Results matching “Price”

Electric vehicles are awesome for local driving. Driving within the single-charge range of an electric vehicle is more fun, more convenient, and cheaper than driving a gas car. Many people are drawn to the idea that they can abandon gas stations, fuel at home, drive 130 miles for the cost of a gallon of gas and all in a car that has a quiet ride and instant, smooth acceleration that can't be matched by a gas car.

In September, we finally got our Nissan Leaf. We had signed up very early in the process, and could have had a Leaf in the spring of 2011, but we decided to put our order on hold until they offered the cold weather package. It was worth the wait!

It's now our primary vehicle and we've put just over 2,000 miles on the odometer. Here's our review of the experience so far.

The Good

Driving Experience We've been driving electric since 2008, so it's easy for us to forget how much better the driving experience is with an electric drive train. The accelerator pedal on the Leaf gives instant, smooth response: you push, it takes off. There's no waiting for a gear shift, and no slow climb to full acceleration the way you have to wait for a gas car to rev up the engine speed to maximum torque, then have to shift gears and repeat. It's just smooth, rapid acceleration all the way. I'm sadly reminded of this every time I fly somewhere and am forced to rent a clunky gas-burner.

Braking The Leaf also features regenerative braking. In a gas car, if you want to slow down you have to hit the brakes. This costs you money twice: you're throwing away the kinetic energy of the car and you're wearing out your brake pads. With regenerative braking, you use the motor as a generator to slow the car and charge the battery pack, plus you avoid wearing out the brakes. Even more than the cost savings, regenerative braking shines when going down a hill. In a gas car, you have to ride the brakes or downshift. Riding the brakes is bad as it heats up the pads and can present a safety issues on long downslopes. Downshifting, or engine braking, is better except that you have to chose one of a few gears. With regenerative braking, you can smoothly control your speed with your right foot, whether you're accelerating up to speed, or holding your speed going downhill. Friction brakes work just as on a gas car when you need to stop quickly.

Controls The Leaf has a built-in touch screen for controlling the navigation system and the audio system (AM, FM, CD, iPod/MP3 player, and the ability to subscribe to satellite radio), as well as viewing car information and setting preferences. There are tactile controls on the steering wheel for the audio system and cruise control, and tactile controls around the touchscreen so you can control the vital systems by touch without taking your eyes off the road.

Backup Camera The 2011 Leaf SL package adds a backup camera displayed on the large center console screen. With the camera, it's so much easier to back up whether it's out of a parking spot in a crowded lot, backing into a spot, or just being able to back up against an edge or wall when getting out of a tight spot. I'm now spoiled and miss this feature when driving a car that doesn't have it.

Touchless Keyless Entry The Leaf detects the keyfob wirelessly so that when you are right next to the car, you can just push a button on the handle to lock or unlock the doors or the hatch. You don't have to fumble to pull your keys out of your pocket or purse, which is incredibly handy when you have an armload of groceries. It's the same for starting the car, no fooling with a key, you just push a button and the car starts as long as the fob is inside the car with you. The car knows the location of the keyfob with enough precision that it won't let you lock the keys in the car and can warn you with a beep if you get out of the car without turning it off.

Quiet Ride It's widely reported that electric cars are quiet; some even wrongly claim they are silent. Electric cars don't have noisy internal combustion engines that have to be muffled. At low speeds they can be surprisingly quiet, although you quickly learn to recognize their unique sound even when they creep up slowly behind you. At speeds above 20 mph or so, they make the same noise as a typical gas car does, which consists mostly of tire noise.

That's the story outside the car. Inside the car, it's tricky to do a good job of insulating road noise while keeping the vehicle weight low to maximize efficiency and range. Even if you get rid of the dominant road noise, you just make it possible to hear all sorts of little sounds that you wouldn't notice in a less insulated car. This is especially difficult when there's no engine noise to mask other drivetrain noises. This is the reason for the Leaf's unusual protruding headlights: they deflect airflow around the side view mirrors to get rid of a wind noise you wouldn't even notice in a noisy gas car.

Our two other electric vehicles sound just like the Leaf from the outside, but inside the Leaf is a completely different experience, by far the quietest riding car we've ever owned. I haven't seen the data, but I suspect it's on par with heavily sound engineered luxury sedans that cost far more than the Leaf.

Cold Weather Comfort Because the Leaf uses electric power to heat the car, it doesn't have to wait for an engine to heat up before it can start blowing warm air. The cold weather package (now a standard feature on the 2012 Leaf) adds heated seats (front and rear), heated side mirrors, and a heated steering wheel. If you're driving in the cold, there's nothing more wonderfully decadent than a heated steering wheel. With the cold weather package, the heated seats and the steering wheel get warm even faster than the cabin air.

The cold weather package also adds a battery heater for really cold climates. That's not an issue in Seattle where we rarely see temperatures below 20°F, but is important in more extreme climates.

Remote Control and Monitoring Using a wireless communications system called Carwings, we can monitor the car remotely to check things like the state of charge. The system sends us a text message if we pull into the garage but forget to plug in.

We can also tell the car to pre-heat from our phones. This is something that just can't be done with a gas car sitting in your garage where running the engine would fill the garage, and possibly the house, with deadly carbon monoxide. If the car is plugged in, it uses grid power for the pre-heating, so it doesn't reduce our range. Most of the time, our driving is nowhere near any concern about range, so we use the pre-heat feature even when it uses battery power to warm the car for our return after it has been sitting in a cold parking lot.

