Nissan leaf

ossie

Hello is that the AA. I have a flat battery. Yes sir we will be with you within the hour.....

Inactive

martinslittlehelper wrote: »

. You can't beet British! Also remember the majority of the time you are spending at the pumps we are sending the money abroad. Billions each year are leaving the UK economy. When you plug in, you have the option to use a British supplier! Nothing against globalization but it's always good to have the option!

Sure can't, all of those successful cars; Rover, Hillman, Triumph .. the list is endless.. :rotfl:

Kilty_2

vikingaero wrote: »

CAP went out on a limb to predict the Leafs residual value. No doubt they were "convinced" by a deal with CAP's business manager and Nissan.

Yes the Leaf may have a residual of 47% at 3 years old. But the battery is "expected" to retain 70-80% of capacity after 10 years. So lets strip out marketing BS and call it 60% real world after 5 years. What happens to the residual value of the car at 5 years old when it may only have a range of 60 miles and the closer it edges to 10 years old and a new battery pack cost of £6,000.

Surely the strong 3 year residuals will encourage leasing firms to buy them in droves though - as demand increases the prices will go down including the cost of the battery (and/or battery technologies will be able to be developed further)

Plenty of petrol cars have far worse than 47% residual at 3 years old - my current car I estimate to have purchased for about 27% of the new price :rotfl:

Lum

Aren't most lease cars leased as company cars and thus spend the first 3 years of their lives doing moon mileage on the motorways?

Don't think the Leaf with it's 100 mile radius is something that would be useful for this.

Kilty_2

Lum wrote: »

Aren't most lease cars leased as company cars and thus spend the first 3 years of their lives doing moon mileage on the motorways?

Don't think the Leaf with it's 100 mile radius is something that would be useful for this.

Plenty of lease cars used as inter city vehicles - we have 14 (diesel Fiestas) at work which won't do more than 100 miles a day.

vikingaero

Kilty wrote: »

Surely the strong 3 year residuals will encourage leasing firms to buy them in droves though - as demand increases the prices will go down including the cost of the battery (and/or battery technologies will be able to be developed further)

Plenty of petrol cars have far worse than 47% residual at 3 years old - my current car I estimate to have purchased for about 27% of the new price :rotfl:

But aren't the residuals being artificially distorted by the government grant, which could disappear at any time after 2013? That's the difference between an attractive purchase package and an unattractive one.

Plus residuals/depreciation spouted by the beloved car magazines are rubbish. It's always based on list prices and not real world transaction priced. For example I buy a Golf for £20k and 3 years later it's worth 40% or £8k = a loss of £12k. I buy a Golf sized Korean Wotsit for £12k and it's worth 30% after 3 years or £3.6k = a loss of £8.4k. But the magazines and CAP won't quote that, they'll base the depreciation on a Korean Wotsit on it's list price of £16k.

vikingaero

Nissan Leaf £20k, 100 mile range, minimal "fuel" costs? I'd rather have a £20k Prius, 300 mile range, some fuel cost. :eek: (I can't believe I said that)

Kilty_2

There's no doubt that the range is a limiting factor for some people and hopefully this means the uptake will be gradual but steady - demand must rise however major change is required to the electricity distribution networks across the country to cope with the increase in demand for charging overnight.

epz_2

While there are some pretty cool things about electric cars i certainly wouldn't want to be an early adopter.

One of the big advantages is the lack of all the mechanical stuff which we are used to can go and get replaced by a couple of hub mounted motors and a fancy computer. This is also pretty troubling that, anyone vaguely aware of computers will understand how complex this stuff will get and you dont want a BSOD to for example shut down one motor at 70mph. Before anyone says that wouldnt happen remember it already has happened in fly by wire airplanes.

Secondly IMHO a second hand electric car is a really risky buy, unlike a normal car where a 5 year old car with 10-20k miles will still have a pretty usable life an electric car potentially wont. Batteries degrade from the moment you buy them, heat will kill them faster and they potentially will have a different capacity when it gets cold so the car you buy with 100mile range in summer could have a 50 mile range in winter. Unlike the usual ways to know a car has been thrashed you are just hopeing for the best, how many people will take that risk and the bad stories will spread about the bloke who buys an electric car and it needs to be scrapped at the 1st cold snap.
Some of these ultra capacitor developments are cool and could solve some of these problems but remember a capacitor big enough to power a car will also make a pretty big bang in a crash.


Electric cars are cheap to run because of the tax advantages they get, if enough cars start to move over then the governement will need to tax them the same or find £54 billion in cuts or tax rises.

People mention the infrastructure costs of hydrogen filling stations, in fact like petrol all you really need is a plot of land, a big hole and some builders to throw up a kiosk. Last I heard moving to electric cars would be like 17% extra load on the grid(1), even if we had the generation capacity which we can hardly meet our existing load on we would still need to shift that amount of juice about, not a trivial task uprating all the power lines etc.


Before anyone suggests local wind/solar as a solution, it may well be fine if you live on a small island etc where you have room to put up a turbine and are used to self sufficiency, most people live in city's where there is neither the space or capacity. At best they could be supplemental, the grid would still need to cope with full load so when the snow comes and there is no wind as people want to drive and heat their homes.

There is also the problem that these costs at the moment are pretty fairly distributed, if you dont drive then you pay very little, if you are a gear head with a 500bhp muscle car they you pay a lot, move the goal posts and you will likely end up putting more of the cost on the little old lady trying to heat their house than they currently see.


(1) I may be wrong as i didnt check it and the numbers sounds low a bit me.

forgotmyname

100 mile range is rather useless, As mentioned with the heating and lighting you can drop that substantially.

Nearly £4000 deposit and £100 a week for how long? £20,000 / £30,000 cash price? Charging issues are going
to be a problem for a few years yet. Keeping 50% of its value after 3 years is good if it only cost £8,000 so you
lose £4000 but when it costs £25,000 its not quite the same when you lose that amount per year.

How long do before a £3k+ bill for new batteries?