Why 100,000 Miles In A Nissan Leaf In 2½ Years Is Super Logical
Update: Steve Marsh (aka TaylorSFGuy) has added cost/savings specifics in the comments below the post.
Washington resident Steve Marsh is being honored today by Washington Governor Jay Inslee, State Transportation Secretary Lynn Peterson, and folks from Nissan. Why? Because the man is logical and did a little math.
The common (often incorrect) talking point is that electric cars aren’t ideal for people who have to drive a lot. The rationale is that it might be hard for them to charge up when away from home, and the range on (non-Tesla and non-PHEV) electric vehicles might not be long enough for the to only charge at home.
However, there is one huge reason why an electric car is a lot more sensible for someone like Steve who drives a ton. Driving on electricity is much cheaper than driving on gas. For this reason, the more you drive, the more you save. (That is, assuming you aren’t driving more than you would otherwise simply because you love driving your EV so much.) In Steve’s case, since he has to drive about 40,000 miles a year (well above the national average of 13,476 miles), he has saved some massive moola… just as he planned.
Of course, along with the huge fuel savings, electric cars have almost no moving parts and require almost no maintenance — no oil changes, no transmission or transmission problems, forget all the broken tubes and valves, more protected and longer lasting brakes, etc. At 40,000 miles a year, I’m sure not having to worry about all that adds up, as well.
Steve uses a charger at his workplace and a Blink DC rapid charger along his route — part of the West Coast Electric Highway — to charge his car on his workday commute. Unfortunately, I’m not seeing any indication as to how much Steve has saved. There are a lot of assumption to be made if you want to calculate that, including which car Steve would be driving if not the Leaf, so I’m refraining from running some calcs for Steve’s story without more info.
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