So much for a Leaf being the "backup car"

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Joined
Mar 23, 2019
Messages
17
Location
Eugene, Oregon, USA
Well, things worked out pretty good.

About a week ago now, after 2 days of haggling, my wife and I brought home a 2016 Leaf with 15K on it. It'd come off lease here in the Eugene area, was in solid shape, and we could get a lower-mileage, newer car than we thought we'd be able to afford.

Not too shabby really :)

As you can imagine though, what we thought would be our backup car... isn't. It's now the "first out" vehicle, and we are having so much fun driving it. First day we snagged new boosters for the kids, and they love riding in it. My son especially gets a kick out of showing the charging area to his friends :)

Glad to be on here as an owner now. I'm totally hooked. This is our first EV... but I don't think it'll be the last. My kids are already asking when there'll be an electric Outback available...

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Congratulations! I've always liked the black paint, looks good. Like you, our LEAF is the first choice to the point where my wife and I both complain the odd time when we have to drive our old Hyundai Santa Fe. Wish I could afford a newer, longer range EV but I'll definitely be picking up one of those as a used buy in a few more years...

Enjoy!
 
Thanks Alozzy! The black wasn't my first choice (I love the red and the blue), but given the price, miles, and condition, I certainly won't complain.

I did graciously "let" Jodie and the kids bring the Leaf home from the dealership. Especially since I knew that she was about to go on a business trip, so the kids and I would have it all to ourselves for a few days :)

Seeing the 2019 Leaf, the Volt, and such, I'm definitely glad to see how the EV space keeps evolving. I'll love to have my eye on an EV whenever the time comes to replace our 2014 Outback.
 
It’s amazing that a Leaf will be the car of choice in the driveway. It’s been that way for us since 2015. Now that we bought a 2019 Leaf Plus with a 62 kWh battery and 220 miles of range the other cars are just sitting idle in the driveway and garage.

I have a 2015 Lexus RX450h hybrid that we bought new about the same time that we bought our first Leaf. The Lexus only has 10,000 miles on it.
 
Yeah my plan was for the leaf to do about 80% to 90% of driving and maybe some trailer pulling.
Nope it does it all.
 
The LEAF has 50k miles. The ICE bought at about the same time has 10k miles. Tells the story. Lucky for me I made an agreement that the wife could have my car one day a week.
 
I have to force myself to drive my ICE cars since they don't like to sit too long without being driven. It's just one more thing about ICE cars that EV's don't require since they don't have all those nasty chemical reactions going on inside them all the time.. Reminds me of why you don't see too many steam engines any more. I've heard the maintenance on those is incredible.
 
I drove the Prius PHEV (aka PIP) tonight, and as always it was like driving a vintage car to me - with a slushbox, no less. It was also running a little rough, probably because my housemate doesn't use the gas up fast enough.
 
goldbrick said:
I have to force myself to drive my ICE cars since they don't like to sit too long without being driven. It's just one more thing about ICE cars that EV's don't require since they don't have all those nasty chemical reactions going on inside them all the time.. Reminds me of why you don't see too many steam engines any more. I've heard the maintenance on those is incredible.

EV’s don’t need as much maintenance as an ICEV but they still need maintenance and use. There are things like wheel bearings which benefit from occasional use. Tires can also develop flat spots (even if correctly inflated) from lack of use, and those are quite annoying until the tires heat up and the tires regain their roundness.

And yes steam engines are very maintenance intensive. That’s why steam locomotives mostly faded from existence quite quickly once diesel-electric ones became widely available. Normally a company would wait for such a large investment to simply wear out before replacing it, but the maintenance savings were worth retiring many of them early.
 
RonDawg said:
goldbrick said:
And yes steam engines are very maintenance intensive. That’s why steam locomotives mostly faded from existence quite quickly once diesel-electric ones became widely available. Normally a company would wait for such a large investment to simply wear out before replacing it, but the maintenance savings were worth retiring many of them early.
Love the analogy! And yes, steam engines were and are very maintenance-intensive which is hugely expensive. I’m very close to the North Carolina Transportation Museum which used to be a steam engine servicing center. Today, it is one of the very few active steam engine rebuilding and servicing centers and it performs a lot of work on it’s and other museum’s fleet of active steamers. Fascinating for us chronologically-advanced folks to watch, ride in, and even drive from time to time.

According to some of the folks at the museum, @RonDawg is quite correct: maintenance was a key driver to the demise of steam locomotion but there were others as well. Operating costs beyond maintenance were high too. A steam loco eats horrendous amounts of oil, coal, wood, or other fuel. It consumes a massive amount of water that has to be frequently refilled and heated impacting any trip length. It takes hours to start one up from cold, not just flipping a switch to start up a diesel, and hours for one to shut down and get cool enough to work on. It requires a significant infrastructure of water and fuel servicing stops and the maintenance of those stops. And accidents are very dangerous since you have high pressure water/steam and a large open firepit with a blazing fire in it.

With all their drawbacks, for me there is nothing quite like seeing a steamer in operation, and to actually drive one at the museum? Priceless. Thanks @RonDawg for this trip down memory lane!
 
I often return to a locomotive museum in Durango, CO.
Those things are majestic.

They are also monstrosities. It can be hard to fathom just how much was used to build them and the inefficiency is vertigo inducing. They reflect on the dawn of engineering, somewhat in the same vein that watching a pre-historic start a fire is to think about the beginning of science.
 
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