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I have an acquaintance that had just bought his 4th Leaf (2019) and decided to drive it on a 400ish mile road trip to a conference. It took him over 10 hours.

I have an acquaintance that had just bought his 4th Leaf (2019) and decided to drive it on a 400ish mile road trip to a conference. It took him over 10 hours. When he got to the next charger they 1) Often only had 1 high output charger. 2) The one they had was often either in use, or broken leading to very long charge times. This combined with the less than stellar driver assist the would never get any better for the life of car made him almost instantly regret sticking with the leaf. He owned it for about 2 months before trading it in on new Model 3.

stcredzero 6y ago
When I went for my test drive of a Model 3, I noted that there was a Chevy Bolt being traded in for a Model 3.
- bdamm 6y ago
  Yeah. The Bolt is a nice driving car, but the charging rate is a joke compared to any Tesla.
  - cbm-vic-20 6y ago
    The Supercharger is definitely faster, but a Bolt on a CCS DC Type-3 charger is slower, but in the same league. On the other hand, the "user experience" of every Type-3 charger I've seen is terrible. The chargers are often in inconvenient places, the super thick cables are very short, and then you've got to try a couple of times to get the charger and the car to talk to each other and get the payment sorted out. Tesla wins on this hands down, and it's not even close. Oddly enough, the Type-2 experience isn't nearly as bad. Other than requiring 6+ hours to charge...
    - bdamm 6y ago
      Chevy Bolt with optional fast charging: 55kW Tesla Model 3 base model: 170kW So not really the same league at all.
  - Shebanator 6y ago
    I have a Bolt and a Model 3. The Bolt is a perfectly good car, but nowadays you'd be crazy to buy a Bolt, which is why in this area they are selling brand new for $14K under MSRP.
worldsayshi 6y ago
Is it not possible to charge a Leaf at a Tesla station? If so we have to have a drive towards standardisation fast. Or Tesla will have a monopoly.
- ReidZB 6y ago
  For superchargers, where you'd want it most, no. Superchargers use a specific protocol to communicate with the car for purposes of billing -- tied to the Tesla account associated with the car. I don't think the plug itself is different than a normal Tesla plug (other than being beefier, perhaps?) but I could be wrong. For normal Tesla wall chargers, like one that might be installed at someone's house, I think there are adapters that might work for the Leaf, but I have no experience with them. That said, other than Tesla, I think there is standardization. Especially with Electrify America. But, Tesla's network is so convenient and widespread that it is currently a big selling point for the brand, in my opinion.
  - vel0city 6y ago
    You cannot charge any non-Tesla car from a Tesla connector. Tesla uses a proprietary connector and signaling protocol.
    - toomuchtodo 6y ago
      This is not true. Tesla destination chargers [1] will charge non-Tesla vehicles with an adapter. I have this adapter [2], and my friend's Bolt charges from my home charger (a high power wall charger on a 100A circuit) when he's over for beers. It is true that the V3 version of the Tesla destination charger (which is relatively new), which has a microcontroller/wifi/etc, has a config flag you can set to only charge Tesla vehicles and can whitelist by VIN, but it's still in the very early stage of release. @vel0city: In response to your deleted reply to this comment, if legacy automakers want access to Tesla's supercharging network for their own EVs, they should be prepared to contribute towards the enormous capex costs Tesla incurred as well as the ongoing operational expenses. Otherwise, legacy automakers who made no material effort to transition to EVs are free riding off of Tesla's hard work to build the network they now desperately need to remain in business. [1] https://www.tesla.com/destination-charging https://www.tesla.com/destination-charging [2] https://smile.amazon.com/Lectron-Tesla-Charger-J1772-Adapter/dp/B07V7V2QT8 https://smile.amazon.com/Lectron-Tesla-Charger-J1772-Adapter...
DoingIsLearning 6y ago
To be fair there is about a 10k price difference between a model 3 and Leaf. Not saying your points are untrue but for completeness you would expect less for a cheaper car. We can certainly point to the technology gap between the two being too wide but at the end of the day they are not at the same price point.
- notJim 6y ago
  Even greater for used Leafs.
  - TaylorAlexander 6y ago
    Yep you can even buy a 2013 leaf retrofitted with a 2019 battery and 150+ miles of range for $12k from a shop in Oregon.
