My Nissan Leaf life: How an electric car hit my budget
(Read article summary)Before you buy an electric car, like a Chevy Volt or Nissan Leaf, it makes sense to figure out how it will hit your pocketbook and your cash flow.
– Fourth installment in an occasional series
A key step before you buy a new plug-in electric-drive vehicle is to examine your finances in detail. You may just love helping the planet, but it clearly helps to be able to justify higher upfront costs with the promise of lower fuel costs down the road and square that with the reality of what's in your wallet. A deadline helps, too.
By last November I had hatched a plan that would give our 1998 Honda Accord to our daughter for Christmas. She could take it off to college in January. That would leave my wife and I with only our eight-year-old Honda Odyssey. It's a good van, but at about 20 miles per gallon city, 26 m.p.g. on the highway, it’s hardly a mileage champ.
Having done our field research, it was clear that the only electric-drive models that would actually be available in early 2012 were the plug-in hybrid Chevy Volt and the all-electric Nissan Leaf.
From the start, we had leaned toward the Chevy Volt. Our premise: Owning a plug-in hybrid meant you could reasonable have just one vehicle in the garage, drive on electric most of the time, still go on long trips, and save money over having two cars. But that premise was about to get a fiscal reality check.