Fuel Cost At the US average cost for electricity (11 cents per kWh), the Leaf can drive 30 to 35 miles per dollar of electricity. If gas costs $4/gallon, that's the equivalent of getting about 130 miles per gallon, not in a gutless, rattling economy box, but in a quiet, comfortable car with excellent acceleration.

If the savings in fuel cost is applied to a buyer's monthly car payment, the Leaf is an incredibly affordable car.

Convenient Fueling The Leaf is best suited for local driving, which fortunately accounts for more than 90% of the typical American's driving. If you can use the Leaf for your local driving, you'll find plugging in overnight to be far more convenient than going to a gas station. Especially if you share a car, you've no doubt experienced the rude surprise of needing to make a detour to a gas station, spend time waiting in line, and pump gas when you're already running late. The Leaf is fully charged every morning with just a few seconds of effort required to plug it in at night, about as much time as it takes to plug in a cell phone. Charge time varies with how far you've driven, anywhere from a few minutes to eight hours, but it doesn't matter at all because it happens while you're sleeping.

I know many people think charging time will be an issue, but I just laugh when I see people waiting in a 20-minute line to save a few pennies per gallon at Costco. Driving electric, I pay the equivalent of $0.99 per gallon of gasoline and fueling takes just a few seconds of my time per day. I can only imagine how long the line would be if Costco sold gas for $0.99 per gallon. I get that price and I can charge up in my garage where there's always shelter from the elements and never a wait.

The Bad

Nissan has done an amazing job with their first full production electric vehicle. It's the most comfortable car Cathy and I have ever owned. It's a wonderful car, with no competition whatsoever at any price when considering the comfort and convenience it offers plus the liberation of not being hostage to wildly fluctuating gas prices. However, Nissan got it wrong on two important aspects of driving electric. The good news is that new electric vehicle drivers will get all of the benefits mentioned previously before they notice these more subtle shortcomings.

Increasing Range Anxiety Range anxiety is the irrational fear of running out of power even when an electric car has plenty of range for your driving needs. The way the Leaf presents information about the car's state of charge causes range anxiety. The dash shows in large numbers an estimate of your remaining range. That sounds pretty reasonable, but it has to make an assumption about how you will be driving for the rest of the trip. The Leaf assumes you'll be driving the same as you have been for some unknown period of time. Unless you do all of your driving under exactly the same conditions, same steady speed and constant slope, that estimate is going to be wrong pretty much all the time since it fluctuates wildly as conditions change.

The best information we get is a 12-segment display that displays the state of charge in approximately 8% increments. The problem is you can't tell where you are in the bar. Suppose I drive from work to the grocery store and the gauge drops from 8 bars to 6 bars. That could be from the top of bar 8 to the bottom of bar 6 (almost three bars, or 24%) or from the bottom of bar 8 to the top of bar 6 (just over one bar, or 8%). That's a big difference.

While the estimated range can be useful in some circumstances, Nissan should give us a way to display the car's state of charge as a percentage. I understand that there is some inherent uncertainty in computing the precise amount of energy remaining, but the raw state of charge should be presented to the driver with the same precision as the estimated miles. Having this information would help drivers better understand their energy use and increase the Leaf's usable range. This is such an important piece of information that owners have figured out a way to display the state of charge by tapping into the Leaf's on-board diagnostic port.

Denying the Best Feature of Electric Driving The regenerative braking offered by an electric car dramatically improves the driving experience. Once you get feel of driving electric, it's a joy be able to control your speed with just one pedal: push down to speed up, lift to slow down. Whether it's uphill or downhill, speeding up an on ramp or slowing down for an exit, you do it all with the accelerator pedal. It's far more natural than how it works on a gas car, it's just different from how we all learned to drive. Nissan was apparently concerned about making the Leaf feel as much like a gas car as possible so as not to scare away consumers afraid of change. To do this, they have two modes, normal and economy mode. In normal mode, there's a limited amount of regenerative braking on the the right pedal. In economy mode, there's more regenerative braking, but acceleration is dampened out. You can get the same acceleration in eco mode as normal mode, you just have to push the pedal farther down.

I want maximum regenerative braking, so I always drive in eco-mode. This makes the accelerator less responsive unless I really push it. I would much prefer a more typical pedal response with the maximum regenerative braking. It's also annoying that the drive mode doesn't persist, I have to put it into eco-mode every time I start driving.

Conclusion

Nissan clearly leveraged what they learned from making the world's first factory-made lithium-ion electric car over ten years ago* to create an incredible first generation production electric vehicle.

The comfort features of the Leaf make it worth the sticker price, even if it had a gas drive train. With efficiency that can't be matched by an internal combustion engine and fueled with cheap domestic electricity, the savings in total cost of owning and driving the Leaf make it the uncontested winner in value for its class of comfort and driving experience, in many ways superior to all gas-powered cars at any price. Add in the environmental benefits and the satisfaction of knowing your fuel dollars stay in the US instead of pouring into the global oil market that threatens our national security as well as our economy, and no other car on the market offers the value of the Nissan Leaf.

If you're in the market for a new car, and typically drive under 60 miles per day, and already own a gas car that you can use for those few longer trips, you owe it to yourself to test drive a Nissan Leaf before investing in another gas car.

