So, about four months ago I turned in a 2014 Nissan LEAF I had been leasing for three and a half years and started a new three-year lease on a Chevy Bolt. It’s been a great decision for me, especially since I am in a post-divorce, one-car household.
I am not the only one who has found that 200+ miles of electric range at an affordable price — I’m paying $338 per month for my 39-month lease on a red Bolt LT with a couple of option packages — extremely attractive.
Two other members of the Unitarian Universalist Church I attend in Parker, Colo. Prairie Unitarian Universalist Church have now gone out and gotten themselves a Bolt. So now, in a church with only 140 members, we have three brand new Chevy Bolts — red, blue and black.
Those same members who just got a Bolt, Deena R. and John K., have been watching electric cars and waiting. Less than 100 miles of range, which is what the first generation of mainstream affordable electric cars offered, was not attractive to them. And they waited, and waited — for exactly this threshold to be reached, the “magic” number of 200+ miles.
You might say, well, that’s rather arbitrary. Yes, in some ways, it is. But I have been able to do many trips in the Denver-Boulder area over the past four months with the Bolt that would have been a pain with my 84-mile LEAF as they would have required charging and charging in places where there is not a convenient EV charging station around.
I’ve also been able to do trips that would have been essentially impossible in my 2014 LEAF, which did not have a quick charge port (I did not need a quick charge port when I bought the LEAF as I/we had a gas car at that point to use for any mid-to-long-distance trips).
Two-hundred miles also gives the driver a lot more peace of mind than 84 — and a lot less worry!
I’m happy I have been able to persuade two other UU church members to go electric — they both have home solar, BTW :-). But the “magic” moment of having an impressive three BEVs in one, 140-member UU church parking lot revealingly did not happen until after mainstream and affordable EVs hit the 200+mile range barrier.
