Went on business travel to CA this month and decided to try driving a Tesla to see what it was like. Big mistake… coming home to my civic is painful. Coworkers told me a lot of my gripes like lack of buttons wear off after a month or so. I was already all in on electric for when my car eventually died but god, idk how long I will be able to stay ICE. Anyone else have similar experiences on test drives?
I’m probably unique. I drive a 4Runner and my wife has a Volvo EV. I enjoy the variety of driving them both, even though objectively the Volvo is better in most ways… faster, quieter, more efficient, etc….
I’m with you - I find ICE and EV both enjoyable in their own ways. My Leaf is relaxing and I love how quickly the cabin heats in the winter. My ICE sports cars are light and nimble on twisty roads, and I like the burble of the exhaust. Hell, even my Jimny was fun and charming in its own cheap & unrefined way.
Ha. My leaf has no cabin heat. And I still choose to bundle up and drive it :p
On an unrelated note, what kind of mileage can I expect from a leaf, especially during winter time? I’ve been looking at buying one to so I can keep my daily for doing truck stuff and road trips. Averaging 12-16 mpg is quite hard on the wallet too
We have quite mild winters where I live, it’s rare to go below 0C. With the heater blasting it will happily do 220 km around town, or 150 km at highway speeds. We definitely notice the range reduction in winter. In the warmer months it does 270 km around town, 200+ km on the highway.
So how long did it take for you to get over range anxiety? I mean realistically, my commute is about 25 miles, but I gotta factor in range for things like grocery store runs, degradation, etc. While I’m excited about the possibilities of the AZE0 Leaf battery tech going open source, I am concerned about the CHAdeMO port being phased out
We have the perfect use case for a Leaf: 90% of our driving is around town under 70 km/h (45 mph) , and we can easily charge overnight at home. So we never had much range anxiety to begin with. Every now and then we will purposefully take it on a longer trip just so we can learn how things like speed and temperature affect the range. But for our daily driving we don’t even think about range.
I think the best thing you could do for yourself if you’re considering a Leaf is test drive one. Take it on the highway for 15 minutes and get a feel for how quickly the range drops. Find a public charger and see how much range it adds in 5-10 minutes. The Leaf may be perfect for me, but I’m just a stranger on the internet who (probably) does very different types of driving to you.