* The all-electric Nissan Altra built to satisfy California's short-lived zero-emissions mandate from 1997 to 2003.

In 1983, I was a math grad student at the University of Utah. I was a student representative on an administrative committee and heard about a top secret Apple demo where they had been shown a new computer that "looked like it was something out of Star Wars." The next year, every department at the university got two Macintosh computers with 128 KB of RAM, a 400 KB floppy drive, an 8 MHz CPU, and a 512x342 black and white screen.


This was cutting edge, state-of-the art computing, something that, back then, looked like it was straight out of science fiction, and one of them landed in the grad student lounge where we could figure out what it meant.

updated 9/6/2011 2:42 pm: added nerdy charge graph

Last week, Cathy and I took the Roadster for a car show and week of island hopping through Washington's San Juan Islands and Vancouver Island in British Columbia. It was a lovely trip and unique in our EV road trip experiences in that we did the entire 450-mile trip using only 120V charging.

We are frequently asked where we charge our electric cars. The question is often accompanied by a pained expression that tries to offer sympathy for the sacrifice we make by driving electric. The answer is: mostly at home. People are frequently surprised to learn we have found it to be more convenient than going to a gas station.

Occasionally, we take a trip that requires charging on the road. That generally requires planning and finding electric vehicle charging stations. For this trip, there were some charging stations available, but they turned out to be both overpriced and unnecessary. We had chosen B&Bs that would allow us to charge from normal household outlets. On one island this was a big help as there were two otherwise equivalent choices: one that wanted to charge us $20 to use $1.60 worth of electricity and another that said we could do it for free. We gave our business to the one that didn't think we were incapable of doing math. Since we were taking a leisurely tour, and mostly on small islands, overnight charging at 120V was plenty for our daily driving needs.

The convenience of being able to fuel up from any outlet became especially apparent when we drove past this gas station in Sooke, BC.

We were on our way to Port Renfrew, some 45 miles further west along the southern coast of Vancouver Island. Had we been in a gas car, this would have been our last chance to gas up before our return, some 90 miles for the roundtrip plus any side excursions. Because we were in an electric car, and outlets are far more common than gas stations, we didn't care.

At Port Renfrew, we were going to be staying in a yurt at the Soule Creek Lodge. We'd contacted them in advance and knew they had an outlet we could use to charge the car. Charging at 120V only yields about 3 to 5 miles of range per hour of charging, which is painfully slow if you are waiting while you charge, but totally adequate if you're sleeping through it.

Our one night there, we picked up 53 miles of range, which was plenty to get us through the next day's driving.

My only regret for the trip was not getting a photo at Wildwood Manor on San Juan Island where we had deer grazing next to our charging car. Somehow you just never see deer grazing at a gas station.

Nerdy Charge Graph

Here's a graph of our state of charge for the trip. It shows the car's range in standard mode ideal miles, which means we can go that many miles at 55 to 60 mph on the highway, with another 25 miles in reserve.

The first steep dive is the 90-mile drive to Anacortes, WA, to catch the ferry. Then there's a flat spot while we wait five hours after missing the cut-off for the unexpectedly popular first ferry by 5 minutes. Over the next three nights, we charged up overnight on Lopez and San Juan islands working back to a full standard mode (90%) charge, then a fourth charge returned us to full again. There are also a couple of little afternoon charges in there. The fifth charge is in Victoria, BC, after which the car stayed parked for a full day, then we did a range mode charge prior to departing for Port Renfrew. The overnight at Soule Creek Lodge got us back up to the top of standard mode (about 190 ideal miles). Finally, the long 170-mile drive home with a short stop for lunch then a longer stop for the ferry ride. We got home with 10 miles of range left (thanks to my heavy right foot as it became clear we had plenty of charge), plus the 25 miles in reserve. The last spike shows the steep slope of 240V/32A charging at home.

A LEAF could do a pretty similar trip. Depending on the starting point, it might need a little charging on the way to Anacortes (like spending an hour or two at a J1772 charging station at the Burlington outlet malls instead of spending five hours in the ferry line). Instead of spending two nights with a full day in Victoria (where we didn't drive or charge), spend one night in Victoria on the way out and the second night on the way back.

Cathy and I were invited to show our Tesla Roadster in the Eco-Center at the 2011 Portland International Auto Show. Tesla Motors didn't have the resources to participate, so we and Chad Schwitters agreed to show our cars and represent Plug In America in promoting electric vehicles.

If you are interested in driving an electric vehicle, I'd like to tell you how to ensure that you'll have a great experience, or at least make sure you don't have a disappointing experience.

Here's the secret formula for EV success: make sure the range of the vehicle suits the driving you plan to do with it. I know that sounds pretty obvious and easy, but there are two big barriers to success: bad reporting in the media and obfuscation by the automakers. There's also a bit of complexity: just like gas mileage, you can't express EV range with a single number. I'll get that all straightened out from the perspective of someone who has been driving all electric for almost two years.

In addition to the general facts of driving electric, we recently got some more specific range numbers for the upcoming Nissan Leaf which I'd like to put into perspective for potential buyers.

Reporting the Obvious and Irrelevant

If you follow EV coverage in the press, you'll find a steady stream of articles from reporters who think they've discovered the flaw that will deflate all of the hype about EVs. Their basic premise is that EVs won't work because they take too long to charge and there's nowhere to charge them. These articles are either totally made up, or based on the bad experience of a single EV driver and don't represent the real experience of the majority of EV drivers who purchased a vehicle appropriate for their needs. My purpose here is to make sure you don't become the excuse for some lazy reporter to write yet another of these uninsightful articles.

