Quote:
Originally Posted by dday
seems like every one in the electric car club hates the leaf. They never have any thing good to say about it. I don't understand. Of course they want everyone to convert their own car to make it electric. I say why take a perfectly good car and turn it into a pile of Junk that cant even go a 100 miles?
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The EVDL has the same mix of people as any other car forum, including this one. They have the equivalent of the "old car people", as in, "I wouldn't be caught dead in one of them newfangled computer-controlled cars. I like one I can fix on the side of the road with duct tape. Now you'll have to excuse me; it's been 7,500 miles and I have to replace my points and adjust my timing again."
The EVDL did have one very good point: charging infrastructure. During the EV1 heydey, there were two charging standards: Magnecharge and Avcon. Both were proprietary, patented and extremely expensive. Magnecharge had the additional disadvantage of being an inductive charger, which had higher losses. The EVDL people believed, rightly as it turned out, that government would require that only those two standards would be allowed, and that old-fashioned NEMA plugs would be outlawed. At one point, it actually was proposed that the NEC would specifically outlaw any electrical car charging connectors that weren't Magnecharge or Avcon. (Don't remember if it actually made it in, but at least one state made such a mandate.)
Along with the Leaf comes another charging infrastructure. If that infrastructure isn't done in a way that's standardized, open and freely available, it will fracture the infrastructure in a way that will make public charging very problematic.
And the reason they pooh-poohed the Prius is because it's not an EV. Until it's plug-in capable, it's still 100% fossil-fueled.
I haven't been following the EVDL lately, so I haven't been privy to the complaints. I assume they boil down to, "give me $32,780 and I'll build you an EV that will run circles around the Leaf."