REPORT: Nissan Leaf coming to Vancouver in 2011
2010 Nissan Leaf EV - Click above for hi-res image gallery
Nissan has named five areas in the U.S. – Tennessee and Oregon; San Diego, CA; Seattle, WA; and the Phoenix/Tucson region in Arizona – to be the first to get the Leaf all-electric vehicle when the car goes on sale in late 2010. A report in the Globe and Mail says that Vancouver will be the first Canadian city where the Leaf will be available. Nissan apparently said that the EV will come to British Columbia in 2011.
The Vancouver area has a long history of advancign fuel cell technologies, thanks to local company Ballard. Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson told the paper that the Leaf agreement means the city is a little bit closer to its goal of "becoming the world's greenest city." Guess all of those plug-in-ready parking lots will see some use, after all. Thanks to Dan and Vince for the tips.
Gallery: 2010 Nissan Leaf EV
[Source: Globe and Mail]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Nick From Montreal 9:11PM (10/09/2009)
Alright Nissan. I'm moving to Vancouver to start that Leaf hot rod business. I'll be offering aftermarket body work to make the Leaf look more..hum...masculine. Packing right now...
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jpm 11:14PM (10/09/2009)
I thought excitement of EVs was more related to the driving experience (torque, noise, acceleration) and not so much the looks.
Tohe 3:38AM (10/10/2009)
You may be joking, but you could be up to something.
jpm 3:30PM (10/10/2009)
No I'm not joking. Think about it. When you initially buy something, you mostly care about its looks. But then after having owned and used the vehicle for a long time, you mostly care about how comfortable it is and its performance. The same can be said for other things in life, including women.
Tohe 4:48PM (10/10/2009)
@Jpm
I was replying to NFM, though you have a valid point, not sure about the women part, but then again what would I know?
Murc 12:31PM (10/10/2009)
95% of the people who buy a car care about its looks. Its just as important as everything else.
I cant wait for electric cars to become more mainstream.
But this car makes the Prius look like a lamborghini.
Come on Nissian! for christ sake you created the GT-R!...and now you destroy your designing cred by making this ugly thing.
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nrb 3:32PM (10/10/2009)
"Come on Nissian! for christ sake you created the GT-R!...and now you destroy your designing cred by making this ugly thing."
Bad example. The 370 is a nice looking car. The GTR, not so much.
Ghen 9:41AM (10/12/2009)
hatchbacks are hot right now, and cheaper to make apparently if you look at sub-compact pricings. I personally like the design of the leaf.
Serge 12:16PM (10/12/2009)
With peak prices mentioned in the article (up to 44 kWh) the guy should look into installing solar panels at home.
wincros 12:18PM (10/10/2009)
Anyone see the Tesla road test in the current issue of Automobile Magazine. One of the side bars was interesting. California uses tiered pricing for electricity, one of the reasons Californians uses less electricity per person than other states which is green and good. The tiering system kicked in with a vengeance charging his Tesla test car. The tester said that his charging cost was the equivalent to a 33mpg ICE car for much of the test which was OK, but he stopped the test just before the next level tier when his MPG equivalent would drop to 19 and the rest of his home electricity cost would go through the roof.
It does present a problem.
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Murc 12:34PM (10/10/2009)
anybody who lives in that failed state, should have to deal with it.
wincros 2:02PM (10/10/2009)
Ah, a grammatically incorrect and gratuitous insult that is off the subject. I hope that is not typical of your state. Let me explain the issue so you will realize that it was not about California.
As enticing as electric vehicles may be they need the cooperation of the utilities and government as well. Some forward looking utilities has already tried to reduce usage of electricity through tiered pricing for all the good reasons to do that. It has been remarkably successful.
http://carbonkids.wordpress.com/2008/11/21/residential-electricity-consumption-by-state/
Something needs to be done about pricing though if a new electric appliance, a vehicle, is introduced into the mix that uses much more electricity. Otherwise, from a cost point of view to the owner an electric vehicle like the Leaf will end up costing more than a Hummer to drive.
If society thinks it is a social good to drop ICE vehicles in favor of electric some system is going to have to be developed which distinguishes from your profligate use of electricity for personal use and the sucking of electrons out of the system to recharge your electric car which is a social good.