Would a newspaper publish an article about a Ford Focus owner who was disappointed that he couldn't fit his wife and seven kids in the car? How about a Honda Civic owner who's mad her car isn't suited for towing an RV? A Hummer owner who's mad about how much it costs to drive a mile? Of course not, these would be laughably obvious mistakes made by the owner in choosing a car.

For the consumer properly informed on the benefits and limits of electric vehicles, it's equally obvious that buying an EV with a 75-mile range to do a daily 74-commute with no charging infrastructure isn't going to yield a happy driver. That's obvious and boring.

The real story is that there is no problem with range or lack of charging infrastructure if you can just charge at home to meet your driving needs, instead it's a real convenience not to have to fuel your car away from home. So let's see if you qualify...

The Rule

To be a happy EV owner today, you want to buy a car that has enough single-charge range to handle all of your daily driving with a reasonable buffer for typical errands without needing to charge anywhere other than your charger. (Your charger is probably installed at your home but might also be at your work location.)

The good news is that for most drivers, the required range is surprisingly low. A 2003 US Department of Transportation survey (PDF) found that 78% of Americans drive less than 40 miles a day. If you're in the 78%, and don't often have big exceptions to that daily commute distance, then an EV that gets at least 70 miles of range in your driving conditions will most likely make you one happy camper. (But keep reading to learn how to evaluate EV range.)

Starting this fall, we'll start to see a lot of chargers getting installed in a few metro areas in the US and other countries. As this happens, and EV ownership goes up, more and more charging will become available and convenient. As that happens, charging away from your home charger will become more dependable and the usable range of EVs will expand as a result. For example, if you can charge at home and at work, then the usable range of an EV is doubled because you only need to travel one way on a single charge (with a reasonable buffer).

Since there's going to be limited availability of affordable, practical, freeway-capable EVs in the near future (as in zero today, and a few thousand Nissan Leafs starting to trickle out starting in December of this year, then more from other automakers to follow), it's OK if the first few models of EVs don't work for you, they will work for millions of potential buyers. Wait for an EV that will be right for your driving needs.

The Win

After you've driven electric for a month, spending just a few seconds to plug in each night to start every day with a full charge, without ever having to stop at a gas station, you'll wonder how you ever tolerated the hassles of driving a gas burner.

In addition, the experience of driving electric is just better: you get instant acceleration without waiting for the engine to rev up and the transmission to shift, another nuisance of driving gas that you'll only notice when you get used to driving without it.

Bonus: no tailpipe emissions, low-to-zero emissions from electricity generation, and never having to worry about the price at the gas pump.

Evaluating EV Range

Just like gas mileage, EV range can't be expressed as a single number. Even the two EPA city and highway gas mileage numbers you see on vehicle stickers don't tell the whole story. This is such a big issue with gas cars, the caveat "your mileage may vary" has become part of our cultural vernacular.

Let's start by going over how gas mileage works. Those gas mileage numbers on the sticker in the window are determined by driving the car on two standard EPA driving profiles meant to simulate typical driving conditions, which have been recently revised to better represent actual driving conditions by including things like using air conditioning on part of the cycle.

Gas mileage depends on a number of factors, including passenger and cargo weight, HVAC use, start/stop frequency, road incline, rain/snow, and so forth, but the biggest factor is speed. At low speeds, gas mileage suffers because there's an overhead of running/idling an engine that burns fuel whether you're moving or not. Stop and go traffic is also bad news, because you invest energy in speeding up only to throw all it all away by converting your car's momentum into heat plus wear and tear on your brake pads. At higher speeds gas mileage suffers because wind resistance goes up rapidly with speed, so much so that it takes more energy per mile in a way that starts increasing dramatically at the low end of freeway speeds. Somewhere in the middle, at a moderate, steady speed, is where you get your maximum gas mileage.

Electric vehicles behave similarly, except they get punished less in stop and go traffic because, like hybrids, they can slow down with regenerative braking wherein the motor is driven by the drivetrain to act as a generator to put charge back into the batteries. This not only improves energy efficiency, but also reduces brake wear.

Given this complexity, how can an automaker tell you how your gas or electric car will perform under your driving conditions? Answer: they can't.

While you can argue that it's even more important to understand energy efficiency (in the form of single-charge range) for an electric vehicle, there's the ugly truth about burning gas that no one likes to talk about: it's no good for predicting long-term fuel costs. With a proliferation of gas stations everywhere, range isn't something you think about for a gas car. What you do think about is your pocketbook. Better mileage means cheaper stops at the gas station. While knowing your gas mileage might tell you what you'll be spending at the pump this month, it doesn't say anything about what you'll be paying next month or next year. Anything from a hurricane, to Wall Street speculators, to a political action by OPEC, to the whim of some oil nation tyrant can cause gas prices to double by barely nudging the precarious balance between world oil supply and demand. Electricity rates are far more stable, especially when it comes from renewable sources that aren't subject to the unpredictable economic forces that rule the world's fossil fuel energy market.

How can a potential buyer figure out if a given EV has the range required to convert from the hassles of driving gas to the joy of driving electric? Read on...

