Nissan Leaf and more

Over the past few years one of my interests has been how to ‘save’ the environment in a broad sense. For me there are too many factors to scientifically to ‘prove’ that humans are changing the environment on a global scale. I know that it is political and an intellectual argument because what we see around us and has happened in the last 30 years show already showed us glimpse through pollution of how we are changing the environment to make it uninhabitable for us and every other animal. If the argument goes on for much longer then we are doomed basically.

Part of the solution is of course electric cars, especially powered by renewable energy source. Naturally,the next step in the evolution of electricity and the materials used to store and use it. The simple argument that these cars use more resources and more toxic is on the balance not quite true as normal cars which use oil cause more problems. Eg. earth quakes through the latest oil fracking dilemma. For any one with common sense if you are destroying the foundation of the earth yes it will cause more instability and yes it will contaminate clean water supplies. It’s such a issue that even oil companies trying to stop the research.

Anyway electric cars are already here and possibly the successor to hybrids? Without much fanfare the Nissan Leaf has been on sale since about 2010. It is all electric and on-one seems to care. All the attention goes to Tesla for clearly better PR. The most common issues with electric cars in general is how reliable is the battery? and how far will it go on one charge?

How long with an electric cars battery last is answered by the Nissan Leaf statistics is showing 99.99% reliability since there are 165,000 of them around the world. How far the car goes will depend on usage naturally – think mobile phone! Use it lots and it won’t last long, use it sparingly and it will meet expectations. It’s just like a normal car really. Unfortunately the majority don’t seem to be able to work that out that link. The problem of charging is easily fixed and since the NissanLeaf can even text/email message you when it low of charge and other nifty features.

I do like the Nissan Leaf as car and in concept, it is the only affordable purely electric car on sale. If my transport needs was purely city suburb commuting than this would be the car I’d get. Apart from even more high tech features the only thing that Nissan Leaf needs to change is they way it looks – it currently looks like any other smallish hatchback. The design needs to be from future not the past. If that can make something like the Nissan Juke why not a futuristic and individual looking electric car?