Why you should own an
electric car
Julia and I did our research, talked about the pros and cons for several
months, and then decided to dive in and buy a 2013 Nissan Leaf zero emission
fully electric car. We"ve had the car (which we"ve christened the Nav Missy)
since December 2013 and we both love it. One of the many features of this
very futuristic car is its telemetric system called: CARWINGS.
Just like the original Kindle the car comes with a prepaid cell-phone
based Internet connection. If you enable it the system uploads your driving
performance to the cloud. The system also allows the car to be remotely
controlled from a web page or a phone app and downloads updates to the
navigation system.
You can turn on the climate control remotely and start or stop charging
remotely. But the most intriguing feature of the CARWINGS telemetric system
is its ability to compare your driving with other Leaf owners. Above is the
current data from the last trip we made in the Nav Missy. You can see how
many gas free miles we traveled. You can see, that compared to other Leaf
drivers, we are ranked as good. That we travel, on average, 4.1 miles for
every one kilowatt hour of energy (kWh). By the way a kWh of energy costs
about $0.12 on average in the USA. So it costs us just $0.12 to travel 4.1
miles in the Nav Missy.
According to the EPA, the annual cost of electricity to power the 2013
LEAF is $500, or less than $10 per week. This cost is based on driving
15,000 miles per year while paying $0.12 per kilowatt hour. Also according
to the EPA, the average new gas powered car sold in the U.S. in 2013 will
achieve 23 miles per gallon. If you use a gas price of say: $4.26 a gallon
for regular gasoline driving the same 15,000 miles per year, the average new
car will cost $2,446 in gasoline each year, or over $47 per week.
Anyway besides from being cheaper to run, never having to visit a gas
station, the Nav Missy does not pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The
true cost of running a gas car is really a lot more than $47 per week if you
factor in the cost to your children's future from the damage to the
environment your gas car is causing.
If you"re in the market for a new car please consider buying a fully
electric car. I believe you"ll love it and you"ll really be doing everyone's
children a favor.
Notice the 1,622 lbs. of Co2 we did not pump into the atmosphere since we
bought the Nav Missy.