About 2007, I viewed the movie "Who Killed the Electric Car". It was a life changing experience. I have long been a proponent of efficient transportation and WKTEC illuminates how we are being steered into making poor choices for our transportation. I resolved to do all I could to change the situation. My Hyundai conversion is the result. Also, after a year's wait, we took delivery of our Nissan Leaf in June 2011.

I have long used electric golf carts for transportation on the farm. In June 2011, I took delivery of this little electric pick up truck.

The Hyundai has had reliability problems. The golf carts and the Xebra are not very reliable. The Leaf is a superb car! I hope I am now past the Hyundai reliability problems. Where am I going with this? For this season, I have been able to use electric vehicles to haul all supplies to my fields and all produce out of the fields. I have also been able to do ALL my grocery store delivering with EVs. The Leaf's maximum range is slightly over 100 miles; that gets me all over Austin and San Marcos. The Hyundai's range is more than 150 miles; that gets me to Sun City, Dripping Springs, Bee Cave, etc. The Leaf is much preferred because it hauls about 14 banana boxes vs 10 in the Hyundai, because it is a much nicer and smoother car and because it has good air conditioning. I can and do use the Hyundai for farmers markets with low sales expectations. But I must still rely on the Sprinter to do larger farmers markets. And, I still rely on about five diesel tractors.

Both the road cars are easily charged overnight. There are four Nissan dealers from San Marcos up to Round Rock; each offer charging but that is more of an emergency kind of thing since it takes at least an hour to get a significant charge. Charging on the Leaf is about 12 miles per hour of charging; the Hyundai can be charged at about 15 miles per hour. The electricity used by the cars is not really significant on our electric bill. Cost is in the range of $.02-$.03 per mile. My estimate is that we use an average of about $2-$3 worth of electricity per day on our EVs. Our diesel Golf takes about $.06 worth of diesel per mile and the Sprinter takes about $.12. That's with diesel in the range of $3.50-$4.00 per gallon. In the summer our total electric bill runs up around $1,000 per month. With the limited incentives we have in our area, solar electric is not cost effective. Nevertheless, we are on the verge of trying a small electric carport, around 2KW.

As of the end of July 2011, our Hyundai has about 24K miles on it and the Leaf about 3K miles. I expect the Leaf to be a FAR cheaper car than the Hyundai.

As of December 2011: Both the Zap and the golf cart have died. I'm trying to accumulate motivation to work on them. In the meanwhile, I have removed the passenger seat from Escort and have been using it for "around the farm" transportation.
We are in the process of disposing of an un-needed gas vehicle. We took it into Lockhart to run it through the car wash and fuel it up preparatory to turning it over to the new owner. We realized that that was the first time we had pumped fuel at a gas station in over SIX MONTHS! We do still fill tractors from our on-farm fuel tank.
Our produce delivery needs have disappeared with a freeze about a month ago. The Leaf is now approaching 10k miles (in about six months) and the Hyundai is over 30k miles, more than 10k miles in the past year. Since the Hyundai is now not used daily, I have sent it's controller off to get some intermittent problems resolved; it will be out of commission for a couple of weeks.
The Leaf is working out to be just a SUPER car. No trouble whatsoever with it. Much in contrast to the conversions and the Zap. It looks like the Leaf will be FAR cheaper to own and operate than the Hyundai. At 10k miles, the Leaf looks like maybe $.10/mile. That's so low right now because it has had no depreciation; it is worth now what we paid for it. At 30k miles, the Hyundai looks like over $1/mile, due mostly to high initial cost and repairs coupled with low market value. Oddly, I expect the per mile cost of the Leaf to increase and the per mile cost of the Hyundai to decrease as we pile on miles; the Leaf should suffer more depreciation in coming years while the Hyundai has already suffered most of it's depreciation. Immediate operation costs of both cars are similar. About $.03 /mile for fuel and a few more cents per mile for tires, licensing, and insurance.