Decarbonization and carbon sequestration
The U. S. officially notified withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on Nov 4, 2019. I am so sad to hear the news that movement toward decarbonization is essential to prevent from global warming. Please listen a high-school student (Greta Thunberg) speech on decarbonization at United Nations’ Climate Action Summit in September 2019. We should start working on decarbonization ASAP. Toward big goals of decarbonization in the world, our family started from carbon capture/sequestration project, “native plant project”, which also saved lots of precious water in California. In the U. S. 30% of source of greenhouse gas emissions is transportation. Our family has been driving 45K miles per year using two gasoline-powered cars (2012 Toyota RAV4 and 2013 Toyota PriusC), which has been consumed 1.4K gallon (5.3 kL) gasoline1. This means we drove 50% more mileages than two people at my generation (15K miles per car, US Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration). Therefore, switching gasoline-powered cars into non gasoline-powered ones is the most important topic for our family.
Nissan LEAF Plus vs Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV
Using my analysis of EV data in “Needs more cargo space in electric vehicles!”, I listed two candidate EVs; 2019 Nissan LEAF Plus and 2019 Mitsubishi OUTLANDER PHEV due to sufficinet cargo space, sufficinet driving range (200 miles or longer), and less expensiveness. I kept my eyes on following EVs, but no other candidates have been added to the list. In the comming year (2020) there will be attractive electric SUV with reasonable price in the U. S. market, Tesla Model Y, Volkswagen ID.4, and Toyota RAV4 Plug-in hybrid (RAV4 Prime), which will broaden consumer’s choices. For our family time has been cliking because the odmeter of our PriusC had almost reached to 180K miles and Clean Vehicle Rebate Project（CVRP) had shrank incentive program reasonablly on Dec 3, 2019 (see articles in insideevs.com and clentechnica.com). Although Mitsubishi OUTLANDER PHEV has been gained excellent reviews and are the most sold electic SUV in Europe, reputation in the U. S. was not so good (read an example in edmunds.com)) and its sales in the U. S. have been only moderate (~200 per month). Furthermore, CVRP had removed OUTLANDER PHEV from incentives for PHEV, which requires 35 miles only for EV mode (OUTLANDER PHEV runs 20 miles with pure EV mode). An upper model of OUTLANDER PHEV was so attractive to me because it has safety driving assistance and two 1500 W AC outlet that are helpful in case of power outage (as done several times in California this year). However, the sales prices of both cars were the same, which means LEAF Plus is $4000 cheaper after tax credit/incentives. Also $250 prepaid card of an EV charging network (EVgo) came with LEAF Plus. And in essense LEAF Plus is ZERO emmission vehicle. So we had decided to buy LEAF Plus.
Dealership of Nissan and Mitsubishi
During entire November, we had visited many dealers around our area and an impression that Nissan dealers were not enthusiasistic to sell their cars except one dealer where we purchased our car. I felt that this is the one of reasons why sales of Nissan cars have been decreased over this year. Probably because profit of selling EV is lower than one of gasoline-powerd car, Nissan does not promote sales of LEAF. Furthermore, many Nissan dealers misunderstood how Federal Tax Credit works, which mislead to promote leasing rather than purchasing LEAF. Mitsubishi dealer network is very week, so I was not sure that I could get sufficient maintenance service from the dealers. Pahaps dealer system itself needs to be reconsidered as Tesla did.
In the future
Finally, LEAF PLUS came to our house. I am planning to post blogs regarding life with LEAF (from gas to electricity, auto insurance, service), evaluation of the EV, hope and expection to LEAF in the future, as well as more projects of our decarbonization.
15K/23 (mpg for RAV4) + 30K/40 (mpg for PriusC)↩