Read this from one of the guys on my Aprilia forum
It really is a scary thought and I appreciate I am opening myself up for ridicule here but hey ho so beit.
I have a confession!
For the last 16 months I have been commuting in an electric car, a Nissan Leaf (feels good to have outed myself) Shocked
The thing is I commute 90 miles a day, my trusty Alfa was costing me about £320 a month in fuel, a cheap Diesel would have been approx £240, an economical bike (NC750) around £180 and lets not go there regarding the Ape it's £16 a day!!!!!!!!
All of the above was when fuel was at 99.9p / litre which it isn't now.
Just up the road from work is a Nissan dealer and one lunchtime whilst out for a stroll they were unloading 4 leafs from the transporter which were their demo fleet and all branded as 155 mile range.
I said the sales guy taking delivery that "they were dreaming of 155 miles maybe, what's the real range?" He said I could have one for a four day test drive to find out for myself. I wasn't interested really but thought I would save about £60 so took it.
The thing cruises at 80 which as quick as my commuting traffic ever goes, is very comfortable and eerily quiet and so far in 21K miles has cost me just over £400 in electricity according to the meter on the charger. I am fortunate in that I can charge at work so my costs would be doubled but even so £800 for 21000 miles is cheap.
I use the car for commuting, I have another car (evil diesel) that we use for family stuff but when I have taken the Leaf on business trips I've not had an issue to charge it and complete my jouney, just needs pre-planning that's all.
In the current summer conditions it will do 120 miles driven sensibly, in the depths of winter it's 100 miles. There is a new model coming out later this year with a bigger range and I can see me swapping the contract onto a new one.
I am convert, would I have an electric bike? I don't know but this is the future for transport and as far as cars are concerned once the packaging and technology for improving the capacity and power management evolves I have no issue with it becoming mainstream.
We would love to all be driving round in big V8's and 200 bhp superbikes but life is about compromises and I for one can't afford to run a "sporty" car for my commute. The purpose for which I chose to take the Leaf for I cannot get over just how well it does the job, I think it's great.
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