I canceled my Leaf reservation yesterday after almost two years.
Here are Nissan's blunders thus far:
15 Amp charger. Seriously? 30 Amp is twice as fast. I had 30 Amp on the RAV4 and it really, really matters. When you need to top up somewhere, waiting around 3-4 hours is doable, 6-8 hours is not. Why not 80 Amp, since J1772 supports it? Purely idiotic. ChaDemo is a scam, it will NEVER roll out en masse, but 50Amp can be easily found and would charge 3 times as fast. This is especially useful now that EVSEs pay by the hour (don't even get me started on how idiotic this is, it's cheaper to gas up a Hummer).
It sucks, but the rest of you have no idea what you are missing out on with such slow charging. I'm sure you'll tell me it's not a big deal, but seriously, I drove the RAV4 EV for 3 years, and it is so incredibly useful to charge that much faster. Some RAV4 owners have added a 50 Amp charger and will charge at 49.5 amps (which won't blow the breaker). That's a full charge for a Leaf in 2 1/2 hours.
I finally decided to accept this horrible shortcoming and just buy a car anyway. So, I kept in touch with Nissan, even keeping personal contact with some higher-ups at Nissan through some connections I have. I have been promised again and again that the cars would arrive in Colorado mid-to-late 2011, even after the Tsunami. Why does this matter? Tax credit! Take delivery in Dec. 2011, get your credit in March/ April 2012. Take delivery in January 2012? Get your tax credit in March/April 2013. A YEAR later. That's $11,500 that you have to carry an additional year. So... when does Nissan finally roll out cars in this state? JANUARY 2012! Well, at least I get the original price since I reserved a car in April 2010, right? WRONG! PRICE INCREASE!
How about guaranteed early delivery? No? Any member of the public can order a week after I can? Oh, well, that helps, I guess... THEN I go to order, and I need "Home charging assessment" before I can order? (I've got 50 Amps in my garage... right where my RAV4 charger was! I DO NOT NEED THIS!) Then, after doing some digging, I finally discover that I could call and get a waiver from Nissan, but not before ordering is opened up to the public.
The worst part about all this is if I KNEW it was going to be JANUARY 2012, I could have brought a car in from another state and saved thousands of dollars, plus have my car early.
Seriously, Nissan has botched this. Bad. I'm frustrated to no end. This relationship is unfulfilling, I'm moving on.
Nate
Here are Nissan's blunders thus far:
15 Amp charger. Seriously? 30 Amp is twice as fast. I had 30 Amp on the RAV4 and it really, really matters. When you need to top up somewhere, waiting around 3-4 hours is doable, 6-8 hours is not. Why not 80 Amp, since J1772 supports it? Purely idiotic. ChaDemo is a scam, it will NEVER roll out en masse, but 50Amp can be easily found and would charge 3 times as fast. This is especially useful now that EVSEs pay by the hour (don't even get me started on how idiotic this is, it's cheaper to gas up a Hummer).
It sucks, but the rest of you have no idea what you are missing out on with such slow charging. I'm sure you'll tell me it's not a big deal, but seriously, I drove the RAV4 EV for 3 years, and it is so incredibly useful to charge that much faster. Some RAV4 owners have added a 50 Amp charger and will charge at 49.5 amps (which won't blow the breaker). That's a full charge for a Leaf in 2 1/2 hours.
I finally decided to accept this horrible shortcoming and just buy a car anyway. So, I kept in touch with Nissan, even keeping personal contact with some higher-ups at Nissan through some connections I have. I have been promised again and again that the cars would arrive in Colorado mid-to-late 2011, even after the Tsunami. Why does this matter? Tax credit! Take delivery in Dec. 2011, get your credit in March/ April 2012. Take delivery in January 2012? Get your tax credit in March/April 2013. A YEAR later. That's $11,500 that you have to carry an additional year. So... when does Nissan finally roll out cars in this state? JANUARY 2012! Well, at least I get the original price since I reserved a car in April 2010, right? WRONG! PRICE INCREASE!
How about guaranteed early delivery? No? Any member of the public can order a week after I can? Oh, well, that helps, I guess... THEN I go to order, and I need "Home charging assessment" before I can order? (I've got 50 Amps in my garage... right where my RAV4 charger was! I DO NOT NEED THIS!) Then, after doing some digging, I finally discover that I could call and get a waiver from Nissan, but not before ordering is opened up to the public.
The worst part about all this is if I KNEW it was going to be JANUARY 2012, I could have brought a car in from another state and saved thousands of dollars, plus have my car early.
Seriously, Nissan has botched this. Bad. I'm frustrated to no end. This relationship is unfulfilling, I'm moving on.
Nate