The view from 20,000km

A couple of months ago, I wrote about my experience of the first four months of driving a Nissan Leaf and my reasons for buying it in the first place (Click here to read it.)

It’s taken slightly longer to cover my next 10,000km due to some time off during the summer months, but I’ve just crossed that next milestone this week. As an update to the previous post, below is the updated cost comparison against my old commuting vehicle, a 2003 1.4l Petrol Skoda Octavia;

In the last 10,000km, I’ve saved €972 on driving my Nissan Leaf for my daily commute in comparison to the Skoda Octavia. If you compare this figure to the previous post, where I had a saving of €941, you can see that my savings have actually increased.

There are three reasons for this difference.

1. The average cost of petrol has risen (surprise, surprise!) by just a little over 2c per litre in the last few months. Since January of this year, the average price of petrol has gone up by 3.6c per litre. That’s not much, but it’s certainly going up. It’s probably worth pointing out that diesel has remained relatively consistent in price, sitting at around €1.46/1.47 per litre.
2. I changed my electricity provider and my unit rate price has decreased by a little under 10% as a result.
3. It’s summer time! This means better average temperatures, which gives better efficiency from the Nissan Leaf’s battery pack.

As the figure on the odometer goes up, of course the question turns to long term effects on the battery. There are many in-depth technical discussions and articles online about the longevity of electric vehicle battery packs, but I find the popular Android app “Leaf Spy” to be quite useful. After over 37,000km on my Leaf since new from the factory, it still retains a battery State of Health of 97%.