By David Dodge and Scott Rollans
Carol Bishop bought her Nissan Leaf “mostly for environmental” reasons, but she also absolutely loves to drive it!
The Nissan Leaf is one of the more affordable EVs on the market. But, that doesn’t mean it isn’t a joy to drive. “It is so much fun,” she says. “It just picks up and goes. There’s no gears to change, there’s no lag—you just go.”
Carol also loves the fact she no longer watches the price of gas at the pumps. For her, keeping her car “fuelled” is as simple as charging her cell phone. “We just drive home at the end of the day, and you plug it in—and you’re ready to go again the next morning.”
The couple felt hesitant about buying earlier Leaf models with low range, but they also realized they couldn’t afford something fancier. “We wanted to buy an EV for a long time, but range was a concern. And while the Tesla had a pretty good range it was out of our price point.”
Then, in 2016, Nissan introduced a Leaf with a 200-km range. Carol hasn’t looked back. “It’s fantastic,” she observes. “We use it for commuting around the city, and running our errands, and love it.”
For Carol and her husband the Leaf is their second vehicle used almost exclusively for commuting around the city–as we’ve learned in our series, a car with a range of 400 kilometers or more makes road trips pretty easy.
$9 to drive 600 kilometers
Although they paid more for their Leaf than they would have for a similar gas-powered model, Carol says the long-term savings more than make up for it. “In the month of March, we drove 600 kilometres. It worked out to about a dollar per hundred kilometers.”
To illustrate her point, Carol pushes a button to display her car’s real-time energy efficiency on the car’s info menu. “We’ve got 5.2 kilometers per kilowatt-hour for this car. And, right now, we’re paying just under seven cents a kilowatt-hour. So, that’s just over a penny per kilometre” for the electricity.
These numbers are for “electricity only” of course and we all know it costs about $50 or more per month to transmit, manage and deliver electricity to your home. So all-in Carol is probably paying between $0.12 and $0.14/kWh for her electricity. However, this still means it only cost her $18 to go 600 km. The same distance in my RAV4 costs $60 getting about nine litres/100km.
As Carol points out, their Leaf required no fancy rewiring of their garage and no expensive high-tech charger. “We keep it pretty simple. We just plug it into the house the same as we do with our Christmas lights. And, the charger came with the car, so there was no extra cost for that.” Bishop says it takes roughly six hours to charge, based on their normal use of 20 to 40 kilometers per day.
Winter only a minor obstacle
Many people worry about how electric cars will fare in winter climates. Carol says her Leaf does lose some range in cold weather, but not enough to cramp her style. “In the wintertime, you have to plan your day a little bit more,” says Carol adding “In the summertime, we go probably four days before we actually have to charge. In the winter, you’re charging probably every day.”
Part of that comes from running the heater. Carol shows us the car’s energy info menu to demonstrate. “You see, we’ve got a 146-kilometre range right now. And if we turn on the heat we’re going to lose 11 kilometers. This is the kind of thing that impacts your range in the wintertime.”
Bishop also likes the way her car is toasty warm almost as soon as she gets into it. And, winter weather allows her to enjoy her one favourite feature. “It’s the heated steering wheel,” she says. “I won’t lie.”
Range anxiety may soon be a distant memory
Up to now, Carol’s Leaf has been limited largely to urban driving. But, she says ATCO’s new “Peaks to Prairies” network of high-speed chargers could be a game-changer. And, as battery capacities grow, things will only get easier. “The Leafs that just came out this year have a 300-kilometer range,” says Bishop. “With that kind of range and the addition of charging stations throughout the province, we can actually get places.”
Like many EV owners, Bishop and her husband have added solar modules to their home to generate clean electricity.
“We were able to put in a 10-kilowatt system. And so, that should take care of all of our power needs over the course of a year, including the car charge.” In other words, that penny-per-kilometer efficiency just got better. “There won’t be any power bill, and we might even end up with a surplus at the end of the year.”
Carol has been driving her Leaf for three years now, and can’t talk enough about the experience and savings she’s enjoyed.
With up to $5,000 in new federal incentives for electric vehicle purchases, and manufacturers investing tens of billions of dollars in new electric models, perhaps more of us will soon be turning over a new Leaf.
This is Part II in our #LifeWithAnEV series. Also, check out our story on Ed Ma and Rhonda Blair who are now on their fourth EV–and yup three of them were Teslas.
