overall cost of prius vs nissan leaf

[JPWhite]

Originally Posted by camry25

I was wondering if a car like the prius at ? $24000@ 50mpg would compare to an electric car like the leaf at ~$35000
@100mpg with gas at $4.00
for 20 years driving in the city. Which would be cheaper to own?

To do that kind of comparison use my spreadsheet and adjust the parameters to your personal situation.

Nissan LEAF – Scrunching the numbers | Nissan LEAF

(I had to make the link not work or look like a URL because of forum posting rules :-(

[NeilBlanchard]

Thanks -- I can post the link for you:

Nissan LEAF – Scrunching the numbers | Nissan LEAF

As I mentioned, the real cost of gasoline includes more electricity per mile with an ICE powered car than for an EV, because of the embedded energy overhead of oil and gasoline. And the oil companies still get HUGE amounts of money subsidies from the government. Those need to go away.

Put some solar panels on your roof, and drive for zero fuel cost, and cut your carbon footprint for driving to a tiny fraction of what it is now.

[JPWhite]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

Put some solar panels on your roof, and drive for zero fuel cost, and cut your carbon footprint for driving to a tiny fraction of what it is now.

Thanks.

Yes solar is next on my shopping list. I figure once Mr. Obama is out of office the incentives for solar will be repealed, so now is the time for solar. Plus once more folks use EV's the price of electric will go up as the EPA puts its stranglehold on power generating plants, so solar is insurance against fuel price hikes :-)

[Ryland]

Originally Posted by JPWhite

Plus once more folks use EV's the price of electric will go up as the EPA puts its stranglehold on power generating plants, so solar is insurance against fuel price hikes :-)

Electricity will always go up in price, but demand for electricity is not going to go up much if people are replacing gasoline cars with electric cars because of the huge amount of electricity that is used to refine gasoline, replace a 20mpg vehicle with a 300watt hours per mile vehicle and the nations electrical use has stayed the same, charge at night and you've helped even out the electrical demand on the grid because there is less oil being refined for you in the day time now.

[Ryland]

Originally Posted by Erasemus

As a Leaf owner I did this calculation before buying and included another category, maintenance, for a 5 year /100,000 mile total cost of ownership (TCO) comparison.
The only Leaf maintenance costs in that interval involve transmission fluid, brake fluid and brake maintenance. The Prius requires those plus oil changes, belt maintenance, radiator maintenance, fuel pump maintenance, etc. that I estimated as an additional $1000. For my driving habits, I concluded that the Leaf should have a significantly lower TCO, assuming gas prices rising to $5.00/gal over the interval.
The energy costs for the Leaf also contribute to job creation in the country where the vehicle is charged due to the fuel sources (coal and nuclear, and, in my case solar). They do not fund dependence on foreign oil.

According to Nissan, the Leaf's gear oil never needs to be changed (VW says they same thing, change it only if you are changing a seal or something) where the Prius has a CVT instead of a regular gear box and those can get pricey to rebuild and some of the early Prius had issues with them.
I also haven't checked to see how long the exhaust on a Prius lasts, but unless it's stainless steel it's going to rust out at some point too.

The Leaf is pretty impressive, list of maintenance is rotate the tires, change the cabin air filter, replace the brake fluid and replace the wind shield wiper blades.