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Daily coverage of the world of cars.

Nissan Leaf

We Tried City Living with an Electric Car

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2020 Nissan Leaf SL Plus front-quarter view, charging door open.

Range anxiety remains a major impediment to the widespread adoption of the electric car. After all, America is a big place, and plenty of us see more than 200 miles of highway every week. But imagine, for a moment, that you’re living in a city, taking public transit to and from work, and rarely driving far from home. Maybe you want a car for your trip to the grocery store once a week, to visit your brother 20 miles away, or to take Max to the good dog park—the one in the next town over. If any of this sounds familiar, you may look at an electric car and think, “Hey, that’s not a bad idea.”

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Tesla Model 3 Delays Could Lead Buyers to Other Automakers


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Freezing air has descended upon my city. Those leisurely mornings of heading out to the car in shorts and a T-shirt have been replaced by scraping windshields free of frost.

I love my electric Nissan Leaf, because I can start and warm it up using an app on my phone while I stay toasty warm inside the house. My Subaru Legacy actually requires me to go outside and start the motor with a key.

This week I needed the Legacy, because my errands required more range than the Leaf could provide. That meant I had to brave the cold, trek outside, and start the Subaru so it would be warm for my family.

When I got back inside, my wife, who was getting ready in the upstairs bathroom, asked why the car was so loud.

“Because it has a gas motor,” I said.

Needless to say, we have become accustomed to driving electric.

We’ve been hoping the next electric car might be a Tesla Model 3, but with production problems pushing back availability of the car, we, like thousands of other drivers, may have to look elsewhere. Continue reading >>>

Should You Be Worried About Replacing a Used EV’s Batteries?


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2017 Chevy Bolt

One of the benefits of owning an electric car is not needing to buy gasoline. The cost savings add up year after year, even when you include the cost of electrons to recharge the batteries.

Two of the biggest concerns since the advent of hybrid and EV technology are electric range and potential cost of replacing battery packs.

Range anxiety has mostly been solved as EV range steadily increases to over 200 miles per charge. Replacing battery packs has, so far, proven to be a non-issue, but it’s bound to become one as the earliest EVs continue to age. How much should people expect to pay once the inevitable happens?

About half of what the car cost new, at least according to Chevrolet. Continue reading >>>

Changes Coming for Popular Nissan Juke, Leaf


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Nissan_Juke

Electric cars shouldn’t look like electric cars if they are to go mainstream.

Tesla figured that out early, while other automakers, especially BMW and Nissan, made their electric cars look more and more… electric.

The BMW i3 and Nissan Leaf are perhaps the “most electric” looking of today’s electric cars.m BMW shows no signs of easing up on its polarizing styling, while Nissan, known for pushing the limits of good design taste, will soon unveil all-new looks for the Leaf and a slightly tamed-down design for the soon-to-be-hybrid Juke.

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Feeling Green? Our Top 10 Environmentally Friendly Used Vehicles


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2013 Tesla Model S

Tesla made some serious waves last week when it debuted its Model 3 electric car. These weren’t your “gently lapping the shoreline” waves, either. Think “Laird Hamilton monstrous big-time waves.” We’re a data-driven, internet-focused company, so to demonstrate this point, we ran some basic Google searches. “Chevrolet Bolt” (the Model 3’s most direct competitor, and a car set to beat it to market by almost 2 years) returned 2.3 million results. “Nissan Leaf” (by and large the most popular electric car currently on sale) yields 4.9 million results. “Tesla Model 3?” 90.4 million results. So yeah… tidal waves.

Continue reading >>>