    - nullc 6y ago
      Got a name for the shop?
      - TaylorAlexander 6y ago
        Here ya go. Hell you can get 250 mile range. https://evridesllc.com/cars/ https://evridesllc.com/cars/
    - checkyoursudo 6y ago
      Retrofitting a battery ... I should see how much it would cost to do that for my wife's 2013 Leaf ...
- moistbar 6y ago
  It's only about a 6k difference if you compare base models.
- eagsalazar2 6y ago
  I'd agree people should expect less if we were talking about battery life, leather seats, etc. But we're talking about awful user experience, support, and software - this is a failure of execution, plain and simple, by everyone except Tesla. Being good at software is something that is (or isn't) deep in the DNA of every company and is very very hard to change. I think long-term this is why Tesla's domination of the market is just beginning and isn't dependent on longer battery life or charging network. No car company except Tesla has demonstrated even basic competence in good UX or software development, so they are all doomed to lose. (I'd personally give Tesla a B- but they are competing against an industry of straight Fs across the board)
dasudasu 6y ago
A friend of mine sold his first generation Leaf and purchased a used Prius instead. He is an EV fanatic and that was his first car. There is a private network of charging stations in our area. He has a few stories about them. One time he arrives at a station that disconnects him after 5 seconds. He calls them. Customer service says it's functional and nothing is wrong with it. He asks them to look up the previous charges. They all disconnected after 5 seconds. Coincidence! He goes to another broken station. He calls them. Apparently they're not aware of it being down right now, but tell him it's a recurrent problem with this one. Nothing else is done. He breaks his own rules and takes his chances on a charging station without having enough charge to go to another one in case this one fails. Sure enough, it's broken. He call them. He has to get towed to the next station, and they will pay for it, but that doesn't include his own transport. He has to pay for a cab himself. He gets to another non-functional charging station. He calls them. They tell him it's a compatibility issue with his car despite him having used the same ones for the past 5 years. There is nothing else they can do for him. He asks to speak to someone higher up and to pass on his complaint. He never hears back. He wasn't even discouraged by the long recharge times. In the end, it's because he was tired of being late to appointments and having to worry about this crap all the time.
- derefr 6y ago
  This sounds like some kind of market failure. Perhaps we need fewer EV charging networks with random unattended parking-lot terminals; and more independent, non-network EV chargers, built into gas-station-like operations, with individual owner-operators who are very concerned with ensuring you can pay them money.
  - theshrike79 6y ago
    There is a counterpoint to this. Currently in Finland we have chargers like this. They're known in the EV circles to be utter shit and don't work more often than they do. The station does show in all maps, but if you check the reviews it's all red. The reason is that the owner bought them from a random company, they installed it and do have a service contract - the problem is that the service queues are measured in weeks and spare parts are scarce. The same thing is with chargers on the parking lots of some chain stores. Corporate has mandated that there has to be X charging spots - enter /r/maliciouscompliance - ok boss, here's the charger. Does it work? No. Do they care? No. Does corporate actually care? No, they can quote numbers of installed charging stations in their quarterly reports. Meanwhile bigger operators standardise on one station provider, have their own trained staff and a stockpile of common spare parts. A few even frequent the local EV driver FB groups and interact with their customer base there.
js2 6y ago
That's why we went with a Volt. It was the right compromise for us. Allows my wife to drive electric 90% of the time but still can go on road-trips w/o having to find a charging station. At the time we bought, Tesla stations were still few and far between for the types of road trips she would take anyway.
- AtlasBarfed 6y ago
  Considering battery material supplies, the Volt is probably the best 20 year design for moving off of ICE, although I'd like it to get close to 50-80 all-electric which might get to 95-99% of all car trips being electric, even though usually PHEVs use the gas engine if AC/Heat is needed, but again that's a very acceptable transition cost.

