the eventuality your reservation can't be filled, you'll usually get upgraded for free. Personally, got upgraded from a small VW Golf class to a VW Phaeton once, plus a day for free. And automatic, no stick shift like the Golf.
Not having any rental cars is very common in my experience. I'm often renting in smaller cities though (like the rental car place just a couple miles from my house), I've never heard of problems in big tourist destinations or large cities.
TL;DR is many EVs and hybrids (especially European ones) have tonnes of design faults with e-motors and power-electronics that not only make them ticking time bombs(not in the explosive sense) out of warranty, but also have malicious DRM making third party parts impossible to source, and repairs difficult and eye watering expensive even if theoretically EVs should be more reliable on paper than ICE cars.
Maybe the EU should focus more on EV/auto repairability regulations instead of smartphones and USB-C widgets.
Luckily EV Clinic is working hard on breaking the DRM and reverse engineering parts to make and sell aftermarket ones, but this shouldn't be needed in the first place if the OEMs weren't so bad at design, greedy and hostile to consumers and aftermarket repairs.
Seriously, we need regulations here ASAP. The free market doesn't work here for the consumer when OEMs all do the same anti consumer things.
> The EU did put in regulations, but they did the opposite and essentially mandated DRM
is the same statement as:
> following the posts of EV Clinic it seems like [the EU did] the opposite
Where both posts use "the opposite" to mean "the opposite of creating in regulations to enforce repairability" .
FYI: Mercedes Benz hybrids have a full(*) battery warranty. What's the asterisk you ask? The warranty only covers repairs up to the car's current value. Which has plummeted over the few years you've owned it and the cost of the battery is absolutely ridiculous. Like "buy 3 used Leafs" ridiculous.
Most hybrid batteries are also blobs of molten plastic and silicone that can't be repaired at all. EV batteries are constructed of semi-standard cells and can be opened and repaired piecemeal by specialist shops. Official repairs usually just swap the whole thing - again for a massive cost.
Maybe they should do both.
I rented a PHEV in Spain, and this was the biggest issue. Every charger has an app. They want all your information, even your home address, before charging. Most of them error out after you try to make it work in the 44 °C / 110 °F Spanish sun.
After trying five charging apps and only succeeding in one, I gave up charging completely because of the horrible experience. I wonder why EVs don't save credit information in the vehicle and negotiate payment with them via some sort of "Cable API" or something. Or even you know, use tap to pay PoS like every normal transaction does.
The Camry has a drag coefficient of about 0.36.
The Leaf is about 0.28.
https://ecomodder.com/wiki/Vehicle_Coefficient_of_Drag_List
Drag coefficient matters a lot for EVs. Air resistance reduces the range of all cars, but you notice the decrease in an EV. (When I plan a long trip, I use windy.com to see if I'll have a headwind or a tailwind and I plan accordingly.)
That's why EVs look different. And why EV trucks often have terrible range, even though they have more room for batteries.
Something the size of a Camry would be totally fine as an EV. Lucid Air is approximately this shape and is a great EV.
(And at lower speeds, drivetrain and tire friction become bigger factors.)
There are 20A 120V circuits too! Called NEMA 5-20, one of its prongs is rotated. You plug that into a receptacle where one of the slots is T-shaped instead of straight. And it's standard practice for EVs to draw 80% of the maximum current, so 16A it is. I see this plug in larger machines in the office, like a large photocopier or a large vacuum.
220V has a real advantage in boiling water fast in traditional kettles though (I used to live in china and they were twice as fast as the ones in America). It is almost worth getting a 220V outlet in a kitchen just to support fast water kettles.
They are also heavier, so need different set ups in order to handle decently.
But, that's why they look so different.
Yes EVs can keep their weight low, but it's a lot more weight to deal with.
Yes EVs have excellent 0-60, but that's just because they have a great launch. Even doing a 5-60 pull removes the EV advantage. Starting from highway speeds? EVs start to look real slow.
There are some good traits to EVs but, outside of launching hard in street car trim, performance is not one of them.
It's not M5 BMW hard, but it's hard. I guess that if you have a performance variant then maybe it would be.
Even with the benefits of EV packaging, manufacturers chose to make them “different” on purpose, which really put off the vast majority of buyers. Tesla had so much success because they were practically the first manufacturer to make something look somewhat normal and have good stats.
Now, BMW finally learned and has their 4 and 5 series EV cars share a common platform with the ICE. There is no physical difference in style other than the front grill.
The first gen leaf got a lot of commentary about this "EV look" and the contemporary Nissan Note had a similar front end. And then both got 2nd gens that evolved similarly.
