Sat Jan 15, 2011 9:29 am
my "whining" comment was not directed at you or anyone else on this board. we are all whining because EVs should have happened decades ago and free market forces were not allowed to offer this to us. PERIOD!!
so we should all be whining like 4 year olds because we were screwed and like 4 year olds, we had someone else tell us what was good for us and that someone made "our" decision for us by removing choices "they" felt were inappropriate.
now my response to this thread is really off topic. i need to create a new thread called "why i am grateful to Nissan and the reason they should not do more than they are doing because they have already done 10 times more than anyone else has"
now, that is true today and in a few years, that will not be true as we have other car companies playing catch up now.
now we constantly come up with the "Prius correlation". the Leaf has no real precedents... (at least none less than 8 years old) this product like the Prius is all new. years in development, done so at great risk and huge amounts of money spent, but we have gone thru all that. Toyota did the same thing. i have a book detailing the Prius development cycle and it pretty much started in the early 90's so 8 years in the making before a product was launched.
but how do these two watershed events in automotive history really compare?
well, both products had/have huge initial demand. it took the Prius essentially till October 1, 2006 to catch up... actually with back orders, we can safely say Jan 1, 2007. more than 3 years after gen 2 release. my wait for my 2004 Prius was over 7 months. now that was after it was released. so if we take a Dec 2010 Leaf release, we are looking at July or so? just to catch the first wave of early adopters. which is pretty much what Nissan said they could do... we shall see how well they execute.
but that does not address the post (remember i said it would be a bit OT)
i think the popularity of the Leaf will explode and like the Prius, Nissan will be playing catchup for a long time. even when Leaf 2 comes out, the price of gas will still make Leaf 1 a very hot commodity since buyers will be looking at more money and an extended wait for Leaf 2 or getting Leaf one right away and eliminating their $600 per month gas bill.
but what we are really talking about is how much Nissan has not done for us. we ignore the awesome discounts we have/are getting. obtw, it was after the Sept 30, 2006 deadline for the maximum $3150 tax credit before Priuses started to be offered at more than a penny below MSRP.
we also ignored the fact that Nissan has actually put a HUGE amount of energy into getting States and Cities to promote green legislation, additional perks for EVs like sales tax waivers (THANK U WA for that $3,000 gift!!) additional state rebates, credits, etc.
now, my state has actually invested a lot of money in helping to encourage EVs, high mileage hybrids, etc. and has done so for years, but even they were motivated to provide even more support to help the Leaf be successful.
and yes, i do understand that we have very limited finances to work with...after all the car does not burn oil so not much money in "oil-free" futures (it aint plastic!!) so the best way to spend what money we do have is paramount to a successful launch...
so we can put it into QC stations where will fill up our Leafs just like we filled up our gas cars, or we can take advantage of the 180 million plug in options we have at home....hmmm????
go out of the way to charge in a "short" 20 minutes
or
spend 20 seconds to plug in at home
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