At The New York Times An Unexpected Sticker on Nissan Leaf's Window - NYTimes.com Two federal agencies say they know how far the new Nissan Leaf will go on a fully charged battery. They just don’t agree. A few weeks before the Nissan Leaf is delivered to buyers, the Environmental Protection Agency, which approves the fuel economy stickers that go in the window of every new car, says it will go 73 miles. The Federal Trade Commission says the correct number is 96 to 110. Rest Of Story At An Unexpected Sticker on Nissan Leaf's Window - NYTimes.com
In a couple of months there will be enough Leafs in the hands of enthusiasts that we should be reading real-life user reports regarding range under differing conditions and driving styles. If you decide to be one of the very first people to buy a new product, you have to be aware that you are buying an unknown item. back in 2004, a lot of Prius drivers liked to pretend that they were "pioneers," buying a car the rest of the public did not yet trust. But in fact, the new model had been on the road for months, and the older model for years. The Leaf, at this point, is truly a new and unknown car, untested as yet by people not working for the company. The very first buyers will indeed be pioneers. After a month or so we'll know everything about the car other than battery life. I'm not going to sweat the range issue. I'm going to wait and see what the first owners have to say after they've been driving for a while.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency has another set of classification rules based on interior passenger and cargo volumes. safest sports utility vehicles
This just sounds like a case of using different drive cycles. If people learned to match their own habits/environment to whichever driver cycle best matches their own, we would have a lot less teeth gnashing.
That's the Federal Government for you! Let's have multiple "Standards" and make is easy. In fact lets have several meanings for the word "Standard" Remember AM Stereo, that worked out well...
