You care more about what it looks like than the fact that it's...

-quiet
-extremely efficient
-full of torque
-cheap to operate
-cheap to service
-spews less C02

I think that's a little short sighted.

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I want the car to succeed. Better styling would help.

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@jpm

Styling is one of the most important factors of a car, most people will not except a design monstrosity like an Aptera, they want a Tesla Model S. People want something that people will not laugh at them for driving. Electric cars do not need to be design jokes like the Aptera.

That being said, I think this Nissan is a fine car, it is not incredible, but it is a simple sedan. Now the next biggest factor: PRICE.

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Funny how every single electric car seems to be criticized for its styling.

The Leaf looks pretty good to me, looks like a conventional car but still looks unique and easily identifiable. Looks practical too. Not sure about aerodynamics though, I suspect it's intended as a city car and not optimized for highway speeds.

Personally I'd prefer something with more emphasis on aerodynamics, so I can drive on the freeway at the speed of traffic and still get reasonable range. And I'd prefer something more pretty and exciting. I'd probably order an Aptera as soon as they'd let me.

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"Spews less CO2"

In my attempt to educate the masses let me take this one on, one more time:

CO2 is a life gas. Plants absorb it, sequestering the carbon and liberating the oxygen. Animals absorb the oxygen and liberate the carbon and the system is self regulating, through homeostasis. No taxes need apply.

What we need is logging taxes, that are paid to farmers and reforestation companies directly. Otherwise taxation just gives money to the very elitist parasites that, having the wealth and technological ability to do something about our green problems, instead chose to use them to manipulate the minds and empty the purses of the lower classes. This because they have taken over the state, which is now a tool of elitist control. Of psychopathocracy.

The idea of paying for CO2 emissions, which I technically already do on my station wagon, really gets up my nose, because it's complete and utter bs.

All of the above makes more sense if we pass from fossil fuels (or so called fossil fuels, perhaps even this is a lie) to renewables, which, being agriculture based, would sequester in the growing cycle the carbon they emit on use and solve the problem in the midterm, until electric cars predictably take over the roads and we change to something like a solar road network or even flying cars, finally.

But the key point is carbon taxation is prejudicial, because it feeds parasites and it locks us into a technological quagmire of bad fuel choices.

Don't say I didn't warn you 20 years down the road from now.

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"In my attempt to educate the masses let me take this one on, one more time"
Why don't you start by educating the 97% of published climatologists who disagree with you?

"CO2 is a life gas."

We need water to live, too. That doesn't make a flood a good thing.

"Animals absorb the oxygen and liberate the carbon and the system is self regulating, through homeostasis."

It *was* approximately balanced until we started adding an unaccounted for 7GT of carbon per year.

You didn't even post the standard piece of denier blather, so let me go ahead and post it for you: "And if carbon levels go up, plants will just absorb more!" No, they won't. Very few places in the world are plants carbon limited. They're generally either sunlight limited (rainy land), water limited (dry land), or nutrient limited (most of the oceans). An increase in carbon will increase growth rates in some places, but will greatly decrease them in others (for example, the corresponding ocean acidification is devastating to phytoplankton).

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Let's correct some bad memes then:

Educate the masses: that was sarcasm, I AM the masses.

97% of climatologists: Excuse me? I've shopped around, it's far less than that, and all of them under the Rockefeller and other elitist funding. They tow the line or walk the streets, it's as simple as that. The argument of authority dosen't work in the information age.

Water and floods: Good point. You're right on this one, about the water, and of course the CO2 added to the atmosphere is sequestering oxygen. But I did address this point in my original post. We should change to renewable CO2 emitting fuels, that fit back into the life cycle. Not TAX the life cycle, make up more derivating trading carbon credit bs, and essentially allow a few parasites to make fortunes WITHOUT ACTUALLY ADDRESSING THE PROBLEM. And the problem is big oil, killing alternatives, wrecking the world. The solution is not tax, it's tax breaks for renewables, and if big government, and the big corporate interests that have them hostage, have to go broke to "save the planet", hey, I'm fine with that. More than fine, I actually recommend it.

You're on the wrong side of history meme, but at least you make a better job of it than your average repeater type disinfo agent. Hurrah.

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@Zeph

I still can't make any sense of your posts.

CO2 *is* a "life cycle gas," but fossil fuels upset that balance. Burning fossil fuels injects a lot of additional CO2, and there is no mechanism to remove that added CO2. So the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere goes up. Acidity of the oceans also increase because CO2 is absorbed into water in the form of carbonic acid.

I don' t know what you mean by tax on that life cycle. When people talk about tax on CO2 emissions, what they are really talking about is tax on fossil fuels. Not biofuels or other renewable energy.

And a tax on fossil fuel is pretty much the same thing as tax breaks for renewable fuels. Either way, the tax system should encourage use of renewable fuels and punish the use of fossil fuels.

