Quote:
Originally Posted by thstone
My wife wants a "green" car (she has a BMW E46 325i right now) so we went out and test drove a Ford Focus Electric today. 101 MPGe, 3.5 hour charge time, 76 mile range. This is a pure electric with no gas engine whatsoever.
It was a very nice car and drove and handled much more like a European car than I expected from a Ford.
The ride quality was about the same as a base Boxster and the handling was decent. The power and performance (0-60mph in 9 sec) was good and more than enough for my wife who drives ..... let's just say, carefully.
The interior was surprisingly nice for a base model and the only thing that my wife would want beyond the base model is leather seats which we can have done on the aftermarket.
Her drive is 60 miles max one way and she has access to company Level 2 chargers at her work so range shouldn't be an issue for her daily use. For long trips, we have another BMW or my 996.
I have never been a big fan of all electric cars and am surprised that I may end up with one in the driveway soon.  At the same time, I haven't seen my wife this excited about a car since.... well, never.
Let me know your thoughts! |
Move cautiously on this. While you are located in an area with moderate temperature extremes, not everyone is, or will always use the car in moderate climes; which can significantly impact range.
When Nissan introduced their Leaf plug in electric a couple of years back, they claimed a 100 mile expected range. Unfortunately, there are no currently agreed upon EPA federal standards for determining mileage on plug in car, the numbers are typically developed by the companies selling the car. In the case of the Leaf, testers like Consumers Report evaluated the car an said that if the car was used on a 68 F day, day time use only, no AC used, and no other electrical accessories used, the car may get 60-65 miles between charges. They also noted that if the air temp dropped to 40 F, the expected range under the same conditions could drop by as much as 40%. They also noted that the expected replacement costs for the battery pack in the car should be about 30-35% of the purchase price of the car new, which was $45K at the time.
A local Nissan dealer we get parts from got in two loaner Leafs from Nissan to use as demos when people drop off other models for service, to try and help introduce electric cars to conventional car owners. Within a couple of months, the dealer stopped using the cars as loaners after having to flatbed them back to the shop when they literally stopped running on the customers during the same day they were lent to them, always because the battery pack had run low on charge.