I Think the "battery lease" is a replacement option. But the car is sold just like any other, battery included.
It's really a great appliance if the range works for you. Comfortable, quick around town, silent, safe, with more convenience and connectivity features than anything remotely in the price range. But i would never own one as my sole car.
In related news, Chevy is supposed to announce a sub $30k crossover with 200 miles of battery range on Monday.
I'll take my 23 year old corollas thanks. Probably still outlast these EV's lol.
There are other EVs that seem to be tanking quickly too. There are Ford Focus Electrics in the same range. It looks like I will have to wait for those extended batteries to come out and snag a Focus or Leaf that needs a fresh one.
Most EVs leave the dealership new not as purchases, but as leases. The leasing company takes the rebate as the first owner of record, and applies it to the monthly payment. This is how $40k cars were leasing for monthly payments akin to $15k cars... If we were talking about something that moved through sales rather than leases, I'd tend to agree with you.
Ok, i agree with that. I was assuming we were talking about outright sales.
I also agree with SVreX that people who have nothing to do with it are generally couching the whole battery replacement things in the wrong terms. There seems to be a lot of talking about battery failure inside the warranty period, which is closer to free than $5000, and not considering the fact that the batteries DO get cheaper over time, and the replacements are sometimes better than the originals which makes the cost comparison somewhat apples/oranges.
I've always thought of it as analogous to automatic transmission repair. We all know manuals are substantially more reliable, more efficient and cheaper to repair and yet for practical reasons the long-running E36 M3tiness of many automatic transmissions has never been a dealbreaker for any but the fringe elements (many of which are on this forum). There are TENS OF MILLIONS of vehicles running around just in this country with known timebombs under the hood that cost thousands and thousands of dollars to replace, but hardly anyone is making a stink about the complexity and drawbacks of automatic transmissions.
Now take a look at the 'transmissions' of hybrids and EVs. I'm supremely confident the 'trans' in my Prius will NEVER need repair/replacement. Same probably goes for a Leaf. Compare that to an old Ford Taurus or Chevy 1500 and you just moved all of your 'probably' transmissions costs to 'maybe' battery costs in a newer hybrid/ev with vastly simplified transmissions. To me that's a net BENEFIT.
I'm waiting for the car-to-house functionality to come along so I can power stuff in blackouts if need be. Or even better, get solar panels and use the EV battery as a storage device.
Hmmm what is the power draw of an electric car charging station with a lead attached? What size solar panel or generator capacity would you need for that?
Looks like instead of selling replacement battery packs nissan only leases them at $100 per month. Upside is you get replacements if they lose more than 70% of capacity, downside is you are stuck paying $1200 a year for a car you already own.
Within two more years, I bet there will be an aftermarket solution.
singleslammer wrote: Within two more years, I bet there will be an aftermarket solution.
Leaf batteries are very simple to disassemble and people have already made a business out of selling new or low mile take offs by the individual module. There is no doubt in mind that a battery rebuilding business will emerge if there truly is a need. (Haven't searched for it but it might already exist)
You'll need to log in to post.