stcredzero 6y ago

When I went for my test drive of a Model 3, I noted that there was a Chevy Bolt being traded in for a Model 3.

bdamm 6y ago
Yeah. The Bolt is a nice driving car, but the charging rate is a joke compared to any Tesla.
- cbm-vic-20 6y ago
  The Supercharger is definitely faster, but a Bolt on a CCS DC Type-3 charger is slower, but in the same league. On the other hand, the "user experience" of every Type-3 charger I've seen is terrible. The chargers are often in inconvenient places, the super thick cables are very short, and then you've got to try a couple of times to get the charger and the car to talk to each other and get the payment sorted out. Tesla wins on this hands down, and it's not even close. Oddly enough, the Type-2 experience isn't nearly as bad. Other than requiring 6+ hours to charge...
  - bdamm 6y ago
    Chevy Bolt with optional fast charging: 55kW Tesla Model 3 base model: 170kW So not really the same league at all.
- Shebanator 6y ago
  I have a Bolt and a Model 3. The Bolt is a perfectly good car, but nowadays you'd be crazy to buy a Bolt, which is why in this area they are selling brand new for $14K under MSRP.

worldsayshi 6y ago

Is it not possible to charge a Leaf at a Tesla station? If so we have to have a drive towards standardisation fast. Or Tesla will have a monopoly.

ReidZB 6y ago
For superchargers, where you'd want it most, no. Superchargers use a specific protocol to communicate with the car for purposes of billing -- tied to the Tesla account associated with the car. I don't think the plug itself is different than a normal Tesla plug (other than being beefier, perhaps?) but I could be wrong. For normal Tesla wall chargers, like one that might be installed at someone's house, I think there are adapters that might work for the Leaf, but I have no experience with them. That said, other than Tesla, I think there is standardization. Especially with Electrify America. But, Tesla's network is so convenient and widespread that it is currently a big selling point for the brand, in my opinion.
- vel0city 6y ago
  You cannot charge any non-Tesla car from a Tesla connector. Tesla uses a proprietary connector and signaling protocol.
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    This is not true. Tesla destination chargers [1] will charge non-Tesla vehicles with an adapter. I have this adapter [2], and my friend's Bolt charges from my home charger (a high power wall charger on a 100A circuit) when he's over for beers. It is true that the V3 version of the Tesla destination charger (which is relatively new), which has a microcontroller/wifi/etc, has a config flag you can set to only charge Tesla vehicles and can whitelist by VIN, but it's still in the very early stage of release. @vel0city: In response to your deleted reply to this comment, if legacy automakers want access to Tesla's supercharging network for their own EVs, they should be prepared to contribute towards the enormous capex costs Tesla incurred as well as the ongoing operational expenses. Otherwise, legacy automakers who made no material effort to transition to EVs are free riding off of Tesla's hard work to build the network they now desperately need to remain in business. [1] https://www.tesla.com/destination-charging https://www.tesla.com/destination-charging [2] https://smile.amazon.com/Lectron-Tesla-Charger-J1772-Adapter/dp/B07V7V2QT8 https://smile.amazon.com/Lectron-Tesla-Charger-J1772-Adapter...

