Green Mountain Power has just announced a new program for its customers in partnership with Nissan, giving buyers of the 2017 Nissan Leaf a $10,000 discount. This is in addition to a $7,500 tax credit for which most new Leaf buyers will qualify. The base MSRP for a Nissan Leaf is $30,680, meaning buyers who take advantage of the discount and who qualify for the tax credit can get a new Leaf for $13,180.

In addition to savings on purchase of the car itself, electric car buyers enjoy much lower fuel costs and much lower maintenance costs, with no oil changes and few moving parts to wear out.

You may have heard that electric cars aren’t really any better for the environment than gasoline cars. That story has gone around the Internet a lot, but it’s not true. You can read some of the details here.

Transportation is the single biggest factor in most individuals’ and families’ carbon footprints, and cars are the biggest part of the transportation carbon problem. Buying an electric car is one of the very best ways you can reduce your carbon footprint.

The 2017 Leaf has an estimated electric range of 107 miles on a full charge. This goes down a little in winter, but it’s also a conservative number; careful driving can get better range. Many families have an electric car for local transportation and a gas car or hybrid for longer drives. Other electric cars currently available have a greater range: for instance, the Chevy Bolt has a range of 238 miles, and the Chevy Volt (yes, it’s ridiculous that they have two cars with such similar names), while it has only a 53 mile electric range, has a backup gasoline engine that kicks in automatically when the battery runs out of power.

In this deal sounds too good to be true, I can explain Nissan’s motivation here: in a few months they’ll start selling the 2018 Leaf, which has much greater range and some other advantages. Discounting the 2017 models so steeply offers them a change to generate interest in the brand and get the old stock off the lots before it’s eclipsed by the new model.

Questions or concerns about electric cars? Check out the information at Drive Electric Vermont, comment here, or contact us.