Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.

Sweet Jesu, I’m back.

After a series of setbacks, a physician has finally cleared your dear blogger to resume scrivening. What has happened to me, you may ask justifiably. Read on for a tale of woe, and I will share what I know.

Nearly 2 years ago I undertook a project, attempting to mate the drivetrain of a Nissan Leaf with the remarkable shell of the Mitsubishi Bean-Shaped-Car (or was it Car-Shaped-Bean?). 

(Mitsubishi Mi-EV)

 

Understandably, these plans went nowhere, due a complete and total lack of understanding on my part of the finer points of engineering, product design, and reality in general. I ended up out of the energy to keep up even this meager blog, much like a Nissan Leaf being slowly overtaken by a yellow turtle within a deflector shield.

 

My Leaf-Related Experiences

If you trudged through the drivel above, I now present to you an accounting of mechanical problems I have actually encountered in 30 months of Nissan Leaf stewardship.  

1. For the second time, in sub-zero weather (that’s Fahrenheit, you socialist Canadians), the heater gave up the ghost. Once again it required a week of dealer care to fix, and I’d be wary of how much it would cost to replace when out of warranty. I would guess, based on pure speculation, that the replacement of the heater would run around $3000 USD.
2. Around the same time, a front control arm assembly became obnoxiously squeaky, and required replacement, and less than a year later, ominous clunks and squeaks are once again emanating from the recesses of whatever linkages of struts, springs, and devil’s machination with which the Leaf suspends itself. 
3. Annoyingly, the driver’s side door is off-kilter, and doesn’t seem to seat properly. 
4. And hanging over the whole experience is an eerie whirring and whistling sound from the electric drive, which the mechanic assures me they can’t duplicate, and is totally normal anyway, and WILL I PLEASE SHUT UP!

So with all these problems, and the previous post about the idiocy of buying an EV when lease rates are the far better deal, I must be looking for a new lease deal right? In an upcoming post, we’ll discuss the EV options that have become available, and some that hang on the horizon.