Case Study: the Range of a Tesla Roadster

For most people, buying a $109,000 two-seat sports car is totally out of the question, whether it's a gas-burning Ferrari or an all-electric Tesla Roadster. Being able to go from 0 to 60 mph in under four seconds isn't going to get the kids to school or bring home the groceries from Costco. But, as of this writing, Tesla Motors is the only automaker selling a production, freeway capable electric vehicle in the US. If you dig a little, their web site provides a wealth of information about driving electric that will be of help to any potential EV driver.

The best illustration I have found of the effect of speed on efficiency, and thus range, is this graph from Tesla Motors showing how the Roadster's range varies with speed, while holding other factors constant at favorable values (constant speed, no AC, no driving up a mountain, etc.).



The EPA range number for the Roadster is 244 miles. From the graph, you can see that you get that range driving at about 55 mph. If you have to pick one number to describe range for a Roadster encompassing city and highway driving, this is a pretty good choice, and it's a real number that I've personally verified as much as possible without actually driving the car until it stops. Likewise, the value of about 180 miles for 70 mph matches my real-world experience. Simon Hackett and co-driver Emilis Prelgauskas came close to the graph's 34 mph range number by driving 313 miles on a single charge in Australia last year. Perhaps someone will be patient enough to try out the 17 mph peak on the graph at over 400 miles of range, but that would be a very long drive!

I'd say Tesla did a good job here, picking a reasonable single number for stating range based on some combination of the EPA city and highway cycles. They also provide the graph showing the whole story, at least with respect to speed, although to find it you have to dig down into their blog entries to find the article with the graph and full explanation.

But there's a bit more to the story that requires more digging. The above range numbers are for using the entire battery charge from full to empty, something you really don't want to do on a regular basis because it's not good for the life of the battery pack. For normal daily driving, you don't need 244 miles of range, so Tesla provides a "standard" mode of charging that only uses the middle 80% of the battery pack. This will extend the life of the battery pack and still give you 200 miles of range at 55 mph, or about 160 miles at 70 mph. This is between four and five times what most of the drivers in the US need for their daily commute. For daily driving, the range of the Roadster is ridiculously high. Going on a road trip beyond the single charge range is doable, but it requires patience and planning. This situation will get a lot better as high-speed charging stations start to appear later this year.

The numbers also get worse in really hot weather. Last summer I drove from Portland to Seattle in 100-degree weather, about 180 miles. This trip is easy at 55, in fact even at 65 mph it's no problem. But this trip, with the HVAC system using energy to keep the battery pack cool, it took getting off the freeway and careful route planning to reduce both distance and speed to get home without having to stop for a partial charge.

The upshot: if you live in an extreme climate, with either a lot of sub-zero winter days or 100+ degree summer days, you'll want to add more buffer to your required EV range.

The last big issue is aging of the battery pack: as the battery pack ages, its capacity will decrease gradually over time, then drop more rapidly as the battery pack wears out. Our car is performing the same as it did when we got it one year and 9,000 miles ago. Other Roadster owners have crossed the 20,000 mile mark, and so far I haven't heard of anyone noticing a loss of range. Tesla's battery pack warranty is only 3 years or 36,000 miles, which is in line with other high performance sports cars, but is a bit underwhelming compared to their statements of expected battery life, seven years or 100,000 miles. Nissan says their battery pack should last 10 years, and because the Leaf is a much more mainstream vehicle I expect they will offer a much better battery warranty.

Still, if you're planning to drive your new EV for 5 to 10 years, it's not going to be smart to buy an electric car that's right on the edge of meeting your needs with its full factory-fresh range.

Our Electric Garage

In July of 2008, while we were waiting for Tesla to build the Roadster we reserved in 2006, we were fortunate enough to buy a rare 2002 Toyota RAV4-EV from its original owner in Berkeley, CA. If you've seen Who Killed the Electric Car, then you've know what a great electric driving experience the lucky few drivers had during the brief period where California required all of the automakers to find a way to reduce tailpipe emissions to zero.

When we got the RAV4-EV, we expected it would take care of about half of our driving. We were wrong by a wide margin: it took over 95% of our driving. The only time we burned gas was when we each had to be different places at the same time. Despite our EV enthusiasm, we were range anxiety victims and overestimated how much range our driving really required.

In our experience, the RAV4-EV gets about 100 miles per charge. Even staying out of the top 10% and bottom 20% of the battery pack means we can drive 70 miles per charge under our typical driving conditions, and can handle any driving conditions with enough range we don't generally have to think about it.

When our Roadster finally arrived nearly a year later, we were totally converted to the electric driving experience. Having a second electric car meant we didn't have to choose which of us got to drive the smooth, quiet car.

Our hope is that the Leaf will bring this sort of EV capability into the mainstream in an affordable, practical, safe vehicle.

Nissan Leaf Range Numbers

The first range number we heard for the Nissan Leaf was 100 miles using the EPA's LA4 drive cycle. Darryl Siry gets credit for being the first to point out that the LA4 drive cycle is a poor choice for describing EV range as it's a city driving cycle that's nicer to the range than the combined city/highway drive cycle that is used by Tesla. Siry also wrote a great piece on the issues with range numbers and the need for federal regulations on how they are reported which added perspective to my personal experience and helped inform my writing here.

