Is the Volt a Leaf over the Toyota Prius?
Leaf to get 367 mpg!? So, which vehicle is better: the Chevy Volt, the Nissan Leaf or the Toyota Prius?
Not long after GM announced that the Volt might achieve 230 mpg in the city, Nissan announced that its Leaf electric vehicle would achieve 367 mpg in the city. So, obviously, the Leaf is the best, followed by the Volt, then the Prius, right?
If 80 percent of US drivers only drive 40 miles or less per day, then the Leaf, with its cheaper upfront costs, seems the clear winner. However, 100 miles of EV range might only mean 80 or 60 miles in the real world. Can you feel that range anxiety kicking in? What if you live in a condo or an apartment, or you have to park on the street?
Then the Volt can you take you further, for a cost, but it's a pretty big cost, or is it?
While Nissan is hoping to price the Leaf at $25,000 to $30,000, the Leaf is also reported to require a battery lease. How much will the lease cost? Even at $50 a month for 10 years, Leaf battery costs could more than pay for a lifetime's worth of fuel for the Prius, and you're still left with those nasty anxiety attacks.
Of course, the Leaf will reduce foreign oil dependency more than the Prius, thus the government will offer a big juicy tax credit. That alone could wipe out the cost of the battery lease, but again, where will you plug-in? What about that Thursday drive to the beach that is 120 miles there and back?
Well, it's back to the Volt, then, right? EV range for every day driving backed by a range-extending flex-fuel engine? Perfect, except for the fact that after a $7500 tax credit, you could still buy a Prius, pay for a lifetime's worth of fuel and still have several thousand dollars to spare.
Is the Volt a Leaf over the Prius? Not yet, but we'll review again once either Nissan or GM starts producing 100,000 of their plug-ins per year.
Labels: Chevy Volt electric vehicle concept, nissan leaf, toyota prius
posted by Dahcredyns at
8:48 AM
12 Comments:
I have checked Govt site and Prius III has NO tax credits available anymore.
Very few people will purchase leaf if they have to make long drives frequently / and Fusion and Prius with any options will be drive out of min $28k or so hybrids over 10 years cost versus fully loaded 2009 Toyota Corolla can not be justified.
Its much cheaper even if gas averages 3.75 a gallon to get a loaded nice Corolla, than any nicely equipped hybrid right now.
I think that will change by beginning of 2011 but till then, get even more savings with slightly used 09 Corolla low miles one owner - you will save about 5k overall for 10 year span!
Even the base Prius comes with quite a few options, so I think you're a little off, especially classing the Prius and the Fusion together.
Likewise, I think it depends on your driving conditions. In my neck of the woods, drives are very congested. In such conditions a Corolla is achieve well under 30 mpg. The 2nd gen Prius, according to Cars.com, could achieve 55 mpg in such congestion. Thus, the new Prius probably achieves well over 60 mpg.
So, I think the Prius can be more cost-effective than you assume, but it depends on the conditions.
Finally, I don't know how often you've driven a Prius, but I think the Prius is a far nicer vehicle than the Corolla.
Nonetheless, you still make a relevant point that is applicable to many auto consumers.
The point is well made that it depends on your driving conditions. I drive a Smart car about 20 miles per day so I could drive a Volt or other vehicle with simular technology for a month and put 300 to 500 miles on it without using a drop of gasoline. I have a diesel engined car that I use on long trips. I only paid 13.5 for my Smart car so paying 30 or 40K for a Leaf or a Volt would not make sense to me. However I have a sneaking suspicion that I would. The lure of driving without using any gas has a strong appeal to me. Darn it!
I was gassing up the buggy yesterday and while waiting for the fill.. was thinking... this:
"will there be a day when service stations either disappear or follow a similar path that public pay phones have"?
Want to see things accelerate?
well.. you put cordon tolls around our urban areas - and you let the plug-ins go "free".
Then they might well beat the non-plug-ins on cost....
and the cities will get cleaner air and less sickness and lung ailments as a bonus that also could be calculated as a reduction in costs.
no?
augustever - i'm tempted as well.
larryg- it's going to require such incentives to take plug-ins to the next level. if we want real change we have to take much more drastic action. however, i don't see the will- amongst the public - for such a movement.
i think we'll need a few more gas spikes. of course, if that happens, then we'll be assisting the new GM out of bankrupcty.
