I LOVE our little LEAF! I’ve nicknamed her “BeeBee”, ’cause she’s so darned cute! She’s also fast, handles well, and uses less electricity than we’d expected. To top it off she’s way more spacious and comfortable than I’d imagined. Our parents can even get in and out of her with ease, which I never thought would be possible! The instant heat and A/C is lovely, especially being able to turn it on with our cell phones before we go out to the car. Heated front seats and steering wheel are wonderful in winter. The trunk is deep and spacious and seats are easy to lay down for carrying longer loads. She is also super quiet, since she doesn’t have an engine.

We never had range issues for in town use and even took the LEAF to Incline Village and Carson City without having to plug her in for a recharge. Our LEAF has a range of 100 miles with a full charge, so it easily accommodates all of our in town travel, and I love not ever going to a gas station! She plugs in like a cell phone through her cute little nose in the garage–how easy is that? One of my secret pleasures with the LEAF is the instant response of the electric motors when you hit the accelerator. I can burn rubber and leave muscle cars in the dust! (Not that I do that often… Really…)

The spreadsheet above gives the first year stats with some projections for the months of January, February and March, since we got the car in April. Averaging out our normal use, we expect to drive the LEAF about 6000 miles per year and use 1.6 megawatts of electricity. If we didn’t have solar panels, it would only cost us $144 per year to power her! That is a savings of around $800 over my old Subaru! (So, it pays to have an EV whether you have solar or not.) But, because we have solar panels, our savings is actually $950! Plus we saved 5700 pounds of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere (286 gallons X 20 lbs/gallon of gas).

We also saved money on repairs and maintenance. I have driven 100,000+ ICE vehicles for most of my life and they have high R&M bills, about $900 per year on average. The LEAF only had one minor repair to tighten front axle bolts for $151, for a savings of $749. This brings the total savings of driving the LEAF for a year to $1,700! (NOTE: This will decrease as the car ages and the R&M bills get higher.) In future years, I will keep a running total of savings so you can see how owning an EV plays out over time. Most EV’s cost about 1/3 of an ICE to maintain due to not having engines and transmissions, and saving the brakes with regenerative braking.

The best part for us has been the pure joy of driving this car and knowing we are powering it with Nevada sunshine and emitting zero carbon and no pollution. We use it most of the time, saving the Highlander for when we need two cars or will be traveling out of the LEAF’s 100-mile range.