Why should you get a Nissan Leaf?  Are you trying to do your part to save the environment?  Do you want to be the first on the block with an electric vehicle?  Or is it just to save money?  There are many good reasons to get a Leaf or any electricl vehicle (EV) but in the article, I will cover some of the economic reasons.

The first question: Is the Leaf cheaper to run than a regular gasoline car?  At this point, the Leaf has fairly limited purchase choices.  There are two models, an upgraded SV and SL model.  The SL can hardly be called a “base model” because it includes a good list of features such as power windows, mirrors, air conditioning, GPS navigation system, Bluetooth hands-free stereo system and more.

For $32,780 plus the normal dealer add ons and general excise tax, you can drive out with a Leaf for about $35,000.  If you look at the gasoline car which the Leaf is based on, the Nissan Versa, it goes for about $20,000 including tax and fees.  To help close the difference between these two, the Government is monetarily incenting consumers to get EV’s.  There is a $7,500 Federal tax credit for the Leaf and other qualified EV's:

http://www.irs.gov/businesses/article/0,,id=219867,00.html

The State of Hawaii also has a rebate of up to $4,500:

http://hawaii.gov/dbedt/info/energy/evrebatesgrants/rebates

Together these reduces $12,000 off the price and gets the cost down to $23,000.  Now we are getting close.

So what about gasoline savings?  In order to answer this, we will need to do some simplified computations:  The average price for a gallon of unleaded gas in 2010 was $3.65.  For this example, let’s say you can drive 25 miles on a gallon of gas. In order to drive 100 miles, it would cost you $14.60 for gas.  The Leaf has an estimated driving distance of 100 miles when fully charged.  So how much does it cost for the electricity for the 100 miles?  The Leaf has a 24 kWh battery and average cost per kWh of electricity in Honolulu for 2010 was $0.2547.  

2010 Average HECo rates per kWHr.

So the cost to charge the Leaf’s battery would be $6.11.  I realize this is an over simplification of what the costs are because there are other factors which involve the time of day and the type of the charger used to charge the Leaf but basically we can conclude that it cost at least half as much to power an EV instead of a gasoline car.  As the price of oil goes up, both the cost of gasoline and electricity produced from an oil fired generator will go up proportionally.  However, if you are using alternative methods of generating electricity (i.e. photo voltaic, wind, hydro, refuge) which do not follow the price of oil, the cost savings will increase as the oil cost increases.  So in my example, you could save $8.49 per 100 miles driven or you would need to drive approximately 35,000 miles to make up for the difference in the EV and gasoline versions of the Nissan cars.  Again, these are overly simplistic estimations which do not factoring many other operational differences but it does show we have come a long way in making an alternative to the gasoline car economical.  Another way to look at this is if you drive about 10,000 miles in a year, you could save at least $849 per year on gas.

Besides charging your EV at home or at the office, where can you get your car charged and what will each of these locations price to charge their car?  By the end of the year, there will be hundreds of charging stations but at this point, I only know of one location where you can purchase a charge for an EV: Green Energy Outlet in Kakaako:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dBU-c4Atp8

I have yet to try the location and see how much it cost.  Other than that, other locations seem to be free at this point: Nissan Car Dealers on Oahu have free chargers on their lot.  There are a number of chargers installed at the Sheraton Waikiki for hotel and guest vehicles.  There are a number of private charging stations installed as well.  For example, at the Oceanic Time Warner Cable office in Mililani, two EV charging stations were installed for their employee’s EV’s along with the photovoltaic system that was recently completed.

What other incentives are there for driving an EV?  How about parking?  In 1997 the Hawaii Legislature passed Act290 which provides free EV registration and public parking in State, City and County metered parking and lots. The Hawaii law expired for the EV registration but the free parking still remains (with your EV licence plates).  Federal/Military parking is not free and at the University of Hawaii at Manoa only the Main parking structure is free:

http://www.hawaii.edu/parking/maps/evparking.pdf

In private parking lots EV parking is not free but there is still the benefit of reserve EV parking.   Due to the Hawaii Law enacted in 2009 (Act 156), by the end of 2011, all public, private and government parking lots of at least 100 stalls must have 1% of the stalls reserved for EV’s and equipped with EV charging units. (http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/hrscurrent/Vol05_Ch0261-0319/HRS0291/HRS_0291-0071.htm) To help get this done, the US Federal Government has funded $2.6M to six organizations in Hawaii to install EC charging stations.

http://hawaii.gov/dbedt/info/energy/evrebatesgrants/grants

The support facilities for the Leaf and other EV’s are being developed here in Hawaii.  At this point, when we drive our Leaf, we need to carefully plan where we are going in order to make sure our Leaf has enough battery power.  At best, EV’s are not like a gas car which can be refilled/recharged in a few minutes but as chargers become commonplace, we probably will not need to plan as much.