On June 19th 2010, we got some more range numbers from Nissan via Forbes. To summarize:

• Cruising at 38 mph in 68-degree weather: 138 miles.
• Suburban traffic averaging 24 mph, 77 degrees: 105 miles.
• Urban highway, 55 mph, 95-degrees, A/C on: 70 miles.
• Winter city driving, 14 degrees, averaging 15 mph: 62 miles.
• Stop and go urban traffic averaging 6 mph, 86 degrees, A/C on: 47 miles.

The Forbes article is typical anti-EV fear mongering, the facts presented with pithy commentary but no critical analysis. Have you ever read an article on how your gas mileage drops in stop-and-go urban traffic during the heat of summer or the cold of winter and how much that's going to cost you when you're driving your gas-guzzling SUV? Of course not. But you do hear about how it will affect the range of an EV that isn't even on the roads yet. It's great to get more facts, but try to ignore the hand-wringing hysteria that makes it sound like the federal government is about to repossess all of the gas burners and force everyone to drive a Nissan Leaf.

The fact is, the Leaf doesn't have to meet the needs of every driver in the US. It just has to meet the needs of the few thousand people lucky enough to be able to buy one in the next year. Even that worst-case 47 miles is going to be good enough for millions of drivers now (remember that 78% of US drivers commute less than 40 miles per day) and good enough for even more drivers when there are convenient chargers at workplaces and malls.

Is the Leaf's Range Right for You?

I think the best way to figure out what range an EV needs to have to suit your needs is to monitor your driving. Just write down your odometer when you get home each night. From that, you can figure out how far you actually drive. Be sure to get not only your regular daily commute, but also some examples of exceptional days with extra appointments, shopping, detours, etc. If you have an additional vehicle that would supplement your EV, throw out any long drives that you would choose (in advance) to handle with that vehicle. Then add a buffer for the unexpected, and, if it applies, more buffer for the extreme driving conditions that reduce range.

People who haven't driven an EV will be tempted to always have half of the battery in reserve for surprises, but most experienced EV drivers are very comfortable driving down to 30% or even 20%. (With the Roadster where I get great feedback on the state of charge and know it won't hurt the battery, I have no problem driving down to 10%. With the RAV4-EV, which gives less precise info, we try to stay out of the bottom 20%.)

If you commute 70 or more miles per day in a city that regularly has horrible traffic, freezing cold or sweltering hot days, and isn't planning for charging infrastructure, then don't buy a Leaf to be your only car this year. Wait until the cars and the charging better suit your driving needs. There are more than enough of us to buy up every single Leaf Nissan can make in the next 12 months, so don't become fodder for another annoying article about how EVs are impractical because someone bought one that's not suited to their driving.

If the Leaf's range numbers do suit your driving needs and you want to get an early start driving electric, then sign up, right now. They are going to sell fast. But before you fully commit to a purchase, get the information you need to determine if the Leaf will meet your needs, and get that info directly from Nissan. Don't depend on a conversation with your local auto sales drone.

I'm glad we have learned more about the Leaf's range months before anyone will be committed to buying one. Next up I want to see a graph like Tesla gives for the Roadster range vs. speed under optimal driving conditions. I also want to know if the range numbers given are for using the full battery to its maximum range, or if they include allowance for the reserves at the top and bottom of the charge cycle needed to maximize battery life.

If the Leaf will meet your needs, you won't regret switching away from gas. The benefits of charging convenience and drivability are great motivators to be among the early adopters to buy one of the first mainstream factory electric vehicles.

Today, Cathy and I both got to drive the Nissan Leaf test vehicle, apparently a Nissan Versa outfitted with the Leaf's drivetrain. Coincidentally, last week we rented a Versa on vacation, so we were treated to a virtual side-by-side test of gas versus electric. They had a course laid out with cones in a parking lot, which I treated as a small autocross course. The test vehicle handled well and had good pick-up, better than the gas-burning Versa.



Most interesting was how quiet it was. The Roadster has a loud gearbox whine when accelerating, plus road and wind noise. The whine is much quieter than a gas engine doing similar acceleration, but it's not silent. The RAV4-EV has a comparable road noise level, maybe a few dB below the Roadster and minus the loud drivetrain whine. Both the Roadster and RAV4-EV are about 7 to 8 dB noisier than Cathy's parents' Honda Accord doing 60 mph on the same section of average freeway surface. (We measured all three vehicles with a Radio Shack sound level meter.) The Nissan test vehicle was very quiet from the inside, I think quieter than the Accord, but we didn't do any measurements. From the outside, you hear the same tire sound you hear from any decent modern sedan.

Before buying, I'd want to take it for a real test drive, get it up to speed on the freeway, etc. That said, based on our test drive today, I'd highly recommend it to anyone who is an early adopter, very interested in driving an all-electric family sedan, and whose driving habits could be met by the Leaf's range.

That assumes that Nissan doesn't bungle the whole thing by forcing buyers into some ludicrous over-priced battery lease.

The following email was sent to Tesla Motors customers on Tuesday, January 20th.

From: Elon Musk, Tesla Motors
To: Tesla Roadster Customers
Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2009 12:45 pm PST
Subject: The Importance of Options

A much fuller account of the history of Tesla is worth telling at some point, but for now I will just talk about the essentials of why we needed to raise prices on options.  Fundamentally, it boils down to taking the tough steps that are difficult but necessary for Tesla to be a healthy company and not fall prey to the recession.

When the initial base price, for cars after the Signature 100 series, of $92k was approved by the board a few years ago, it was based on an estimated vehicle cost of roughly $65k provided by management at the time.  This turned out to be wrong by a very large margin.

