This past week, everywhere I looked two electric vehicles were vying for headlines. The Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Volt both start to roll into showrooms late this year, but which one will prevail with drivers? Let's have an EV smackdown!
For purists, the Volt is technically a plug-in hybrid electric or PHEV, while the Leaf is an all-electric vehicle. Both have plugs, both have electric-only capabilities. As far as I think the American driving public is concerned, they're both electric so I'm grouping them together as such.
Features: Both vehicles are electric and have lithium-ion batteries, but there are key differences. The Leaf is fully electric with up to a 100-mile range on its 24-kilowatt-hour battery. The Volt's battery is 16-kilowatt hours and its range is 40 miles on pure battery, but once that's done, it can go for another 300 miles on a charge generated by a gas-powered generator. Charge times are different, too, according to an Associated Press comparison. The Leaf requires eight hours while the Volt only needs four hours on a 220-volt outlet. The warranties are identical: eight-years or 100,000 miles.
Price: The base prices for the vehicles are $32,780 for the Nissan Leaf and $41,000 for the Chevy Volt. With a federal tax credit factored in (up to $7,500), the Leaf will cost $25,280 and the Volt $33,500. (If you live in California you can knock off additional monies, too). A three-year lease costs $349 monthly for the Leaf and $350 for the Volt, although the Volt requires $2,500 down compared with $1,995 for the Leaf. As Auto Loan Daily points out, the $500-plus savings by leasing the Leaf comes out to less than $15 a month. So, it's less about the price and more about what the vehicles are packing.
Performance: Even though I wish I could get behind both wheels for my own test drives, for the moment I'm going to live vicariously through car-girl and EV queen Chelsea Sexton.The EV enthusiast of "Who Killed the Electric Car?" fame drove a pre-production Volt in Detroit last year and reported, "It's incredibly smooth, and very solid-feeling, even on the intentionally rough proving ground roads." She also described the Volt she drove as "the quietest full-performance plug-in I've seen so far -- they must have beaten every bit of motor whine out of that car because it sounds more docile than it is." She spent the entire day on the track, stopping only to ask the team some questions.
Last week Sexton took a production-ready Leaf for a spin in California. Even though she was limited to half an hour driving it in morning traffic, and not zipping around a test track at high speed, she wrote on Autoblog Green that it is "quiet and peppy, manages hills with little effort and has a nicely balanced suspension that is both smooth and comfortable while being responsive around corners and negotiating traffic." She says it's not at all "tinny" sounding, at least not at the speeds she was going, and that it's one of the quietest EVs in this current generation of vehicles.
Availability: The first Volts go on sale in November, the first Leafs in December. Each vehicle is going to be rolled out on a state-by-state basis, though. The Volt is initially targeting California, Michigan, Washington state and the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut tri-state area. The Leaf is starting with orders from drivers in Oregon, Arizona, California, Washington state and Tennessee. Both automakers want to make sure they have the charging infrastructure as well as the necessary consumer support in place to make sure their vehicle introductions go smoothly.
And the winner is...anyone who has a few ten thousand bucks to buy or lease one of the two. Seriously, in this recession you're already a winner if you've got some bank. But in a way, all drivers win because this fierce competition pushes automakers to work harder on EVs and even improving fuel efficiency on combustible engines. By the time used versions of these vehicles hit Kelley Blue Book, we'll have even more EVs revving up for another smackdown.
Photos: The Chevrolet Volt (left) faces off against the Nissan Leaf (right). Credit: Chevrolet and Edmunds. Photo juxtaposition by Alyssa Danigelis.
Tags: Alternative Power Sources, Cars, Electric Cars, Green Tech, Vehicles and Equipment
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