How Low Can You Go

Our good friends, Erin & Jon invited us to their family house up on the North Shore today and it was exactly what we needed.  We decided to take the Nissan Leaf because the trip would have cost us a lot of gas in the Highlander.  But, the Leaf has roughly 100 mile driving range and their place on the North Shore was 40 miles away according to google maps, so that would put us at 80 miles round trip.  Now, all the Leaf forums out there say it's really difficult to know exactly how much driving range you can get out of the car at different times.  So, 80 miles could be the limit.

Here's what the dashboard of the Leaf looks like (this is not our car)

On the right there's little electricity gauge which tells you how many miles you have left.  But, it's very inexact.

This has all the makings of a disaster...Pregnant wife at 32 weeks who is prone to frequent contractions and 2.5 year old in the backseat...

We decided to try the trip anyway.  We knew there was a Nissan dealership on the way home and we could always stop there and charge on the way back if absolutely necessary.

So, we started our trip 100% charged at 100 miles.  We were literally about 10 miles into our trip on the Pali Highway, when our gauge looked like this:

Uh oh.  I think it was because we were going up hill.  We started to get nervous.  But, we still felt confident that we certainly had enough juice to get us to the North Shore.  We passed the Winward Nissan dealership about halfway through our trip there, so at least we had the safety net.

We arrived at Erin's place with the gauge reading 50 miles.  At their place, we looked for an outlet to charge the car, but we couldn't find one and we thought we'd be ok.

We had a great time at the beach.  Nikhil and Elliott played together and found a huge pit that someone else had dug in the sand, which kept them occupied the whole time.  We all swam in the water

Jeff wearing my sun hat since I left his in the other beach bag

The men carrying our stuff back

Nikhil loves the beach, but he hates being sandy    He stood with his arms by his side, not touching anything until we rinsed him, all the while asking for a "hot shower"

After we showered, we then hit the shrimp trucks for some lunch.  If you haven't been the North Shore of Oahu, there are many, many shrimp trucks there.  It's the equivalent of Ray's Pizza in New York, there's backstory about the different trucks and who started them and underhanded dealings.  Anyway, we went to Kahukus and enjoyed their garlic shrimp.

Nikhil and Elliott had a great time and at the end of the day when Nikhil was back in our car, he asked, "Where is Elliott? My friend."  So sweet!

But now we had to get back home.  Jeff plugged in our home address into the GPS.  Yes, even though Jeff grew up here, he still uses a GPS.  And, it took us a different route then the way we came.  At this point, I asked him if the Nissan was still on the way home, just in case (foreshadowing).  We literally had 47 miles left on the electric gauge and I'm not one for cutting it close and with the trip back home being 40 miles, I didn't want to take a chance.

Well, I dozed off for a moment and I awoke because it was really hot in the car.  I automatically went to turn the AC on and Jeff said not to do that.  I looked at the gauge and we had 8 miles left and we were more than 8  miles from home.  Unfortunately, the alternate route no longer passed the Winward Nissan, so we were on our own.  There is a feature on the Leaf where you can use the GPS to find nearby charging stations.  Our car informed us the closest one was out of driving range.  Great.

Of course, at exactly this moment, when I'm starting to panic a bit, Nikhil wakes up and wants water because it's hot.  Jeff didn't want us to lower the windows because it would increase the drag on the car, making us need more energy to get home.  Like I mentioned, the makings of a disaster.  I was trying desperately not to say "I told you so", though I'm not sure if I was successful (sorry, Jeff!)

Thankfully, we were on a stretch that was all downhill, so magically, the 8 miles, climbed to 11 miles and finally to 16 miles and then we knew were safe.

Here's our dashboard as we pulled into our house.  7 miles. 

Though the return trip home was a bit stressful, we made it and we had an awesome day at the beach - thanks Erin, Jon and Elliott!

Blue like Thomas

So, we are now the proud owners of a Nissan Leaf! What, you may ask? Last you heard we couldn't even get on the exclusive 'reserve a car' list, which is the precursor to actually ordering a car, which then takes anywhere from 3 months to a year to get.

Well, I have to credit Jeff. He stalked the Leaf like a tween stalks Justin Bieber. He read every blog, every website, every youtube video about the Leaf. And, he found that you could track the VIN numbers of the cars delivered to dealerships. So, he noticed that the 3 dealerships on Oahu had received a new shipment on Sunday. He was hoping a couple of the cars would be "orphaned" which means someone ordered it but decided they didn't want it once it came. Then, it actually can be sold to anyone or goes down the list to the next person. As soon as the dealerships were open on Sunday, Jeff started making phone calls. And, he found that a dealership had actually gotten a couple extra Leafs that weren't reserved for anyone. So, we jumped in the car and headed over there. It's far....like 30 minutes away. And, for mainland friends and family, they are probably laughing because 30 minutes is not far. But, once you live in Hawaii long enough, you begin to consider anything more than a 20 minute drive as super far. And, though I thought I wouldn't fall into that trap, I have to admit I was a little reluctant to drive ALL THE WAY TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ISLAND on the off chance that this dealership had the Leaf. But, Jeff was so excited, so off we went.

