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I stumbled upon this gem of an article recently, and since it doesn't look like it has been posted before, here it is!
David Thielen said:A Totally Unfair Comparison
My criteria do not include the cost of gas. The difference in environmental impact is pretty minor. So the top selling points for the Leaf -- irrelevant to me. What matters to me is how well the car performs, even though nowadays that mostly is the 6 miles to and from work. So fundamentally this comparison is comparing the Leaf to the M3 using the criteria that make the M3 the ultimate driving machine.
The first difference is response time. The M3 responds quickly. But the Leaf responds instantly. Press the accelerator and you are accelerating. Turn it on and seconds later it is fully on. Turn it off and it's off. This is akin to the difference between booting up Windows and hitting the home button on your iPad. Instantaneous makes a gas powered vehicle's response delay feel obsolete.
Second the acceleration in the Leaf is amazing. Better than the M3. Some of that advantage is the Leaf is accelerating instantaneously. But an electric engine also accelerates faster, with no difference in power over ranges of RPM. (There was a kid in some GT sports car who blasted out from a green light figuring he would show the old guy in the boxy mom-mobile how much faster he was. So I hit the accelerator and blew by him -- he's probably still wondering how that happened.)
The third giant difference is that there's no drama to it. When you accelerate in the M3 you feel and hear the engine as it accelerates through each gear. You feel the jump as you shift and the engine changes tone to run up again on the next gear. With the Leaf you are just going faster. No sound, no jumps, just faster speed. In fact you have to watch the speedometer for the first couple of weeks because you will find you are going a lot faster than you think.
Did I Make the Right Decision?
Yes. I still own my M3 (will be selling it soon). And not once have I even thought of driving it instead. When I drive my wife's Acura (a very nice car), I find myself feeling like I am using a more primitive technology. Not in a major way, but the little differences add up. Nissan didn't get it perfect, but they got a lot right. And their bet on electric vehicles will be seen as a brilliant move 10 years from now.
The major reason I selected the Leaf over the BMW was because I was curious. The only way to understand an electric vehicle is to own one. Reading about it doesn't give you a real understanding. Owning one, with decisions on every trip revolving around battery charge has taught me how this is key to the technology's viability (and I'm still learning). Equally important, driving an E.V. daily has impressed on me that all the small advantages add up to a car that makes gas powered cars obsolete. The difference is akin to when the iPhone came out -- on a feature list the differences were minor. But in practice it made all existing phones obsolete.
We're clearly going to see rapid advances in the electric vehicles offered over the next couple of years. The Tesla and Leaf are version 1.0 and they have room for significant improvement. I was the second person in Boulder to purchase a Leaf. I plan on being the first to buy an electric BMW. (And hopefully they'll do a quality job on the software component -- including the ability to play Russian Pop.)