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One more post to address CO2 levels and the standard pro CO2 argument about plant absortion - the CO2 added to the atmosphere will eventually be reabsorbed back into the system, because if we bring the system into a renewable energy economy, the resulting abundance of energy would allow us to use our planet's vast resources to flourish our civilization. I'm talking greening deserts here, all of which could be done easily now, bar the energy problems. And the psychopathocracy repressive leadership problems. Our planet, from a lifeforce point of view, is, because of us, underperforming to it's potential.

Yes, we could sequester any hypothetically excessive CO2, although I'm not 100% convinced what I am being told about excess is accurate. The one constant in our society is lies. There's a lot of them, at all levels, and not many people are honest about their positions. As for me, I do think the situation is not as bad as the biased fearmongers are making it, although bad enough for concern and action. I don't believe the global warming garbage, although I believe we as a civilization have fallen into a chemical atmospheric inbalance that needs correcting. I don't believe taxation will change a thing, because it comes from the very social strata that, in my understanding, has the greatest responsability in the current mess, and they will just use it for their own insane agendas.

We do need positive technical and cultural change. We don't need ecofascism. The solutions will come with a change of technological and agri-industrial options and never from the corporate or governmental sphere. It's our purchasing options and our political demands that will make or brake our civilization. Because at the top we have nothing but darkness, not a light to lead the way.

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Are you one of those people who insist the plural of Prius is Prii? And I suppose the plural of Aptera is Apterae? :-)

Seriously though, "leafs" is in the dictionary as an acceptable alternate plural form. And there's a hockey team called the Toronto Maple Leafs.

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Here in Oregon we were suppose to get a stimulus grant package that would match private funds but it was not granted. Who indeed? The Fed DOE Sec. made sure his home state of Washington got there grant.

Why couldn't they make it look like the new Honda CRX? That would be cool. My car is better looking but not as functional and yet still has more range.

Trouble is the company that built my car, EV Innovations says they can't get it to charge any faster when plugged into 110. 50 hours for a 100 mile charge is ridiculous. It is suppose to charge in 12 hours on 110. I think they need to do some more innovating.

http://www.evalbum.com/1892

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A very good interview for the CEO of eTec (main company responsible for this project) is here:
http://gm-volt.com/2009/09/28/interview-with-ceo-of-etec-on-charging-infrastructure/

Another article with the details:
http://blogs.thecarconnection.com/marty-blog/1033949_charging-stations-part-of-the-deal-for-2012-nissan-leaf-ev

A $99.8 million grant from the DOE is partially paying for the 12750 chargers as part of a study. Total cost of the project is estimated to be twice that (~$200 million). A 240V 32amp level 2 charger (7.68 kW continuous) supplied to buyers of the Leaf costs $1500 ($1000-2000 is a typical estimate for these type of chargers). The interview did quote about $20-40k for a level 3 charger (~40kW), Nissan quoted $45k for these (80% in 30 minutes); 250 of these will be installed as part of the project, which leaves 12500 level 2 chargers:2500 for each of the 5 regions. The charger costs altogether only account for about $30 million; the rest is probably overhead costs for the study and obtaining the locations/installing the chargers.

Where chargers might be deployed is residences, employers, parking structures, retail locations, city-owned parking, and maybe even at gas stations. It seems like it will be flexible and developed as they analyze the demand as part of the study.

The chargers will have standard SAE J1722 connector, so they should be compatible with any of the newer plug-ins (for example the Volt; Tesla doesn't use this connector). The level 3 chargers, by my own guess, will use a different connector (the J1772 doesn't support level 3 charging, max power limit is ~20kW). The company is only studying the Leaf, but they say chargers will be available for all vehicles. From what I am gathering, it should be free to charge since it is publicly funded, but the interview did mention Coulomb (the company that does the paid charger) which is part of one of eTec's programs providing revenue to cities that do street-side parking.

The interview has a lot of interesting details. It seems like it will be very useful and provide a lot of data on the best strategies to use to expand the charging infrastructure for plug-ins.

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@Ray
Charging a BEV with a single 110V plug is like filling a gas tank with a dropper, so I understand your pain. A 50 hour charge time means you are only charging at 0.7kW or 6.36 amps. That is under-performing even for a 110V plug, since it can handle 15 amps max.

The Tesla Roadster which costs $108k comes with only a 110V plug, though it takes ~40 hours to charge from empty instead of 50 hr to charge even with the bigger 53kWh battery, mainly because of higher current. This translates to ~20 hours for 100 miles. There is an option for a 220-240V dryer plug for 8 hr charging.
http://www.teslamotors.com/electric/charging.php

What people have done when only 110V is available, is use two out of phase 110V circuits, but you will need adapters. This brings charging time for the Roadster (200+ miles range fully charged in range mode) to 12 hours.
http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/technical/2998-fast-charging-120v.html?highlight=fast+charging

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Roy, from Jakes comments, it appears that your charger is only using half the available power from a 110 volt outlet. That leads me to suspect a defective diode in the bridge rectifier in your charger, which would cause it to use only half the AC cycles, thus running at half power.

You really need to get a different supplier if EV Innovations can't figure out and repair a simple defect like that.

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