Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The Nissan Leaf is just not competitive anymore, and I see no sign of a newer version of it with better range. Depends on your needs. My Leaf has been incredible. I paid $5k for an older one off lease and it gets me round trip to work/school/running errands for essentially zero marginal cost. People are stuck in an ICE mindset where they can't imagine a car being useful with less than 400 miles range. But the reali…
Random thought of mine is charging becomes less of an issue when the cars range is several multiples of daily use. If say your electric car has 200 miles of range and you drive it 40 miles a day, then it needs to be charged once every 5 days. Which is in line with the US average of 12,000 miles a year. Or 230 miles a week which is about the range of a Bolt or Tesla. Other random thought. Someone that has charging at…
The reason this line of thinking doesn't line up with reality is because of how lithium ion batteries work. Storing your car at a full charge will increase the rate of battery degradation as much as 5x. Similarly, discharging to (or near to) 0% State of Charge is stressful to the battery because you are causing voltage imbalances among the individual cells within each pack. The reality is that most EV drivers keep their cars between 20-80% at all times. This is optimal for battery health and it ends up being the most practical charging pattern for daily use as well.
With gas cars, you are forced to think in terms of "time between fill ups", but with an EV you are constantly "filling up" anywhere you go because it's so seamless to park and charge.