Once we got there, we were told that the guy who is certified to sell the Leaf was not in on Sundays, so we couldn't test drive the car. WHAT??? That was certainly not what were told on the phone. Well, thankfully, the sales manager, overheard us and came to our rescue. He actually gave us the keys to president of the dealership's car to test drive (so, thanks!). We loved it. Nikhil loved it. After Jeff and I both drove it, Nikhil asked, "My turn to drive, please?" So, we let him "drive". Then, sales manager actually called the Leaf salesman at home and made him come in on his day off because we were so desperate to get this car.




OK, so we violated rule # 1 of negotiations - clearly, you should never let the other party know how much you want something. The second mistake is that we had our 2 year old with us. It's good to bring your kids to make sure the car seats fit and there's enough room for strollers, etc. But, you cannot negotiate while also trying to watch a 2 year old run around touching everything. It's just not possible to have your game face on. Well, we went through some paperwork and they told us there was an additional $3000 upcharge fee since we hadn't reserved the car. We weren't too happy with that, but like I said, my attention was distracted by Nikhil and the fact that I was now late for a bridal shower, so I didn't press the issue. And, they convinced us that because the state rebate of $4500 was going to run out soon, it was best to get the car now, blah, blah blah.

On our way home, the upcharge fee began to bother us - $3000 is a lot of money! That's 10% the price of the car. We started to have buyer's remorse, but luckily we hadn't signed any contracts. So, the next day, we call around to the other dealerships who don't upcharge and then I was able to call the sales manager back and explain that I was having difficulty stomaching the fee. I was trying to play on the "Indian" angle. The sales manager is of Indian ethnicity, from Fiji and though I'm Indian, from North Carolina, well, there are so few Indians out here in Hawaii, I really thought that common bond would help us out. Well, it worked! He waived the fee and we were happy again!

So, now we are going green. The money we save is enormous. Right now we get 18 mpg in our Toyota Highlander (2008). And, here is the cheapest Oahu's gas price for 89 unleaded which is what we use, even though I think we were supposed to be using the more expensive gas for the 20 year old Lexus.

$4.04/gallon

This guy worked it out that with the Leaf, you get 12 miles per $1 fuel (electricity). That's factoring in the cost of electricity in Hawaii, which is 28 cents/kilowatt hour, which is way more than on the mainland (i know, the paradise tax). The average price in the rest of the country is a mere 13 cents/Kwh. With our Highlander, we were getting 4.25 miles per $1 fuel (so one-third less). And, since we have photovoltaic cells, we actually probably get more miles per $1 fuel since our electricity is cheaper.

So, totally, a no-brainer for living in Hawaii. The fact that we never need to drive more than 100 miles at a time and the high gas prices make the Leaf a super logical choice.

And, it's "blue like Thomas the train" just like Nikhil wanted.

Car Woes

So, for the last 3 years, our generous mother-in-law has allowed us to drive her old Lexus. I think it's at least 15 years old and it has served us well. We got some bad news 2 weeks ago. Hubby and I knew that things with the car were not quite right...it was super hard to steer on the highway and it always said I was going 5 mph even when I was on the highway. I may drive slow, but not that slow. So, we took it the shop and the work was going to cost about the same as the blue book value of the car, so we didn't get it fixed.

So, now we're car hunting. We had been hoping to hold off to get the Nissan Leaf. But those Nissan people are tough. It's like Bungalow 8 was back in NYC when I lived there. You can't even get on the wait list. You've got to know someone. And when you call Nissan, they give you no information, it's all about "Well, not sure when the Leaf is coming in, check the website." It really is like an uber-exclusive club. But, I used to be able to get into those clubs back in the day (pre-hubby, pre-babies) and now I'm shut out!

Today, we're off to test drive the Toyota Prius. We'll have to settle for a hybrid for now because the mechanic said the car "wasn't safe" to drive. But, of course we've been driving it. Of course, we never put our son in there, we just endanger our own lives, b/c somehow that seems better.

Our son, N. is happy to be at the Servco Toyota. He said we should buy a "blue car, like Thomas".



I wish hubby had enjoyed test driving the car as much as N. did. He (hubby, not N!) said it felt "funny". I guess you have to get used to eco-friendly steering, braking and acceleration. So, all in all, not sold on the Prius.

And, the worst part - no negotiation! I consider myself a master negotiator (skills I learned from my dad). He always says "the worst thing people can say is "no". I got great deals for our double wedding 3 years ago - free rooms, cake, etc. But, for the Prius they said the price is set?? Seriously?


I tend to pull the "Bill Cosby" when negotiating. Remember the episode when he went to buy a car and he wore some ratty sweater and wouldn't tell anyone he was a doctor? I'm kind of like that...because if you know anyone who went through med school and residency, then you know we're not exactly flush with cash the minute we graduate. Though I think others might not consider it so. When negotiating for our patio set, I was very vague about what I do and tell them I live in "Kaimuki", which is really one neighborhood over from where we live. We have the most humble house on our block, but the neighborhood is nice. My mother-in-law laughed when she heard about my "lower Kaimuki" address, though that backfired when I got the owner to throw in free delivery with the patio set and then the jig was up when I gave him our address.

So, the car hunt continues. We're thinking about the Chevy Volt or maybe we'll just drive the Lexus until the Leaf comes out? Hope it lasts that long!