Gallery Of Glory: Mallory's LEAF Triumph, Cerritos Branch Meetup and April Delivery?? What the...!?!

Mallory's LEAF Triumph: Getting a LEAF if you Rent your Home

Mallory, a fellow member of the MyNissanLEAF forum, has accomplished something quite remarkable. An apartment dweller in Santa Monica, Mallory managed to install an EV charging dock (EVSE) to charge her LEAF.

Potential EV owners who live in multi-family dwellings, especially those who rent, face serious challenges in installing charging docks. Property owners, landlords and HOA boards of directors are often uninterested or unwilling to finance or even to allow the required physical or electrical upgrades to their property. Since most EV charging is likely to be done at home, these limitations for renters or condo dwellers will likely limit the growth of the market for EVs. This issue is recognized as significant by EV manufacturers and government agencies who are trying to promote the adoption of EVs.

Mallory used persistence, good manners and enthusiasm as she worked with her property owner, her SCE electric utility, her electrician, the EVSE maker Aerovironment and Nissan to get her EVSE installed. The property owner shares some of the credit for being willing to allow Mallory to have the electrical work done, but Mallory's commitment and persistence were most responsible for her being able to bring her new red LEAF, "Ruby", home with her this month. Her success will be a landmark in the early history of the adoption of electric cars. Congratulations, Mallory!

My LEAF Delivery Date is Now April? What's Going On?

I announced last week, with much relief, that I had been given a delivery date of March 2011 for my new LEAF. Well, that relief was pretty short-lived. Two days ago, my Nissan online "dashboard" delivery date changed to "Month of April 2011". As you can imagine, I'm not thrilled about that.

What is going on? Is Nissan having trouble producing the number of new LEAFs that they promised? Were there quality issues that needed to be solved with the early batch of LEAFs that caused Nissan to slow the production line? Both of these guesses are possibly true, but Nissan is denying them. The official line from Nissan executives is that their engineers want to be absolutely sure that the LEAF will be 100% free of defects. I'm willing to believe this and I'd also like to see the LEAF earn a great reputation for quality and reliability. But the most accepted rumor right now is that Nissan is focusing on delivering LEAFs in the home country of Japan because of the impending expiration of a government tax credit that supports the purchase of new EVs. If this is true, we expect to see a surge of deliveries in late March and in April, followed by a regular stream of LEAFs being delivered in the US and in other world markets according to Nissan's previously announced plan.

The LEAF Branch Gathers in Cerritos
As members of our Southern California LEAF Branch group receive their cars, the driving range of the LEAF is encouraging some changes in the locations of our popular breakfast meetings. Last week, eleven of us, including Jimmy from Oceanside to the south, met in Santa Ana. This morning, seven of us got together at the Home Town Buffet in Cerritos, about 20 miles closer to Los Angeles. The group included Mallory from Santa Monica and Tom ("Sparky") from Pasadena, as well as Kat from central LA, who is a regular at the Santa Ana meetings as well. We missed Gary's guiding presence, but we knew he was enjoying himself learning to be a community emergency response team member.

Sparky brought his great-looking black LEAF, and it was joined by Mike Walsh's blue beauty and Mallory's red "Ruby". We had some great conversation that was a bit less technical and revolved more around how the new LEAF owners were enjoying living with their new cars and how the LEAF was fitting into their lives.

Here are some pictures from the meetup this morning.

(Pictures are clickable for enlarging)