Ever since I saw Who Killed The Electric Car back in 2007 I wanted an electric car. But at that time you had to convert a car to electric yourself. There was nothing commercially avalable. Over the next couple years there were some startups that came out with plans and then finally some major brands also made some announcements.

Finally in 2011 Nissan came out with the LEAF. I got to drive one during one of their tour events. It was pretty awesome. I wanted one. We did finally have a house with a garage so that wasn’t holding me back anymore. But, I waited. I’m not always an early adopter of new technology. And I was enjoying not having a car payment.

Around the same time the Chevy Volt came out. I’ve never had an American car. But there were several reasons I wasn’t onboard with the Volt:

• It is a plug-in hybrid, not a pure electric car. If I was going electric I wanted the additional advantage of less maintenance including no oil changes.
• I didn’t like the look of it much. Okay, the LEAF is a little funny looking too so this isn’t the biggest reason.
• I didn’t like the interior. Not enough real buttons in the center console and no center rear seat.

Anyway it took until 2013 for me to be ready to finally get it. It was the same summer we added solar panels to our house. I decided to lease the LEAF for 24 months because it was a better deal and I didn’t have to wait for the federal tax rebate. I chose the higher end SL trim because I was used to leather seats and other options I had in my previous car. I liked everything about the LEAF. It worked well for me because my office os only about 9 miles from my house. So I only had to charge the car every two or three days. I didn’t really have any problems with range anxiety. We would just use my wife’s car if we were going to go somewhere further. Sometimes I would have to check maps online to check distances. A couple times I did forget to plug in the car at night when I should have and I didn’t have enough range to get to work. So after that I made myself a reminder.

I never got faster charging equipment installed in the garage. I just used the regular 110V outet. It wasn’t a problem letting it charge all night long.

When the two year was almost up I had to think about what to do. There weren’t any better options out there yet. The good lease deals were gone for newer models. I decided to extend my lease for up to another year. Then I had to think about it again as part of the year went by again. Over the previous two and a half years I had only driven the car about 12,000 miles because I could drive it to farther destinations to the next state or other places. I was hoping a new LEAF model with an extended range would come out in time. I think it did but the range still wasn’t enough for us to get to some of our regular destinations.

I started considering the Volt since they came out with their all new model. It was improved in several ways. It looked nicer and had more electric only range. So although I was against it at first, it started to become a real option. My other options were to buy my LEAF or buy a new LEAF. But I kept thinking of the possibility of driving the Volt a lot more than I could drive the LEAF. Even with gas, the Volt would get more than 40 MPG. My wife’s car gets about 24 MPG. Another factor was that the resale value of the LEAF had dropped a lot.

So I test drove the 2016 Volt and I liked it a lot. Yes I would have to do a little more maintenance but I would be able to save more gas. I made my decision. Then I just had to go through the annoyance of shopping around at dealerships and negotiating. This time I purchased instead of leasing since the deal wasn’t as good and honestly I hated having the deadline looming over me.

Now I have my blue 2016 Volt and I like it a lot. Having an American car took some getting used to. Almost all of the controls are backwards from Japanese cars. But now I can drive it to my parents’ house, about 85 miles away. It drives very much like the LEAF did. I just passed 3000 miles and I’ve only filled the gas tank twice.

Because it has less electric-only range (only about 55 miles compared to 80), I decided to install EVSE (Electric Vehicle Service Equipment) in the garage so I can charge the car in the middle of the day quickly if I need to.

I had to get an electrician to add a new 240 volt circuit and run the wire from the panel in the basement up to the garage. There are a lot of EVSEs out there and some have come down in price. I decided on the EVoCharge EVSE 30 Amp (7.2 kW) Level 2 EV Charger based on reviews online. So far I haven’t had any problems. It works great.

I think I’ll probably keep this car more than five years. It will be nice to not have a car payment after that. But I’m keeping an eye on the Chevy Bolt or the Tesla Model 3 which both will have a range exceeding 200 miles.