Nissan LEAF – Mainstream Coverage

I try to stay at least partially connected to the mainstream coverage of renewable energy and electric transportation – not so much because I believe there is truth there, but because I need to know what the mainstream consumers believe. This morning’s article in the Wall Street Journal on the Nissan LEAF was telling, for two reasons:

The author asserts, “Such a car would have been science fiction five years ago.” This, of course, is utter tripe. Until they famously killed the electric car over a decade ago, GM was making EVs that its customers absolutely adored. Some insiders report that the project was killed not because it was a failure, but for the precise opposite reason: it proved that the world had a huge appetite for electric transportation, and GM had no sincere interest in heading in that direction. At the same time, Toyota was having a similar experience with its electric RAV-4. When the decision came to recall and crush all the EVs, a maelstrom of protest arose, the remnants of which are still present in our conversations today. In any case, it most certainly completely untrue that the LEAF would have been science fiction five years ago.  Anyone trying to follow this subject with any level of precision and honesty has to wonder about the agenda that could drive revisionist history like this.

The other obvious point the author repeats dozens of times through the article is that the driving experience is a nonevent. “I can think of hundreds of ways to describe the Maserati’s ear-strafing exhaust, but I’m at a loss to describe the nearly mute and rheostatic squeeze-and-go response of the LEAF,” he writes. He goes on with similar language to describe the braking system, the turning, etc. – ensuring that any reader will feel like less of a person to purchase a LEAF.

Again, one wonders about the agenda here.