Just saw this article in USA Today about a new Nissan LEAF commercial that will be coming out to celebrate the LEAF’s first year in America.  Pretty exciting.  Commercial is cute and I loved that the article stated that Nissan thinks it can sell upwards of 10,000 LEAFs this year (and we had the first non-ceremonial one in the US!).  I also was glad to see that they’re saying the car can go about 80 miles on a single charge; it seems much more realistic than the 100 miles they had been claiming earlier.

This got me thinking about how we’ve had our LEAF for almost a year and we’re still REALLY glad we have it.  I still feel cool driving it and although we don’t seem to get as much attention, it’s still a thrill to see others on the road.  My husband waves at other LEAF drivers and so do I when I’m driving ours.  I want to wave to them when I’m driving the Lexus but I just don’t belong to their cool club so I don’t.  So far only one or two have noticed us and waved back.  I love that about my husband, by the way.

In this first year, we have never, not even once, been stranded because our car didn’t have enough juice. We haven’t had to get any oil changes.  We haven’t had to feel raped at the gas station.  We haven’t had to worry about dripping any “stuff” on someone’s driveway.  We haven’t had to worry about leaving the car running in our squashed tandem garage.  It’s pretty cool.

According to the EPA (http://www.epa.gov/otaq/consumer/f00013.htm), the average vehicle consumes and emits a lot o’crapola.  It feels good to know we saved some, both in our pocketbooks and for the earth.

The calculations for Total Annual Pollution Emitted and Fuel Consumed are based on an average annual passenger car mileage of 12,500 miles and an average annual light truck mileage of 14,000 miles. Fuel consumption is based on fleetwide average in-use fuel economy of 21.5 miles per gallon (mpg) for passenger cars and 17.2 mpg for light trucks, as reported in the 19th edition of the “Transportation Energy Data Book,” prepared for the U.S. Department of Energy.

Passenger Car

So driving this car instead of a “normal” car has saved over 5 tons of carbon dioxide.  According to the EPA site, “Carbon dioxide, while not regulated as an emission, is the transportation sector’s primary contribution to climate change. Carbon dioxide emissions are directly proportional to fuel economy–each 1% increase (decrease) in fuel consumption results in a corresponding 1% increase (decrease) in carbon dioxide emissions.”   A much easier to understand factoid,  at an average of $3.50 per gallon, a LEAF driver saves over $2000 in gasoline.

You kick booty, LEAF.  Happy Birthday!