An audit by one of the Series D investors in the summer of 2007 found that the true cost was closer to $140k, which was obviously an extremely alarming discovery and ultimately led to a near complete change in the makeup of the senior management team.  Over the past 18 months, observers will note that Tesla has transformed from having a senior team with very little automotive experience to one with deep automotive bench strength.  We now have executives with world class track records running everything from design to engineering to production to finance.

To bring the cost of the car down, we have reengineered the entire drivetrain, which is now at version 1.5 and will be at version 2 by June.  The body supplier was also switched out from a little company that was charging us nutty money and had a max production of three per week to Sotira, who supplies high paint quality body panels to Lotus, Aston Martin and others.  In the process, we had to pay several million dollars for a whole new set of body tooling, as the old tooling had been made incorrectly.  The old HVAC system was unreliable and cost almost as much as a new compact car, so also had to be replaced.  The wiring harness, seats, navigation system and instrument panel also had to be modified or replaced.

After reengineering and retooling virtually the entire Roadster and completely restructuring our supply chain, we are now finally coming to the point where the variable cost of the car (to be clear, this excludes fixed cost allocation) is between $90k to $100k.  With a lot of additional effort by the Tesla team and the help of our suppliers, we should be at or below $80k by this summer.  There is some variability here due to exchange rate shifts.  Although we gain an automatic currency hedge by selling in both Europe and the US, we are still vulnerable to the Yen, which is very strong right now.

Obviously, this still creates a serious problem for Tesla in the first half of 2009, given the $92k to $98k price of most cars delivered over this time period.  The board and I did not want to do a retroactive increase of the base vehicle price, as that would create an unavoidable hardship for customers.  Instead, apart from a $1k destination charge increase to match our true cost of logistics, we only raised the price of the optional elements and provided new options and a new model (Roadster Sport) to help improve the average margin per car.

The plan as currently projected, and which I believe is now realistic, shows a high likelihood of reaching profitability on the Roadster business this summer.  By that time, we will be delivering cars that have a base price of $109k plus about $20k or so of options (having worked our way through the $92k to $98k early buyers) at a rate of 30 per week.  We are fortunately in the position, rare among carmakers, of not having to worry too much about meeting 2009 sales targets, as we are already sold out through October and have barely touched the European market.

My paramount duty is to ensure that we get from here to there without needing to raise more money in this capital scarce environment, even if things don't go as well as expected.  I firmly believe that the plan above will achieve that goal and that it strikes a reasonable compromise between being fair to early customers and ensuring the viability of Tesla, which is obviously in the best interests of all customers. It's also important to note that the price increases will affect 400 customers, all of whom will take delivery after Jan. 1 and receive a $7,500 federal tax credit. We made the pricing changes to ensure the viability of Tesla in the long term, regardless of government incentives, but we hope the credit will offset the increase for most customers.
 
There is one additional point that relates to the government loans that Tesla is seeking for the Model S program, a much more affordable sedan that we are trying to bring to market as soon as possible.   A key requirement is that any company applying be able to show that it is viable without the loans.  If we allow ourselves to lose money on the cars we are shipping today, we place those loans at risk.  Mass market electric cars have been my goal from the beginning of Tesla.  I don't want and I don't think the vast majority of Tesla customers want us to do anything to jeopardize that objective.

Elon Musk
CEO & Product Architect

Here is the new pricing table updated with the information in the letter sent to Tesla Roadster owners on January 16th. This is an unofficial compilation for comparison purposes, based on my understanding and interpretation of the old and new packages, options and prices. Please post any corrections in the comments.

The email describing the new options and pricing did not detail the cut-off between the old pricing and new pricing, but I believe the new pricing applies to all 2008 model year Roadsters which had not already entered production. I will update as details become available.

Note that there are significant changes from the options communicated to owners nearing production earlier in the week.

The following options were previously available and are now available at adjusted prices and in different bundles:

	Original ($)	Current ($)
SolarPlus Windshield	(included)	400
High Power Connector	(included)	3,000
Forged Alloy Tesla Wheels	(included)	2,300
Painted Hardtop	3,200	3,200
Metallic Paint	500	1,000
Premium Paint	1,000	2,000
Paint Armor	approx 1,400	1,495
Premium Interior	1,800	1,800
Floor Mats	125	150
Mobile Connector (120V/15A & 240V/40A)	350	N/A
Mobile Connector (120V/15A)	N/A	(included)
Mobile Connector (120V/15A) Additional	N/A	600
Mobile Connector (240V/30A)	N/A	1,500
Upgraded Stereo Head Unit with Navigation System	1,200	N/A
Bluetooth	100	N/A
Sat Radio	400	N/A
Premium Speakers	800	N/A
Homelink door opener	(included)	N/A
Electronics Group (includes above 5 items)	N/A	3,000
Destination Charge	950	1,950

The apparent change in the 240V mobile charger from 40A to 30A may be to satisfy regulatory requirements. I will update this when I find out more from Tesla.

These are new options not previously available:

	Price ($)
Executive Leather Interior	6,000
Premium Carbon Fiber and Leather Interior	9,000
Clear Carbon Fiber Hardtop	5,000
Clear Carbon Fiber Accent Group	9,000
Performance Tires	850
Custom Tuned Adjustable Suspension	4,000
Battery Replacement	12,000
Extended Warranty (2yr/24,000 miles, excludes battery)	5,000

At this time, we don't know what the performance tires are or how they compare to the current and previous standard tires. I will update when we learn more.

