The Electric Leaf’s True Believers Won’t Leave Well Enough Alone

    I am an avid fan of the BBC's Top Gear. It is a hilarious show about three men who test cars and compare their effectiveness and practicability. One of the newest episodes contained a lengthy segment on the Nissan Leaf. Their task was to drive from their studio to the ocean. That was it. There were a few positive features on the car, one was that is was extremely quiet. Another would be that the ride was decent, meaning you didn't feel every little bump in the road.
     However, there were a preposterous amount of gripes. The biggest one was that although they were only driving a distance of about eighty miles (and they started with a fully charged battery), they actually ran out of energy and had to push the car to a place where they could charge. Second, there was nowhere nearby that they could charge. They pushed from restaurants to city offices, and finally were allowed to charge at a university. And then it took twelve stinking hours to charge the stupid thing! The crew actually went on a couple of tours around the city to pass the time, which turned out to be quite comical. During this time, they discussed how the battery in the Leaf needs to be replaced every five years or so. This costs about 5000 pounds, or $7861.50. That is absolute nonsense for a car that is fairly steeply priced to begin with at 30,000-ish pounds. Also, the car was, as expected, dead slow, barely reaching acceptable highway speeds.
     My question is why would anybody buy a Nissan Leaf if there are so many problems that come along with it? Yes it is cool that people will modify your Leaf and improve it, but after a while it will all start to add up, and the cost will simply become too great. My recommendation: buy a nice, petrol eater to save yourself the trouble accompanying the Nissan "Grief".

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