After writing about almost 3,000 scrapped vehicles Over the past 17 years, I’ve learned that it takes a little over a decade for a new type of car to emerge from the great self-service graveyards (not counting those crashed and/or burned beyond recognition). The first mass-produced battery-electric vehicles of the modern era hit American streets in the early 2010s, meaning that used examples can now be found in The Pullet-type car graveyards. Here is one that is currently residing in Carson City, Nevada.
While battery powered vehicles enjoyed great sales success In the early days of the automobile, few were sold from the 1920s through the end of the 20th century. Things in the EV world got more interesting in the late 1990s, when General Motors the EV1 and Toyota offered the RAV4 EV (I’m pretty sure I’ll never come across a scrapped EV1, but I to have found a junked ’02 RAV4 EV).
The pace of electronic technology really started to pick up in the late 2000s. The Tesla Roadster became available to the public in 2008, followed by the Nissan Leaf late 2010 And the Mitsubishi i-MiEV a year later. The Leaf immediately became the world’s best-selling EV, a title it held for most of the 2010s.
Nissan wants us to spell this car’s model name all in capital letters, because LEAF is one of those tortured acronyms so loved by Japanese car manufacturers: Iread, IEnvironmentally friendly, aaffordable Family Car. This is not as annoying as the model names we have to spell in lower case or those with punctuation marksbut I’m not gonna play that game. This is a Sheetwhich means it will be plural To leaf through.
Because EV drivers are only allowed to drive in California’s HOV lanes, the early LEAF sold very well in the Golden State. The car’s current (and final) home is across the state line in Nevada, but Carson City is only about ten miles from California.
You can tell it started its career in California at the Proposal 65 sticker on the driver’s side window, which informs car buyers that there may be carcinogenic materials in them. Most owners scrape these stickers off, but this one stayed on for the life of the car.
This car hasn’t been crashed and the interior looks like it was in good shape when it arrived at the junkyard, so why was it thrown away? The resale value of the 2014 Leaf and the range of 84 miles isn’t that great compared to newer models, so we can assume a costly mechanical problem ended this car’s career. Nissan wants $14,941.18 for a replacement batteryso that’s a good candidate for the downfall of this Leaf.
The current magazine can travel up to 340 kilometers on a single charge and has 147 hp (40 more than its predecessor from 2014) and much better fast charging capability, making the specs of this car seem outdated just ten years after it was built.
Good for the world, built in America.
What if everything ran on gas?