Their Juke could be an overinflated Leaf at a glance etc.
Wikipedia photos:
1st gen:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Note#/media/File:2005_N...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Leaf#/media/File:2017_N...
2nd gen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Note#/media/File:Nissan...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Leaf#/media/File:Nissan...
I've found myself taking a second look at a bunch of ICE cars recently as they've all started trying to copy elements from electric car design...
All this to say what he really needs was an electrically assisted bicycle instead of a huge and heavy energy wasting vehicle.
And that was without electric assist. When I look at the low average speed and time spent in car when I use one in an urban area, it just doesn't make any sense in most cities.
But the safety issue is another story though. Every time I relocated I took that parameter into account before choosing a new place.
The big secret with bike commuting is that in urban setting on surface streets, its actually the fastest way to get around short of a motorcycle or helicopter. Yes, much faster than cars, thanks to lane splitting.
But I would not want to be caught in the ever changing weather here on an ebike. Maybe if it had a shell to protect the rider, but then we're getting into it being too pricey for an ebike range.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIQ-RROpls0
Yes, this involves lying on your back with a 700 lb battery held up by jacks just inches above your head. But heck, services are expensive these days so it's going to happen.
The choice was
I'm so glad we picked the e-golf! It's so fast and nice to drive and cheap to run. Only downside is the limited range (200km on a summer day) but even my commute (100km one-way) is OK as I can charge at work and home.That said, we still have a Touran for when we need to drive further or with lots of luggage.
If only the chairs in the eGolf were a bit better...
The 400+hp Teslas are super-expensive to insure here in Sweden. Like 3x the price of only slightly cheaper, but less powerful EVs.
The supercharger network seems effortless & flawless -- almost too good. No payments, planning. The stations are clean, quiet & secluded. Just follow the Nav and charge.
The third-party network has been a disaster for my neighbor. He's had to back track many times, even on ~ 2 hr trips. The chargers are broken, causing him to double-back even more. On a recent trip the only working charger was next to a gas station and the fumes made his wife sick. He has 4+ apps to manage charging payments .
How on earth do people tolerate other EVs?
1. You charge at home and typically drive relatively short distances, meaning you almost never have to interact with a commercial charger; or 2. If you need to rely on commercial chargers, you live in a part of the world where Tesla was never allowed to build a charging network monopoly (i.e anywhere outside the US), or in a part of the US where there's decent fast charging infrastructure
It sounds like your neighbour is unfortunate to require relatively frequent charging at commercial charging stations, in a part of the world where Tesla was allowed to build out a charging network monopoly.
It's not a "part of the world" it's Portland Metro area where millions live.
But if course CHAdeMO is dying. NACS is second best because it's less bulky than CCS, and NACS is winning in the US so the situation is less bad than it might have been.
Are you worried or thought about resale value? Do you plan to keep it for long?
That would be the only reason to get that car now days! Can the car just drive without Internet. I want my car to be my not connected to cloud for all kinds crap.
The software is pretty shit. Lagging and annoying. But apple/android play stops that.
As a car its smooth, quiet, and fast if you need to be. The only annoyance driving wise is that it doesn't have adaptive cruise control, and the reverse/drive/neutral switch always returns to the middle, so you can't tell what mode its set to without looking at it
Battery management on Zoés is fine ; it doesn't have the overheating problem that plagues the Leaf and the VW e-Up in particular; it doesn't have the "very slow charge when cold" problem of many cheap EVs with LiFePO4 batteries, though it charges up quite slowly (10-80% in 50 minutes).
Someone I know recently bought a 135HP 52kWh Zoé without CCS-2 and 22kW AC charge for 7500€. That's a real bargain, it'sequivalent for all practical purposes (but long travel) to a brand new 30000€ R5 :)
It's like a "lite" version of how some cars make you enter a stupid cheat code to reset your oil change reminder or some other thing that should just be in settings.
Oops. My work daily is the same Leaf, my personal car is a '95 1.8 Turbo Miata. The Leaf suffers.
Both I and the owner were very impressed. They ordered the 100mile battery pack, which was very expensive, but it has been great in the long run.
I think it was like 81% cheaper than a gasoline trip at the time not including long term wear and tear. ( Ware and Tare?$#).
I think the Nissan Leaf is the very best of the bunch.
> There is no 'play/pause' button. Anywhere. At least not on the steering wheel or the display area. You have to go into the music section on the entertainment display, then press the software play/pause button. That's dumb.