DoingIsLearning 6y ago

To be fair there is about a 10k price difference between a model 3 and Leaf. Not saying your points are untrue but for completeness you would expect less for a cheaper car. We can certainly point to the technology gap between the two being too wide but at the end of the day they are not at the same price point.

notJim 6y ago
Even greater for used Leafs.
- TaylorAlexander 6y ago
  Yep you can even buy a 2013 leaf retrofitted with a 2019 battery and 150+ miles of range for $12k from a shop in Oregon.
  - nullc 6y ago
    Got a name for the shop?
    - TaylorAlexander 6y ago
      Here ya go. Hell you can get 250 mile range. https://evridesllc.com/cars/ https://evridesllc.com/cars/
  - checkyoursudo 6y ago
    Retrofitting a battery ... I should see how much it would cost to do that for my wife's 2013 Leaf ...
moistbar 6y ago
It's only about a 6k difference if you compare base models.
eagsalazar2 6y ago
I'd agree people should expect less if we were talking about battery life, leather seats, etc. But we're talking about awful user experience, support, and software - this is a failure of execution, plain and simple, by everyone except Tesla. Being good at software is something that is (or isn't) deep in the DNA of every company and is very very hard to change. I think long-term this is why Tesla's domination of the market is just beginning and isn't dependent on longer battery life or charging network. No car company except Tesla has demonstrated even basic competence in good UX or software development, so they are all doomed to lose. (I'd personally give Tesla a B- but they are competing against an industry of straight Fs across the board)

dasudasu 6y ago

A friend of mine sold his first generation Leaf and purchased a used Prius instead. He is an EV fanatic and that was his first car. There is a private network of charging stations in our area. He has a few stories about them. One time he arrives at a station that disconnects him after 5 seconds. He calls them. Customer service says it's functional and nothing is wrong with it. He asks them to look up the previous charges. They all disconnected after 5 seconds. Coincidence! He goes to another broken station. He calls them. Apparently they're not aware of it being down right now, but tell him it's a recurrent problem with this one. Nothing else is done. He breaks his own rules and takes his chances on a charging station without having enough charge to go to another one in case this one fails. Sure enough, it's broken. He call them. He has to get towed to the next station, and they will pay for it, but that doesn't include his own transport. He has to pay for a cab himself. He gets to another non-functional charging station. He calls them. They tell him it's a compatibility issue with his car despite him having used the same ones for the past 5 years. There is nothing else they can do for him. He asks to speak to someone higher up and to pass on his complaint. He never hears back. He wasn't even discouraged by the long recharge times. In the end, it's because he was tired of being late to appointments and having to worry about this crap all the time.

derefr 6y ago
This sounds like some kind of market failure. Perhaps we need fewer EV charging networks with random unattended parking-lot terminals; and more independent, non-network EV chargers, built into gas-station-like operations, with individual owner-operators who are very concerned with ensuring you can pay them money.
- theshrike79 6y ago
  There is a counterpoint to this. Currently in Finland we have chargers like this. They're known in the EV circles to be utter shit and don't work more often than they do. The station does show in all maps, but if you check the reviews it's all red. The reason is that the owner bought them from a random company, they installed it and do have a service contract - the problem is that the service queues are measured in weeks and spare parts are scarce. The same thing is with chargers on the parking lots of some chain stores. Corporate has mandated that there has to be X charging spots - enter /r/maliciouscompliance - ok boss, here's the charger. Does it work? No. Do they care? No. Does corporate actually care? No, they can quote numbers of installed charging stations in their quarterly reports. Meanwhile bigger operators standardise on one station provider, have their own trained staff and a stockpile of common spare parts. A few even frequent the local EV driver FB groups and interact with their customer base there.

js2 6y ago

That's why we went with a Volt. It was the right compromise for us. Allows my wife to drive electric 90% of the time but still can go on road-trips w/o having to find a charging station. At the time we bought, Tesla stations were still few and far between for the types of road trips she would take anyway.

AtlasBarfed 6y ago
Considering battery material supplies, the Volt is probably the best 20 year design for moving off of ICE, although I'd like it to get close to 50-80 all-electric which might get to 95-99% of all car trips being electric, even though usually PHEVs use the gas engine if AC/Heat is needed, but again that's a very acceptable transition cost.