Price Increase

The price increase for owners who had previously locked in their options depends on which options were chosen and which previously standard options the owner is willing to give up. Here are some examples:

Increase	Scenario
$ 1,000	New base model, losing alloy wheels and SolarPlus windshield, and replacing HPC with 120V/15A mobile connector.
$ 6,700	The previous base model configuration with no options added, which includes the HPC, the SolarPlus windshield and the silver forged alloy Tesla wheels; also gets 120V/15A mobile connector.
$ 9,350	Fully loaded model from previously available options, mobile connector reduced from 240V/40A to 240V/30A.

Revision History

• Jan 17 2009 13:44 PST: revised table of examples to include original base model.
• Jan 17 2009 23:32 PST: confirmed that Homelink transmitter was standard equipment.
  

Update: Tesla Motors announced the new options and pricing to all owners on Friday, January 16th. I've posted an updated analysis.

Tesla Motors is in the process of rolling out price increases to their customers who have pre-ordered a 2008 model year Roadster which has not yet entered production. Customers whose cars are about to enter production, after a two-year wait and a fourteen-month delay, are right now getting phone calls in which they are told they have to accept this price increase and re-select options before their car can go into production. This price increase applies to all 2008 Roadster orders starting with VIN 210.

These 2008 model year customers were given a base price of $92,000 and required to make a substantial deposit at a small start-up company with no experience in producing cars. Those early deposits of $30,000 to $50,000 were used along with investment capital to fund the development and early production of the Roadster. Around the time that Tesla delivered their first production car in February of 2008, they opened orders for 2009 model year cars at an increased base price of $109,000 to reflect both increases in their cost projections and also the then-proven ability of the company to produce cars.

Customers whose cars are going into production this month were required to lock in their option selections in September. All customers with orders for 2008 model year orders, some 600 cars, were required to lock in their selections by November of last year. Tesla Motors is unlocking those selections, raising the prices, and requiring owners to reselect their options with the higher prices.

This is coming as a big surprise to owners being informed of this given that they locked in their options and price months ago. A casual reading of our contract sure makes it sound like once we locked in our choices we were committed to buying the Roadster with those options, and Tesla Motors was committed to delivering that package for the price we agreed to.

Here is the table of original and current options and prices as provided by Tesla Motors on January 14th, 2009.

	Original Price	Current Price
Base Vehicle	$92,000	$92,000
SolarPlus Windshield	(included)	$400
High Power Connector	(included)	$3,000
Mobile Connector	$350	(included)*
Hardtop	$3,200	$3,200
Metallic Paint	$500	$1,000
Premium Paint	$1,000	$2,000
Premium Interior	$1,800	$1,800
Floor Mats	$125	$150
Navigation System	$1,200	N/A (see stereo bundle)
Bluetooth	$100	N/A (see stereo bundle)
Sat Radio	$400	N/A (see stereo bundle)
Premium Speakers	$800	N/A (see stereo bundle)
Stereo Bundle	N/A	$3,000
Destination Charge	$950	$1,950
New Options
Performance Tires	N/A	$1,150

The most obvious price increases are from the unbundling of the high power connector (HPC) and a $1,000 increase in the destination charge. The HPC connects the Roadster to home power for rapid charging. Previously, the HPC was included in the price of the Roadster for early orders. (Tesla had previously unbundled the HPC for 2009 model year orders.)

A second big change is the removal of à la carte audio upgrades. Previously, owners could choose to separately upgrade the speaker system and head unit (including a navigation system). With the upgraded head unit, owners could choose to add support for Sirius satellite radio and/or Bluetooth mobile phone integration. Now all of these items are available only as a single bundle for $3,000, which is $500 more than the total system cost originally. The option of spending just $800 for the built-in premium speaker system is no longer available, a disappointment to owners who wanted the factory speaker look with an aftermarket head unit.

There's also a subtle change in the mobile connector. Previously, owners were able to order a mobile connector for charging away from home. The promised mobile connector was to be compatible with both 120-volt and 240-volt connections using a variety of outlet adapters. Tesla later discovered regulatory hurdles to selling a 240-volt connector, so now owners have only a 120V/15A connector that takes about 37 hours to charge a fully depleted battery pack. Said another way, the mobile connector charges at a rate of about 6 miles of added range per hour of charging. Tesla is now including that 120V low-power mobile connector at no charge, with no timeframe or cost estimate for the 240V/40A mobile connector.

According to Doreen Allen, Tesla Motor's reasoning for the price increases is that they are working hard to get to being profitable on each Roadster delivered, and that the federal tax credit of $7,500 which became effective on January 1, 2009, means that the net effective price of the Roadster decreased at the beginning of this year. Additionally, the à la carte audio options were creating too much complexity in production and had to be consolidated to be sustainable.

This owner finds it particularly galling that he and his wife got the message from Tesla that our car is being held from starting production until we agree to these sudden, retroactive price increases on the same day that Tesla Motors published a blog Tax Incentives: Why the Roadster costs less than its sticker price.

On a personal note, we complained a lot, but in the end picked a set of options and agreed to pay the price increase because we want Tesla to be successful and we want our car as soon as possible. It didn't seem worth it to spend a week complaining and arguing about it, not when our car was ready to go into production.