Last week 404 Media reported a website called ‘Dogequest’ was doxing Tesla owners. The site administrators appear to have launched a clone of the interactive map on the dark web too.
The leaf did such a disservice to EVs that the world would probably have been better off without it. It was ugly, it was slow, it had no range, it had no battery cooling so degradation was awful, and charging was slow to boot.
Would we though? The model S was only ~2 years away and that was the first EV people took seriously.
The leaf was affordable, but depreciation hit so hard that buying one new was only for actually insane people. And the battery degradation was almost as bad as the price degradation so your meh range became even worse. In ideal conditions it was fine, but anything worse and it was not a good option.
I’m not a time traveller so I can’t say for sure, but cars lile Chevy Bolt and Renault Zoe wouldn’t be the same, since Leaf showed that there was demand for small BEV hatches and battery cooling systems
Most of those were fixed with gen 2 but the one the two that really matter were not fixed: no water cooling and the CHAdeMO charging. What is worse is that they still didn’t fix it over the last 8 years with a newer generation when it was clear those were both nonstarters. Instead they came out with the overpriced Arya which is much worse than the competition.
But make no mistake, the Leaf back in 2011 was a game changer. It showed that your commuter car could very much be an EV.
A lot of that is why I have kind of always resented the tesla marketing even before we k
new musk was a hateful sexpest. My uncle had one of the early models before they added a lot of the safety features and it was REAL fun to go basically have instantaneous acceleration… and he would probably have died from that if he didn’t die from cancer instead.
But very quickly they made the argument that people need giant batteries and massive range. And that still permeates today. And the reality is that, no, people don’t. The vast majority of driving is commuting which tends to be more stop and go than not and just making charging stations in parking lots more ubiquitous would go a REALLY long way. No, not the super chargers. Just simple slow as hell level 1 and 2 chargers. And that would cover basically everyone 6.9 days a week outside of the folk with REALLY long commutes.
Where long range and super fast charging DOES help is for people doing long road trips and… folk think they are gonna be in their 30s and 40s driving 12 hours straight with only a stop to dump their piss bottle at a gas station. The reality is that by the time you are even considering a “new” car, you are probably also going to be more likely to stop for lunch or have kids to deal with where 30-40 minutes for a full recharge makes a lot more sense.
But instead we got into the mindset that you need a massive battery so you only charge up once a week and when you do it is a 10 minute recharge because even that is too long to wait.
I occasionally think of an alternate timeline where we realized that was stupid and instead L1/2 charging stations were a lot more popular and pretty much every major manufacturer switched to plug-in hybrids. Yeah, their battery tends to be shite compared to a “real” EV but people vastly underestimate how much you get from regenerative braking under real world conditions. Couple years back I had a rental toyota sedan and ended up driving all around Ontario for the better part of a week on like half a tank of gas and it was insane. And the needle literally did not move the entire time I was in Toronto or even frigging London.
people vastly underestimate how much you get from regenerative braking under real world conditions
From what I’ve heard and read, that’s why the original Opel Ampera/Chevy Volt was so beloved.
and pretty much every major manufacturer switched to plug-in hybrids
Nowadays we have new Honda (and Nissan but who cares tbh) hybrids where the engine doesn’t drive the wheels 99% of the time. So we’re intersecting with that timeline a lil bit lol
The leaf did such a disservice to EVs that the world would probably have been better off without it. It was ugly, it was slow, it had no range, it had no battery cooling so degradation was awful, and charging was slow to boot.
We wouldn’t be here without it though. It did a decent job popularizing EVs, much better than i-Miev for example.
Would we though? The model S was only ~2 years away and that was the first EV people took seriously.
The leaf was affordable, but depreciation hit so hard that buying one new was only for actually insane people. And the battery degradation was almost as bad as the price degradation so your meh range became even worse. In ideal conditions it was fine, but anything worse and it was not a good option.
I’m not a time traveller so I can’t say for sure, but cars lile Chevy Bolt and Renault Zoe wouldn’t be the same, since Leaf showed that there was demand for small BEV hatches and battery cooling systems
Most of those were fixed with gen 2 but the one the two that really matter were not fixed: no water cooling and the CHAdeMO charging. What is worse is that they still didn’t fix it over the last 8 years with a newer generation when it was clear those were both nonstarters. Instead they came out with the overpriced Arya which is much worse than the competition.
But make no mistake, the Leaf back in 2011 was a game changer. It showed that your commuter car could very much be an EV.
A lot of that is why I have kind of always resented the tesla marketing even before we k new musk was a hateful sexpest. My uncle had one of the early models before they added a lot of the safety features and it was REAL fun to go basically have instantaneous acceleration… and he would probably have died from that if he didn’t die from cancer instead.
But very quickly they made the argument that people need giant batteries and massive range. And that still permeates today. And the reality is that, no, people don’t. The vast majority of driving is commuting which tends to be more stop and go than not and just making charging stations in parking lots more ubiquitous would go a REALLY long way. No, not the super chargers. Just simple slow as hell level 1 and 2 chargers. And that would cover basically everyone 6.9 days a week outside of the folk with REALLY long commutes.
Where long range and super fast charging DOES help is for people doing long road trips and… folk think they are gonna be in their 30s and 40s driving 12 hours straight with only a stop to dump their piss bottle at a gas station. The reality is that by the time you are even considering a “new” car, you are probably also going to be more likely to stop for lunch or have kids to deal with where 30-40 minutes for a full recharge makes a lot more sense.
But instead we got into the mindset that you need a massive battery so you only charge up once a week and when you do it is a 10 minute recharge because even that is too long to wait.
I occasionally think of an alternate timeline where we realized that was stupid and instead L1/2 charging stations were a lot more popular and pretty much every major manufacturer switched to plug-in hybrids. Yeah, their battery tends to be shite compared to a “real” EV but people vastly underestimate how much you get from regenerative braking under real world conditions. Couple years back I had a rental toyota sedan and ended up driving all around Ontario for the better part of a week on like half a tank of gas and it was insane. And the needle literally did not move the entire time I was in Toronto or even frigging London.
From what I’ve heard and read, that’s why the original Opel Ampera/Chevy Volt was so beloved.
Nowadays we have new Honda (and Nissan but who cares tbh) hybrids where the engine doesn’t drive the wheels 99% of the time. So we’re intersecting with that timeline a lil bit lol