My new to me 2023 Honda Odyssey has the same stupid issue. It's my first vehicle with a touch screen, and I have a lot of trouble hitting the pause button especially when I'm trying to mute it because I need to pay extra attention to the road. WHY is there not just a Play/Pause button on the wheel!? Or at least a physical button on the dashboard.
Also, this is my last Nissan. I have been thoroughly disappointed with the super buggy and laggy head unit in this thing and it is apparently a common theme for Nissan.
My 2016 Ford with CarPlay was rock solid.
i hate it too
The "how to juice your car" question is pretty much solved on the electrical and communications side... but the "how do you pay for the juice" question is indeed absurd. I understand that providers of high capacity charging stations wish to charge a bit extra because a single 200 kW+ DC charger quickly reaches 40k € in pure hardware cost, in addition to the installation cost and the regular swapping of cables due to thieves. But why the EU and the US governments haven't stepped in yet and mandated either a "roaming" standard (where my primary billing contact would be a regular electric utility with a set base price per kWh and optional surcharges for high-capacity chargers or stations in high demand) or acceptance of all common credit and debit cards is way beyond me.
Instead, it's not just multiple vendors, apps and payment methods - it's also a (sometimes wild) difference in price depending on how you pay, at the same station. In contrast, at each gas station there is a sign that's visible from afar stating the exact price for your fuel, with the only thing one might hope for is a 1 cent discount for high volume diesel fuel pumps (aka, your truck's hole is big enough to fit a truck diesel nozzle) and a further 1 cent discount from some sort of loyalty reward scheme.
- card acceptance is only required for 50 kW+ chargers. All the relatively low power chargers at supermarkets, shopping malls and other public venues? They can get by with offering QR codes that are all too often abused for phishing campaigns [2][3] and still have the issue with requiring some sort of app.
- the "card acceptance" may also be fulfilled by PSD2 compliant mobile banking apps, so if you got a rooted phone (where Google Pay is a cat-and-mouse game), a phone whose vendor is under sanctions and thus doesn't get the Google ecosystem or don't want to involve Google Pay, Apple Pay, PayPal or the likes in your daily life, you're screwed just as well at these charger points
On top of that, the standard to publish pricing information to the public coordination exchange is a hot XML/SOAP mess [4].
[1] https://nationale-leitstelle.de/ladeinfrastruktur-im-eu-kont...
[2] https://www.adac.de/news/verkehr-quishing-parkautomaten/
[3] https://www.adac.de/news/auto-quishing-betrug-ladesaeule/
[4] https://nationale-leitstelle.de/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/M...
The neutral and parking brake issues: that just by itself should make Nissan stocks plummet. 2025 and we have these issues? It definitely looks an involution to me.
Things we humans are still lame at: adapters. Power adapters, cable data adapters. Why do we have bazillions adapters?
Can't we just design one adapter for the whole world that makes happy both manufacturers and customers? If not governments should step in and force manufacturers to include all adapters ever needed as part of a car purchase. That you have to spend more money just to charge a car because of the adapter is ridiculous.
If EVs are in this line of quality/user experience in general, thanks I'll pass and get something reliable and old school that actually works as expected.
Edit: And we don't need mobile apps to control our cars. Another really stupid and ridiculous idea that has been pushed to customers when no-one actually asked for that.
As if regulations work. They seem to have very strange situations over there.
Come to think of it, I have no idea how to get my car in to neutral.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuling_Hongguang_Mini_EV
"In 2020, the Mini EV had a price starting at US$4,162, and topped out at US$5,607 for a fully loaded model, making it China's cheapest electric car."
Where I am there is a decent rail network, and the rail provider has a fleet of EVs for rent, where the cost of the electricity is included. This provides a "green" last mile solution even if the public transport itself in each area may be lacking (often it's not however).
So a trip looks like this:
Hop on the train which quickly takes the lion's-share of the travelling distance, then switch to an EV that fills the gap to the final destination/s. Then do this process in reverse to get home.
This approach solves the largest problems presented by the author.
What the USA lacks is a robust network. The spread of rail is too thin to be useful for everyday use.
The only time it makes sense to buy an EV is if it's used.
Edit: He bought used.
> You should never purchase EVs, only lease them. That's what I did. This saves you from the terrible depreciation they have.
> The only time it makes sense to buy an EV is if it's used.
Coming in too hot, friend! The headline, and opening line, is that it is a used EV.
the artile is a guy who drives his cars 'into the ground' - he wouldn't care about value he cares about how long it will run.
[1] chassis+body+suspension basically a car without powertrain and interior trim
You can lease a used Tesla Model 3 for $5k/24mo. Say the used Leaf was $15k, it would need to be worth at least $10k in 2027.