Re:Certified Pre-owned Teslas for Less Than $40K USD
by ProfessorLayton on Wednesday June 07, 2017 @01:40PM
(#14508314)
I agree with the limited milage being a huge constraint.
Deep charging and discharging would severely degrade a battery's lifespan. Therefore all cars - From Model S to Prius - limit the battery's SOC to about 20-80% (Varies by chemistry and car model). The user may see 0-100%, but that is merely in regards to the usable energy available.
So a Leaf reporting 80 miles of range is already taking into account degradation and provisioning.
My wife would normally be the ideal Leaf consumer - most of her jobs are no more than 10 miles from our house. But still that's 20 miles out of a pool of 66 before she a) turns on the air conditioner, b) runs any errands, c) runs into any traffic that delays her, and d) forgets to charge the car at home or finds the charger full at her grocery store.
The Leaf comes with a contingency planning overhead cars with longer ranges do not and that has to factor into any future decisions; could my wife take a job say 20 miles from home? Maybe but any of the factors listed above could easily result in a dead battery tow.
If I mapped that into my own use case even as an inner city dweller the short legs on the Leaf would preclude some practical applications I have now when a car with say 50 more miles of range would handily meet. If the Leaf ever gets to 150 miles new, which implies 120 mile range when new @ 80% charge and 96 miles when the battery has lost 20% of its capacity (also @ 80% charge) that would be workable for inner city driving with the air conditioning on and enough reserves for the unexpected.