Well....to all previous commentators, you all have some good points, but I'll be the fly in the ointment. Unless you have excess money to spend (i.e. can afford 2 or more automobiles), live within 25-30 miles of your work place, have an available recharging facility at both home and work, and don't have to use an electric vehicle for such things as hurricane evacuations, vacations, etc., then these all electric vehicles are totally impractical. Myself, my drive to work is only about 10 miles one way (65% @ highway speeds), but have had to evacuate my home 3 times in the last 3 years because of hurricanes! Each evacuation was for many hours and several hundred miles. So you surely don't want to be stranded 100 miles away on the side of the road, or if you could find a place to recharge, be waiting hours to get back on the road! A majority of people I work with (about 200 employees) live 35 or more miles away from work and in fact have to cross the longest bridge in the U.S. (26 miles) just to get into the city. Several park on the street so they would have no way to recharge their now depleted batteries. Starting to get my drift here??? And I am only one of several million residents who live in areas where similar problems of an electric vehicle would be present.
It seems to me that the only practical means of transportation (for at least the next several years) is some sort of hybrid, whether gasoline/diesel and electric, or natural gas and electric, or even hydrogen and electric. All would give you significant mileage improvements, environmental improvements, and power and range of mobility. Yes, we must try to get away from using petroleum as an "only" automobile fuel source, but a hybrid still is the only feasible alternative to a straight gasoline/diesel fueled ICE for a vast majority of Americans.
last anon-
those are excellent points. and i bet that this 40 miles per day or less is really much more complicated. i'd bet that on average, many people drive just 10, 15 or 20 miles for 50 - 75 percent of their miles traveled. the other 50 - 25 percent is composed of much longer distances.
range anxiety has been studied extensively, and I think muck of that anxiety is based upon the real world habits of every day drivers.
my parents for instance, drive only a few miles here and there on a daily basis, but twice per week the travel a few hundred miles.
the volt is an important vehicle, but a plethora of fuel efficient solutions are required. and, in the interim, i fully agree that conventional hybrids, even plug-in hybrids, offer the most cost-effective, realistic option for consumers.
I just hope that GM is not blowing smoke on the VOLT.
If they crash and burn big time.. the whole idea of plug-ins ... and moving away from gasoline could set back years....
worse.. it would confirm in many people's minds why relying on Toyota to do this is the right strategy and that US companies are simply not capable to take the lead in these kinds of challenges.
Larry G., there is no doubt in my mind that Toyota is the hands down leader in hybrid technology. I disagree that US companies are not capable of taking that lead. Look at all the great advances in technology in the last 50 - 60 years. I'm talking about everything from solid state electronics to satellite communications and GPS. The talent is here...the best universities for technology are here...all that's missing is the motivation.
US auto manufacturers don't seem to be able to read the market as well as some of the foreign auto makers. That's a leadership problem which is so ironic since our lowest paid auto CEO makes 3 to 4 times what the CEO of Toyota and Mercedes makes. And which company is making the most money? The one with the lowest paid CEO. Toyota. There's a message in there somewhere. Is Toyota more motivated than the US makers? I would say yes. But if Toyota was the only game in town would they become like GM. I would say yes to that also. Competition is good. GM didn't realize they had any competition until the hybrid train had passed them by. But bottom line I would not count the US manufacturers out. They have the ability to blow the competition out of the water because their resources (talent)is so awesome.
But when you have status quo management that is happy as long as the money keeps rolling into their bank accounts, you wind up with status quo autos that sit on dealer lots while the competition blows them away. Our top managers aren't hungry anymore.
It's like watching a great athlete become complacent because they lost the hunger that made them great in the first place. So perhaps it's time for GM, Chrysler and Ford to reach down into the ranks and start looking for some people who are very talented, willing to claw their way to the top, and would do it for a lot less than 10 to 20 million a year.
If that's not a win win situation I don't know what is.
Companies like Toyota realize there are a lot of companies out there nipping at their heels so they have never taken themselves for granted. They are constantly looking over their shoulders because they know that even the mighty Toy can be toppled.
that's an interesting perspective.
there was a top ranking female executive, i think from ford, that wrote a book about that subject, and how the US auto industry is driven solely by quarterly financial statements and not much else.
over-paid, under-performing auto executives - aside from Alan Mulally thus far - are also the source of much criticism in the financial and banking industries as well.
still, back to the this issue and GM. since bankruptcy, most of the top execs are still in place at GM. it's almost as if they did nothing wrong, it was all external forces.
toyota on the other hand regularly shakes up its executive ranks.
in sports they often remove entire coaching staffs - not because they are poor coaches, but because change and a new direction are required. sometimes, you just need to shake things up.
yet, even after bankruptcy, we still didn't shake GM up that much.
larry-
I'd just say that even if GM fails, Ford can still deliver. i believe alan mulally is the best executive to hit detroit in a very long time. ford has been doing a lot of work behind the scenes, they just haven't been as vocal since mulally took the helm.
nonetheless, i think ford could be a company that undersells, but completely over-delivers.
Dahcredyns, you've hit the nail squarely on the head. GM needs fresh blood yet they brought Bob Lutz back after he voluntarilly stepped down and retired recently.
Lutz might be the greatest car guy since the invention of cheese and he's reportedly a big fan of the Volt but it's time for some new blood.
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