@Michael,
Don't forget also that in addition to being short ranged, this was a micro-car, even smaller than the Leaf. These don't sell well in the US even with ICE.
I tend to agree with you that an EV needs to be a no-compromise vehicle with enough range to do nearly all of one's normal daily driving.
I see this for most people as having at least 120 miles of real-world driving which, contrary to some hypermilers' perception, means exceeding the speed limit on freeways and using heating and air conditioning for at least a large portion of those miles. Anything less will just be a niche.
The Tesla Model S and RAV4EV are IMHO, the only BEVs that really live up and, without fast charging, I'm not even sure about the RAV4EV.

I leased my LEAF with the intention of buying if the ‘experiment’ panned out. It doesn’t look like it is going to. My expectation, my chief requirement, was far short of “at least 120 miles of real-world driving” – just 33 miles one way to the top of a nearby mountain. The LEAF met that expectation for about a year, but apparently at a huge cost.

There was no way of avoiding a 100% charge and a more or less complete discharge if I wanted to go even 33 miles. The downhill was paid for in advance, so to speak. So if I were selling LEAFs I would describe the trip as a 66 mile journey. But I’m not. (Actually, I guess by terminating my lease early I am in a manner of speaking.)

The point is there are several more EV battery issues buried in the expression “real world driving” that need to be addressed besides simply normalized range / battery capacity. The ability to deep-cycle is one. Coupled with that is the ability to leave the battery at 100% charge for a while without negatively affecting battery life. Otherwise, for most people, ex-EV1’s calculations of EV range 4 or 5 years into EV ownership are the ones vendors should be required to provide potential customers.

It seems pretty clear by now that Nissan’s failure to provide an active thermal management system for the LEAF was a mistake. It may be a mistake that can be fixed with just chemistry. But for all EV vendors it seems a much better ability for batteries to tolerate extreme environmental conditions is needed.

‘Range anxiety’ and the ability to quick-charge appear to be related issues. If batteries could be quickly recharged without impact on their longevity, minimum range requirements would drop substantially, at least for driving done mainly in urban and suburban areas. But even the 28 minutes required to bring the LEAF to an 80% charge is probably too long. If the traction battery remains the energy storage medium for EVs, huge reductions in charging time as well as increases in its energy storage capacity are going to be needed. Short of that, something like the ‘A Better Place’ technology will be a requirement.

P.S. Has anyone heard anything more about the ‘pump in’ charge gel the MIT students were trying to develop? Any recommendations for a lay-person tutorial on EV battery technology with specific emphasis on what features to look for in use and charging systems if you are considering buying or leasing an EV? When I was considering a LEAF, one of the ‘sales pitch’ lines Nissan used to address my concerns about their battery technology was the individual replace-ability of each of the component cells. Whether or not Nissan believed it, this apparently turned out to be not such a hot idea in practice. These are the kinds of issues it would be great to see addressed in a lay-person EV battery technology tutorial.

@ev-1 Driver, It appears that only Tesla has found a viable formula for BEVs. Build a car that performs like an ICE car, equip it as a high end luxury car, and price it so the battery costs are hidden in the overall value of the car.

Money is already tight for the middle class, and they just aren't going to compromise performance and utility for any car purchase, electric or not. A small group of people may go up a little in price for a range extended model, but that's it.

Toyota and their dealers don't want to bother with niche vehicles anyway. That's just not what they are about. They are a plain vanilla company that churns out fairly boring cars at high volume. The FJ Cruiser, even as popular as it has been, was rumored to be threatened for the chopping block at one time. It somehow has soldered on, in part because sales improved, and in part by the extreme loyalty of its buyers (read repeat buyers).

@Spec – opinions are like a**h****; everyone has one. My 66 mile trip is really only a 33 mile trip. On the descent, I have more charge at the bottom of the mountain than I had at the top. Giving Nissan the benefit of the doubt, they may not have had the data to tell me whether my principle intended use was compatible with the long-term health of a LEAF battery – though my dealer told me before I took delivery that he knew of at least one person who had already successfully made the trip.

Nissan’s CarWings database indicates that an average of 10 charge bars is needed to make the trip to the top with my private residence as the starting point. It shows a best case usage of 9 bars. Either of those figures is, for the duration of my lease, well within the purported 80% of remaining battery capacity the LEAF is supposed to have after 8 years unless almost all of the capacity loss occurs in the first 15 months.

The Nissan technical people think my problem is the result of a botched software update which they believe quite a few dealers may have done incompletely. They are going to take a look at my car. For the moment, this is an entirely believable explanation. I have pictures showing a 12 bar charge of a battery supposedly only capable of an 11 bar charge. After some initial unsatisfactory encounters with some lower level Nissan customer support personnel, Nissan gives every appearance of taking my concerns seriously and arriving at a fair settlement if they can not be addressed.

@Michael
You said " They are a plain vanilla company that churns out fairly boring cars at high volume." Your statement above wasn't about the dealers, it was about the company which clearly balances 2 business strategies between their divisions.
The company churns out both high volume (Toyota) and low volume (Lexus).
Don't forget, however, that Toyota led with the original niche Prius as well. They took a loss for a few years but are on top now.
Perhaps another response to the original article would be; "Why is Toyota looking at selling EVs as Toyotas, not as Lexus or Prius?"
I do fully agree that Tesla seems to have found a strategy that appears to be sound.

@Spec – What we have is a failure to communicate. No, even I don’t believe in perpetual motion machines. What I was referring to when I concluded it would be fair to count only the distance up the mountain in considering the range capabilities of the LEAF is the fact that I have been consistently “lucky” in capturing 17% (two bars) of regenerated energy on the descent. It just doesn’t seem relevant to include a part of a trip that generates more energy than it consumes when discussing the LEAF’s range.

Considerably more relevant would have been what would have happened if I’d had about ten more miles of climb with the same grade. I can confidently predict, without a course in engineering or physics, that I would not have made it. Something south of 43 is a lot further south of the 73 mile EPA range estimate.

Now I can forgive Nissan for not including a section in their documentation discussing my personal needs. But I can also forgive myself for concluding that a car with an officially validated 73 mile range and a battery expected to retain 80% of its capacity for 8 years would get me 33 miles up a mountain for a long time to come.