A New Nissan Leaf For $28,000? (With Incentive)

This article is the third in a mini-series that started when I highlighted a new Nissan Ariya someone could get for $31,000 and a new Chevy Equinox EV someone could get for $32,000 — both before incentives, before potential fuel savings, and before maintenance and repair savings.

Featured here is a new Nissan Leaf for $28,000, including the state of Colorado EV credit because it is in Ft. Collins, CO. That state credit is about $4,000. To be clear, this vehicle is not the updated Leaf (which looks totally different), it is the current one, the Leaf SV Plus. The range is about 212 miles and it has a 60 kWh battery. At the moment, there is also a federal tax credit applied, but that will expire soon. 

If someone purchased this Nissan Leaf to replace a gas or diesel vehicle and saved $100 a month by using electricity instead of fossil fuel, the annual savings would be about $1,200. In five years, they would be $6,000. If the Nissan Leaf saved $6,000 by using electricity instead of gasoline, the effective total cost of the vehicle compared to a similar sized and featured gas car would be $22,000. There is also a potential savings by not having to pay for maintenance and repairs internal combustion engine vehicles require. It is difficult to predict how much it might save in maintenance and repair costs because there are many variables. If there were additional such savings, the total cost of the Leaf would be less than $22,000.

With gas and diesel vehicles, if all the social and environmental costs were factored in, their sticker prices would be much higher than they are.

While many people might not be aware of the health effects of air pollution produced by fossil fuels, they are quite severe: “New research from Harvard University, in collaboration with the University of Birmingham, the University of Leicester and University College London, found that more than 8 million people died in 2018 from fossil fuel pollution, significantly higher than previous research suggested — meaning that air pollution from burning fossil fuels like coal and diesel was responsible for about 1 in 5 deaths worldwide.” 

Fossil fuel air pollution might not be a topic that people think or talk about often — if at all. Consequently, they will not go online and search for information about it for even five minutes. But it does come at a cost.

What sparked my interest in writing about affordable electric vehicles were two exchanges I had recently. One was with a Democrat who claimed that electric vehicles cost $187,000. He said he is an environmentalist. The other was with a 2017 Chevy Bolt owner who said it is a great car, one of the best cars he has ever had. He also said new EVs all cost $40,000, which is not true. A third exchange, from years ago, was with a Democrat who lived on the West Coast and was a senior. Most days he didn’t drive at all, but he claimed EVs don’t have enough range! His longest driving excursions were about 50–60 miles round trip once or twice a week. There are many EVs that can cover this distance with ease. He identified as an environmentalist because he used cloth bags when grocery shopping instead of paper or plastic.

None of these men seemed to be fully aware of the costs of fossil fuel pollution to human health and the environment. The costs of internal combustion engine vehicles go well beyond their sticker prices. A report produced by the American Lung Association stated that switching to clean electricity and zero-emissions vehicles could prevent almost 90,000 premature human deaths in the US and over 2 million asthma attacks.