CHAPTER SIXThe History of Electric Vehicles
Long before I started working as a writer and financial analyst, I was an electrical engineer. I spent nearly 25 years in the semiconductor industry. Even now, I love puttering around with new technologies and gizmos. Back in December 2011, we installed a 10-kilowatt (kW) ground-mounted solar array at our farm in Pennsylvania.
So getting an electric vehicle (EV) wasn't much of a stretch. It was the waiting game we had to play. When Nissan Motors announced it was developing an electric vehicle in 2009, I was all ears. After some research, I determined I had to have one. And why not? Nissan was having a bit of a problem moving its LEAFs out of inventory. So they offered a two-year lease that was $50 less a month than my wife was spending on gasoline to drive her Acura MDX back and forth to work. She was initially concerned with the 80 to 90 mile range, but it's only 15 miles from our house to the school where she teaches.
So we went to the Nissan dealer and ordered a LEAF. We took delivery of it in June 2013. When our lease was up, we called Nissan and asked if we could extend it for another year at the same price. They were happy to agree. For the three years we had the car, all we did was replace the wiper blades. That's it. No oil changes, brake jobs, muffler replacements, or any of the other dozens of things you have to worry about in a car with an internal combustion engine (ICE). And charging the LEAF's battery cost us between ...