tigertin20, that is the best thing to do, take it for a week test and do the sums, this is exactly what you need. Great stuff. I have too many cars already but one day for my/daughter commute I will get one or similar.
,
Aug 24, 7:16am
Not really needed, even with an 8 amp charger (plugs into a 3 pin plug) you'll easily charge overnight. A 16 amp caravan plug is worth installing at about $400 which will charge your car a fair bit faster.
With the exception of English import Leafs which only make up a tiny percentage of the cars in NZ (which can charge at 6kw), Leafs can only charge at 3.3kw which means anything more than a caravan plug at home is just wasted at this point.
The exception is of course the 50kw DC fast charges you find on the side of the road.
tamarillo,
Aug 24, 7:34am
In who opinion is is likely? Haven't heard anything from govt on it but might have missed it. We need to road tax to maintain and build roads, simple.
tamarillo,
Aug 24, 7:36am
Renault Zoe. Few around, much nicer looking things. Don't forget Renault and Nissan are allied so none of this French car bs please!
harm_less,
Aug 24, 8:25am
Fair comment. My thinking is that a dedicated charging unit 'future proofs' owning an EV (and following EVs) while also ensuring that potentially risky charging isn't done using domestic wiring that isn't up to the demanded drawdown rates.
Our 7kW Juicepoint unit has a dedicated 32 amp feed so safe for now and ready for our Tesla (Lotto allowing!)
,
Aug 24, 9:08am
The range is nice, but they're too small and they're not very nice to drive.
,
Aug 24, 11:27am
Ohh. and no DC fast charging makes them a non-starter.
tigertim20,
Aug 24, 9:13pm
Have had the car since this afternoon. Ive used it for MOST of the drive it normally would do on a Friday. (but not all) I did say earlier it would be the other halfs daily work vehicle, but we decided that we would need to use it more than that (9km a day) to justify the cost so we factored in a trip to the gym for me after work as well.
To be honest, I'm not sold on it. The other half will have a turn tomorrow, but the hills certainly take a toll on range, and I made a point of driving very conservatively, no heater etc and I'm left with three problems:
1)I doubt we we would use it enough to justify the cost of buying it if used just as a work car 2) I doubt it would reliably have the range to do the extra trip to the gym and back in a day 3) even if the leaf does make the extra trip initially, battery degradation would possibly mean that the extra trip would cease to become feasible before the purchase of the vehicle, and subsequent fuel savings made it worthwhile.
Are there any articles on the way and speed at which the batteries decline? I understand as batteries decline, range decreases. Given that currently the range would decline with degradation, Im wondering if theres a rule of thumb, of how long on average the range decreases by for a given mileage or number of years
mals69,
Aug 24, 9:17pm
If you doing so many miles a day why look at a leaf in the first place ? Fine for most folk, here in ChCh common as muck.
supernova2,
Aug 24, 9:30pm
How far away is your gym? Surely the thing has a range greater than 18km a day?
,
Aug 24, 9:51pm
Even my old 2011 Get 1 will do about 100km round town.
s_nz,
Aug 24, 10:26pm
Regarding future degradation, take a look at the scatterplot at the below link, and draw your own conclusion. (just look at the 24kWh data points.)
To me it looks like the battery state of health trends down at somewhere between 3 and 5 percentage points a year (4 - 6km of range loss per year).
I don't know of any articles exploring Nissan leaf battery degradation, but I am sure there will be some in the wild. Generally high ambient temperature, and frequent DC fast-charging are associated with faster battery degradation.
Regarding cost effectiveness, low distances traveled do reduce the about of fuel savings. Do consider non-financial aspects too. Is the Leaf more desirable / safer etc to drive than the car it is replacing? do you value not having to spend time at the petrol station? do you like getting into a pre-warmed car on cold mornings?
The times I drove a leaf, I found it a lot nicer than a Toyota corolla. Also if somebody crashes into you, it weighs as much as a Rav4. Was a bit disappointing by seat comfort, and A pillars getting into vision though.
Regarding range, how many bars does your test car have (little bar stubs to the right of the big blue/white bars)
12 bars = State of Health above 85% 11 bars = above 78.75% 10 bars = above 72.5% 9 bars = above 66.25% And so on, dropping 6.25% per bar.
If your test leaf is in reasonable battery health, would doubt that two 20km return trips would pose issues even in adverse conditions.
If you want user references of people with similar "bar" leaf's, join the EV owners Facebook page and ask.
When I had my i3, (22kWh battery - smaller than leaf), I could get 140km on the open road if I babied it, and 120km if I drove normally (air con etc).
If, in say 5 years time, range did become an issue for a second trip, consider that by plunging in for an hour for at 3kW will add something like 14km of range to the car.
s_nz,
Aug 24, 10:49pm
My Opinion, but backed up with government statements, and logical reasoning.
We need money to maintain and build roads now too, but the government has given an RUC exemption (essentially a subsidy) to electric cars to encourage their uptake. (I would rather we use localy made electricity than imported oil for transport so I support this). The exemption has already been extended twice, and will end on 31 December 2021.
