2 years ago i leased a similar vehicle, a 2015 fiat 500e. it's only for sale in california and oregon. it's a "compliance car", sale of which enables fiat/chrysler to sell some number of monster trucks and SUVs. it's a lot of fun to drive, and many people have leased them for less than their cable tv bill per month (with around $3k buy in and a buyout of the vehicle at the end of the lease that nobody would opt for.)
(by the way, i rented a benzina 2016 fiat 500 in italy earlier this year, and, aside from the shape, it's a completely different car.) importantly, it's small enough to park in the fragmented parking in san francisco between residential driveways. it gets 80-ish miles per full charge with 2.5 hour recharge times at 220v and an impractical >20 hour recharge time at 110v. in california there are numerous free charging options in municipal parking lots, county buildings such as libraries and colleges, and high tech companies. about a year ago, one of the solar companies (sungevity) had a promotion which bundled a level 2 charger when you installed rooftop solar cells, so i went for that. it turned out to be a giant win, because they also replaced my main circuit breaker box, doubled my connection to the power grid, and because my 220v service is as far as could be from the driveway, the conduit run alone to the charger would have cost me about $2k to install. so far i think i've made about $1100 selling excess power back to the power company in a year of operation. the cited reason for their low value is concern about battery longevity and the increased range of the new EVs for sale. I have a year left on my lease. Already put a deposit down on a Tesla 3, but doubt it will be available by then. Maybe a Chevy Bolt (with 230 mile range and really enthusiastic reviews) makes the most sense and they have started showing up on dealer lots now (500 within a hundred miles of my zip code). But definitely leasing an EV makes more sense than purchasing these days, because the technology is improving so rapidly. ne interesting thing is the resale value of these fiats when they go off-lease after 3 years and 30k miles. they've been selling at auction for $4500-5k wholesale, which means you can buy them retail for $6500. that's a very cheap used car! (i wonder if the bank would be willing to just sell me the car i've been driving for $5k and be done with it.) On 1/27/17 1:23 PM, Alaric Snell-Pym wrote: > I've just become the proud owner of an all-electric car, a Renault Zoe. > > Don't mistake me for the kind of person who can afford to buy new cars - > ha! - we're leasing this one, £130 a month for the car and another £70 a > month for the battery, which is normally leased even if you buy the car > (as it needs periodic replacement), but it's a definite step up from our > previous history of failing second-hand cars. > > It's nice. 60-80 mile range between recharges, depending on the ambient > temperature (mainly because the heat pump that controls the air > temperature inside it draws a kW or two). I have the dashboard set to > display the power level in kilowatts, which is instructive: > > Cruising at 30mph on a flat road = 8kW or so. > > Accelerating smoothly = 20kW. > > Accelerating hard from 60mph to 70mph: 60kW. > > So far, I've not paid for electricity to charge it with; here in the UK, > public chargers tend to be free to use, although many of them are in car > parks you need to pay to leave your car in. A hotel near us has free > parking AND a 22kW charger that can fill it in 1-2 hours, but we need to > lurk in the hotel bar while it's charging because there's nothing else > to do. On the other hand, two paid-for car parks near places I actually > need to go and visit (eg, my office) have 7kW chargers that take four > hours to charge the thing fully. > > Plugging the car in to charge, even now I've done it several times, > still carries a pleasingly future-shock strangeness. > > Ideally, you have a charger at home, but I have no off-street parking to > fit one in, so I can't. The local council should install a public one in > the road, central government offers them grants for doing so, but > they've yet to respond to my request, so I'm not holding my breath. > > Electric cars are widely touted as the environmentally friendly option. > Obviously, they're nowhere near as good as walking or riding a bike, but > I wonder how much they improve over fuel-burning cars. They still need > to be made, and that's a large fraction of the resources used in a car's > lifetime. And they have that battery full of exotic substances which > needs replacing periodically. > > And rather than buying a second-hand one, I've entered into a three-year > leasing contract, whereby they'll replace it every few years if I keep > paying them. Making me now the wasteful person driving new cars around, > that creates the piles of cheap second-hand cars others will buy. > > Sadly, the fact it's leased means I'm not supposed to take it to bits > and see how it all works inside :-( >
