Last Update: November 13, 2015

  1. Electric Car Ownership Economics
    1. Electric cars aren’t too expensive – you can own one for free
    2. Electric vehicle tax credits encourage adoption, help governments reach climate goals
    3. Electric cars drive cheaper, electricity is a cheaper fuel, calculating the cost of any fuel
    4. Electric cars are cheaper to maintain, no oil to change, no gaskets to replace, etc
    5. Saving on refueling time and other time costs associated with the cars
    6. How to calculate electric car cost per mile of range – which EV is more valuable
    7. Calculating effective trip speed – Fast charging cars more valuable
    8. Leasing insulates you against electric car price fluctuations
    9. Driving an electric cars is serenity, what’s “peace of mind” worth to you?
    10. Externalized car ownership costs that tilt the playing field towards gasoline cars
    11. Understanding car cost of ownership – gasoline, diesel, electric, etc
    12. Car cost of ownership models
  2. Altruism – Saving the World at What Cost?
    1. What’s the Cost of Inaction? Fossil fuels keep causing climate change
    2. Jeremy Jackson – Ocean Apocalypse – Naval War College Lecture
    3. Recognizing the future costs of climate change and resource wars
    4. What is it worth to avoid future climate change and environmental catastrophes?
    5. Peak Oil the long-term gasoline price (hint: UP) and electricity price (hint: STABLE)
    6. What’s your share of the cost of the global oil war?
  3. Don’t electric cars freeze up in Winter and become useless?
  4. Freedom from Fossil Fuels
    1. Biofuels – carbon neutral? sustainable?
    2. Environmental benefits of biofuels
    3. Will we get freedom from oil through fuel efficient cars and trucks?
    4. Environmental impact of Fossil Fuels and the Petroleum Industry
  5. Electric cars are safer than gasoline cars
    1. Chevy Volt battery pack fire in 2011
    2. Nissan Leaf car fires
    3. Tesla Model S car fires in 2013 and 2014
    4. Other electric car fires
    5. Lithium battery Flammability

At this point we haven’t heard of any Nissan Leaf’s catching fire due to the electrical system.

Summer 2015 – Mysterious Leaf car fire, unknown cause etc

(longtailpipe.com) In North Texas a Nissan Leaf was video’d on fire, but the car owner wasn’t identified nor anything further.

Summer 2012 – Massive wildfire in Colorado catches a Nissan Leaf

(insideevs.com) A Seriously Burned Out Nissan LEAF

This Leaf was obviously burned to a crisp. But it wasn’t the electrical system. In the summer of 2012 there was an epic massive wildfire near Colorado Springs Colorado. This Leaf was caught up in that fire, and burned. The important thing to note is that even with the heat of that fire, the battery pack remained intact and did not burn.

This is important to note because lithium-ion batteries can catch fire if their temperature simply reaches the point of ignition. But that did not happen in this case.

March 2011 – Fukushima tsunami wrecked a bunch of Leafs – no fire

In December 2011, during the height of frenzy concerning the Chevy Volt fire, Nissan put out a press release noting that during the Fukushima Tsunami and Earthquake there were a couple dozen Leaf’s destroyed but none caught fire.

(www.torquenews.com) Nissan’s Leaf survived fine in Fukushima tsunami, no fires Two dozen Nissan Leaf electric cars were mangled in the tsunami, with no battery pack fires, giving us anecdotal battery pack safety evidence compared with the Chevy Volt.

(www.nytimes.com) Tsunami Reveals Durability of Nissan’s Leaf

“Considering how they were tossed around and crushed, we think that is a very good indication of the safety performance of that vehicle,” said Bob Yakushi, the director of product safety for Nissan North America.

About the Author(s)

David Herron : David Herron is a writer and software engineer focusing on the wise use of technology. He is especially interested in clean energy technologies like solar power, wind power, and electric cars. David worked for nearly 30 years in Silicon Valley on software ranging from electronic mail systems, to video streaming, to the Java programming language, and has published several books on Node.js programming and electric vehicles.
(disqus.com) comments powered by Disqus