Recently, we ran a poll on which car AutoblogGreen readers preferred: the Chevy Volt or the Nissan LEAF (the Volt won). We were talking with some green car advocates recently who proposed the following scenario: what if Nissan is able to sell the LEAF and a standard ICE vehicle for the same price as GM ends up selling the Chevy Volt for? Wouldn't that be one heck of an advertising campaign?
There are the two main problems with our little scenario: we don't have any official pricing numbers for the Volt or the LEAF. Right now, all we have are guesses. For the Volt, we've heard that the price would be somewhere between $40,000 and $45,000, but we don't know if that's before or after the government's $7,500 rebate. The numbers we're hearing for the LEAF are around $25,000 to $30,000 – again, not sure where the $7,500 fits in. Still, if we think that the LEAF could be $15,000 cheaper than the Volt, there is a possibility that you could buy a LEAF for your daily driver and then pick up a Versa (starting price $9,990) for when you want to go on longer trips.
Other things to consider:
There are the two main problems with our little scenario: we don't have any official pricing numbers for the Volt or the LEAF. Right now, all we have are guesses. For the Volt, we've heard that the price would be somewhere between $40,000 and $45,000, but we don't know if that's before or after the government's $7,500 rebate. The numbers we're hearing for the LEAF are around $25,000 to $30,000 – again, not sure where the $7,500 fits in. Still, if we think that the LEAF could be $15,000 cheaper than the Volt, there is a possibility that you could buy a LEAF for your daily driver and then pick up a Versa (starting price $9,990) for when you want to go on longer trips.
Other things to consider:
- The environmental impact of producing two vehicles is quite a bit more than just one.
- What if either company decides to offer the batteries, the most expensive part of these cars, for lease instead of purchase?
- Insuring two vehicles doesn't look good compared to insuring just one, does it?
- It'd probably be more economical to just rent the ICE car when it's time to go on a road trip.
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