4 ms·

The Zoe is, sadly, at the moment, the perfect anti-yellow-jacket car: no matter how much rebates the government will give you, you need to put so much cash on t

The Zoe is, sadly, at the moment, the perfect anti-yellow-jacket car: no matter how much rebates the government will give you, you need to put so much cash on the table that it's completely unaffordable to those who might benefit from it the most (daily short-medium commutes between peripheral towns.) Instead, it's bought by already-affluent upper middle-class, who then get to feel better about their carbon footprint, while also saving on gas ! (Which, don't get me wrong, is great !) As the saying goes, "it takes a lot of money to be poor." The situation will, hopefully, get better, when there is a second-hand market for EV, or much cheaper vehicles...

dhosek 6y ago
Here in the US, used Nissan Leafs run around $10K. We don't have much call for another car right now (our main car is a plug-in hybrid Chrysler minivan), but if we did, this would be a likely candidate.
- dencodev 6y ago
  I see endless Leafs for sale (the older original ones) for only $5k. Granted their batteries are pretty degraded and I'm sure only gets 60 miles of range when blasting AC or heater.
  - bfieidhbrjr 6y ago
    Actually a lot less, more like 30 miles. Worse if it's cold, hot or uphill. I've owned a couple of leafs. The problem is kind of interesting - a smaller battery in and of itself is painful but there's a deeper problem. YOu have to spread the charge cycle over the whole battery and you have to do more charge cycles. So a Tesla can discharge different cells each day, and any individual cell gets used less frequently. With the leaf, you're using every cell, every day. So it's compounding and much worse than people realize, forgetting all the other problems like no thermal control on the pack. I actually loved my leafs (leaves?) but they couldn't even get to the city and back very quickly (I mean after 6 months the battery loses a bar). The newer ones are betterish.
    - dencodev 6y ago
      At 30 miles range I think I'd rather just take my ebike instead, which gets 24 miles at 30MPH with zero pedaling if I bring an extra battery.
      - dhosek 6y ago
        30 miles is what we get on a charge with our plugin hybrid minivan before it switches to gas. The last time we bought gas was 28 Feb. It tends to prefer gas in the winter which is a big part of why we bought gas then (looking back over the records, we normally buy a tank of gas once a month in the winter and maybe one more sometime in the summer unless we take a road trip).
        dencodev 6y ago
        I don't think I'd ever get a plug in hybrid - most of the appeal to electric cars for me in the lack of maintenance and lack of things to break. Adding batteries to a gas car just seems like it's doubling the amount that can go wrong and makes the repairs much more expensive.
        nradov 6y ago
        Toyota plug-in hybrid cars are actually more reliable than comparable Tesla electric cars, despite the greater mechanical complexity. https://www.truedelta.com/Tesla-Model-3-vs-Toyota-Prius-Prime-reliability-comparison,1376-1393 https://www.truedelta.com/Tesla-Model-3-vs-Toyota-Prius-Prim...
        dencodev 6y ago
        All I see here are two percentages and a happy face and a sad face. It doesn't really have anything compelling for me to see. And if I'm more likely to need to get a model 3 serviced for something like a panel gap, I'd gladly take that over the risk of total ICE failure on a Toyota. The website says nothing about the severity of the problems, and it's really just the severe ones I care about.

dhosek 6y ago

Here in the US, used Nissan Leafs run around $10K. We don't have much call for another car right now (our main car is a plug-in hybrid Chrysler minivan), but if we did, this would be a likely candidate.

dencodev 6y ago
I see endless Leafs for sale (the older original ones) for only $5k. Granted their batteries are pretty degraded and I'm sure only gets 60 miles of range when blasting AC or heater.
- bfieidhbrjr 6y ago
  Actually a lot less, more like 30 miles. Worse if it's cold, hot or uphill. I've owned a couple of leafs. The problem is kind of interesting - a smaller battery in and of itself is painful but there's a deeper problem. YOu have to spread the charge cycle over the whole battery and you have to do more charge cycles. So a Tesla can discharge different cells each day, and any individual cell gets used less frequently. With the leaf, you're using every cell, every day. So it's compounding and much worse than people realize, forgetting all the other problems like no thermal control on the pack. I actually loved my leafs (leaves?) but they couldn't even get to the city and back very quickly (I mean after 6 months the battery loses a bar). The newer ones are betterish.
  - dencodev 6y ago
    At 30 miles range I think I'd rather just take my ebike instead, which gets 24 miles at 30MPH with zero pedaling if I bring an extra battery.
    - dhosek 6y ago
      30 miles is what we get on a charge with our plugin hybrid minivan before it switches to gas. The last time we bought gas was 28 Feb. It tends to prefer gas in the winter which is a big part of why we bought gas then (looking back over the records, we normally buy a tank of gas once a month in the winter and maybe one more sometime in the summer unless we take a road trip).
      - dencodev 6y ago
        I don't think I'd ever get a plug in hybrid - most of the appeal to electric cars for me in the lack of maintenance and lack of things to break. Adding batteries to a gas car just seems like it's doubling the amount that can go wrong and makes the repairs much more expensive.
        nradov 6y ago
        Toyota plug-in hybrid cars are actually more reliable than comparable Tesla electric cars, despite the greater mechanical complexity. https://www.truedelta.com/Tesla-Model-3-vs-Toyota-Prius-Prime-reliability-comparison,1376-1393 https://www.truedelta.com/Tesla-Model-3-vs-Toyota-Prius-Prim...
        dencodev 6y ago
        All I see here are two percentages and a happy face and a sad face. It doesn't really have anything compelling for me to see. And if I'm more likely to need to get a model 3 serviced for something like a panel gap, I'd gladly take that over the risk of total ICE failure on a Toyota. The website says nothing about the severity of the problems, and it's really just the severe ones I care about.