And if they can do that can a road tax on your electric bill be far behind? Electric cars will be wearing out roads too. Believe me, your very conservative auto club, and the oil companies, and the trucking companies will be lobbying for it with a vengeance.
nrb 3:46PM (10/10/2009)
wincros, that's an area where I've always had trouble buying into the hype. I've never been convinced that the $/mile is anywhere near as cheap as the EV advocates want me to believe it is.
After reading your post, I went to automobilemag.com, looking for the article, but couldn't find it. Do you know if it's online? If not, I'll have to burn some gas to go get a copy.
wincros 4:56PM (10/10/2009)
nrb,
I saw the article in the current newsstand copy. I did not find it online. I should have mentioned that.
jake 6:27PM (10/10/2009)
@nrb
On average US pricing it IS as cheap as they claim it is. However, on tiered pricing it can get up to the same or more than a gas car (esp with gas prices lower nowadays), so if you are looking at an EV it's a good idea to check your own electricity prices (as well as tiers if you have that). However from what I know, even on the highest tier it won't be too much more than gasoline. And some power companies already offer incentives for EVs, so it is good to look out for those.
Someone posted the article here, if you are interested in looking:
http://www.mediafire.com/?mjdmmywmhnt
@wincros
PG&E (the California power company) has offpeak pricing for the EV. You can get a separate meter for it. The article itself (link above) mentions this 5cents/kWh rate. I imagine that most power companies will have these kind of incentives (they want the extra offpeak demand). And the way tiered pricing works is that you only pay the higher rate for the amount you go over. For example you pay the lowest rate for the baseline usage and for whatever amount you go over then you start paying the higher rates. So it's not like if you got 300% baseline, then you pay the highest amount for ALL of your usage. So it wouldn't make your electricity rates rocket for your other usage (which would really suck, and most people misunderstand and think this will be the case), it just makes it higher for your EV. He never said in the article that it cost him extra for the rest of his usage, just that the cost would have been equivalent to a 19mpg car with current gas prices.
http://www.pge.com/myhome/customerservice/financialassistance/medicalbaseline/understand/
http://www.pge.com/tariffs/tm2/pdf/ELEC_SCHEDS_E-9.pdf
occ 7:16PM (10/10/2009)
I'm not sure where this guy lives in California, but my HIGHEST
tiered rate from SCE here in Southern California is about 30.6c/kwh
(generation and transmission included). Assuming he has a lead foot,
the Tesla is equivalent to about 30mi/gal ICE at $3/gal.
SCE has special EV charging metering and very low rate off peak that's around 10c/kwh. If he was using that, his lead foot and Tesla is equivalent to a 90mi/gal ICE at $3/gal. Otherwise his Tesla eco mode is equivalent to ~141mi/gal ICE.
nrb 4:24PM (10/11/2009)
Thanks Jake. The article was a simplistic look, but a necessary one. I like the way he crunched the numbers to see how it really would affect him. I should do that with myself. I'm not really planning on an EV in the near future, but I enjoy watching their progression.
I need to run the numbers both tired and un-tiered. The problem with tiered is that it would run my daytime rates (air conditioning) through the roof. Wincros also has a very valid point about road taxes. Currently our roads are paid for through gasoline taxes. If we switch to EVs, that money would have to come from elsewhere. It's probably best to run the numbers, after removing the gasoline tax.
It'll give me something to do when the next power bill arives.
PeterM 5:47AM (10/11/2009)
Does anyone believe it is not entirely about the cost.. Yes yes everyone has to look at their bank balance and decide if they can afford what beguiles the heart, However if we base every purchase purely on the economics..we would buy half or even a tenth of the things we do.
The whole BEV car thing has to do with how we want to see the future.. do we really want to live in a heavily polluted world, that requires that its sole form of energy come from parts of the world that do not like the west.... and to whom we send Billions of Dollars every day..so they send nice people with bombs strapped to their bodies to blow us to kingdom come...
or do we put up a little (a lot??) more money to purchase BEV's, which help the BEV manufacturers make more BEV's, encourage infrastructure changes greening of the power generation facilities, and generally point us in the right direction for our future transportation needs.
Yes? ... No?...
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