The governments has stated the following:
"The Electric Vehicles Programme includes a number of initiatives:
Extending the Road User Charges (RUC) exemption on light vehicles until they make up two percent of the light vehicles fleet"
The government has the goal of having 64,000 ev's at the end of 2021. given we currently have 3.6m light vehicles on NZ roads, this will make up only 0.18% of the vehicle fleet, hence, unless EV uptake is 10 times what is predicted, a further extension will be required.
It appears that both major right an left leaning political bloc's support electric vehicles (Last EV RUC extension was done by previous government). Current government is big on the climate change issue. This is one of the cheaper, easier ways for our government to reduce emissions. by contrast cutting back on farming will have a massive negitive impact on our countries wealth.
There are issues with the current RUC scheme that need to be resolved before it applied to EV's.
The main one is that super efficient petrol vehicles (i.e. prius) are currently under-taxed compared to comparable RUC paying vehicle. Current RUC rates would see a Nissan leaf paying triple the road tax of a Prius, when actually want to encourage using the Nissan leaf.
The other is around plug in hybrids. My understanding is current rules would have them paying RUC's and being able to claim a rebate on petrol tax via the MR70 form. If plug in hybrids become super popular, it is likely the government will not want to allow rebates, as the risk of fraud will be high (people could claim rebates for fuel actually used in different vehicles).
mals69,
Aug 25, 10:27am
Sister has a 2012 gen 1 leaf with 12 bars 88% SOH done 12000 km, dealer called it a unicorn, mint car, one would think it was brand new. Good chance it been babied along. Picking biggest factor on degredation is how heavy your right foot is - batteries working hard. Seen spy reports with hundreds of fast charging and still high SOH and bars.
tigertim20,
Aug 25, 12:43pm
Did you read all posts? initial reasoning was as a daily home-work-home commute vehicle for the other half.
We got the car to test, and have driven it around and done a cost benefit analysis and determined that it wasnt a worthwhile expense to purchase the leaf if it was going to be used for JUST a work commute for the wife.
In order to work out if we could MAKE it worthwhile to buy, we've tried adding in the drive to the gym, but dding that in is too much.
The gym I go to is in mosgeil.
For several reasons, it is NOT an option to change gyms, and obviously we arent going to change home address or workplaces to make a car purchase worthwhile!
Just thought it was worth coming back and posting what I had come up with in case someone else is researching a leaf and does a search for previous discussions later on.
If we lived on the flat (we live at the top of some bigger hills) it would probably be a different result.
Theres no possibility of charging the car at her workplace, and it would be a hassle o have to take it somewhere to charge it during the day so thats not an option for us either.
In a couple more years as prices drop a little on 30KWh models, and more employers put in the infrastructure allow for at-work charging, it will probably be more viable
mals69,
Aug 25, 1:38pm
Yep read all the posts.
mikew,
Aug 25, 2:06pm
I drive Gen 2 Leaf. Commute 100k per day. Love it . Mrs MikeW
intrade,
Aug 25, 9:19pm
My mate told me a story that one of his old cotcher friends got a leaf right . So aperantly he went to northpower free chargeing or something but the gate closes . and then he wanted to get the charger unplugged panic about gate closing , would not unplug and woala gate went shut lol. So he climbed over the fence to call his wive . She said you got to unlock it from inside the car first before you can remove it. There is aperantly no number to call on inside of gate .
apollo11,
Aug 25, 9:38pm
Wut?
berg,
Aug 26, 8:26am
Dees he drink or do drugs you reckon? Whatever it is, he needs to lay off them
,
Aug 26, 8:49am
Even stupid people can buy electric cars, why would he not just go to the other fast charger 8km away In Tikipunga? Or plan slightly better and get a 24 hour access card to the North Power car park from www.northpower.com
matarautrader,
Aug 26, 9:21am
RUC as from October for diesels will be $68 per 1000km. Thats $6.80 per 100km plus $2 for the charging so when RUC comes in, and guessing that they would just use the same charge as diesel you would be looking at $8.80 per 100km. So a petrol car would have to do 3.16 litres/100km to match it and a diesel would have to do 1.38 litres/100km to match it. So a new Suzuki Swift 1.3 is rated at 4.2 litres/100km so it will be pretty marginal as to which vehicle would be the best
mals69,
Aug 26, 9:38am
Still ahead with an EV with no spark plugs, anti freeze, oil changes yadda yadda .
vtecintegra,
Aug 26, 9:38am
A Swift 1.3 is a smaller and much slower car than a Leaf though even if the latter had to pay RUCs.
s_nz,
Aug 26, 9:47am
As it currently stands, when the exemption ends on 31 Dec 2021 (note that the end date has already been twice extended, so I feel further extension is likely). The same RUC rate as light diesel vehicles will apply.
As you point out, there is some obvious issues with this rate. The Main one being that RUC vehicles will be taxed at approx triple a super efficient petrol car.
Obviously this would make anybody cross shopping a Leaf with say the base suzuki swift, more likely to choose the latter. This flies in the face of the governments stated goal to encourage Electric vehicle uptake.
I would suggest, a rework of our light vehicle road tax system would be needed prior to re-introduction of RUC's on Electric Vehicles.
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