What do you like about the vehicle you drive and would you have changed anythin about it?
Realized that with my new job I’m at $500/month for gas. Starting to seriously consider a hybrid or electric but damn they expensive. Either way might just need something more reliable than my 320k+ car.
Drive a 2018 Nissan leaf, fantastic car except for the fact that it uses CHADeMO for DC fast charging (cancelled connector, getting harder to find)
Would recommend getting an EV, especially if you can charge at home. With tax credits and the savings in gas you'll have paid the difference before you're done with the car for sure.
2017 Leaf here. It's my first EV and I can't see myself going back. The fact that I never have to put gas in it hasn't gotten old. I should note that 2017 is ancient in EV years so the range is pretty bad. I can only rely on this as my primary vehicle because my partner has a gas car.
I'm looking at getting a used leaf or a bolt. Do you know what the battery range degradation after 5 years would be approximately? 30%? Is there likely to be some sort of cascading failure at some point that would necessitate a battery replacement? Or are they good to drive to hundreds of thousands of miles with reduced range?
Mine needed a full battery replacement after almost 5 years due to a defect, many 2018-2020 models will also have gotten the same due to the same issue. If you get one of those you get a new pack with ~170 Miles (default was 155 for mine)
Before turning it in I'd gone down to an estimated 125-130ish from the 155 it started at, honestly it didn't really feel like it'd lost much range at all, had the battery not failed due to a manufacturing efect I feel I'd have gotten at least another 10 years before really feeling the squeeze. That's gonna depend on how often you DC fast charge vs level 1 or 2 slow charge, though. Then again, I'd mostly used DC fast charging to charge that battery so idk how much it ACTUALLY hurts the battery in the long run.
If given the choice I'd go for a bolt, preferably one with the refurb batteries from THEIR recall. Main reason being slightly more miles on the battery + CCS-1 (More common than CHADeMO and adaptable to NACS) DC fast charging
My leaf does a daily 46 mile one way commute and I get home with 35-40% charge every day, which I'd say isn't bad at all. If you don't road trip it, it rules