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Phillip Carlson bought a Nissan Leaf in August 2012, which cost about $53,500. It\u2019s seven years old today, and it\u2019s worth maybe $12,000 - if you can find someone dumb enough to buy it. Let\u2019s let him tell the story.

\u201cI bought an electric car from Nissan with 5 years warranty on the battery. They claimed 175km range. From new I only ever got 120km. Now I can BARELY get 35-40km during winter or even 25km if I use the heater. The warranty says the battery is bad if it drops to 8 out of 12 bars, which mine has.

\u201cI took it in and they claim the battery is totally fine and there\u2019s nothing wrong with it and gave me a $33,000 invoice for a new one!!!!! Nissan just won\u2019t listen and I\u2019ve run out of all hope. I paid $53,500 for this car and it\u2019s pretty useless now.\u201d - Phillip Carlson

Here\u2019s the official battery replacement quote from Lennock Motors in the ACT. $750 to replace the battery, an incredible $29,600 for the battery, you Nissan chumps. Plus GST: that\u2019s $33,385 in total. On a shitheap worth $12k, on a good day today.

I note Nissan and other carmakers bitching and moaning about the lack of government support for EVs in Australia. And I\u2019d suggest that if you\u2019re a carmaker like Nissan, seemingly hell-bent on taking your small group of EV first adopters to the prison shower in this way, then you simply do not deserve any taxpayer support. You short-sighted mother-lovers.

And I say this because that kind of behaviour ignores the fact that the easiest guy on earth to sell a new Leaf to is the satisfied owner of an old Leaf.

This extortionate conduct hardly screams: \u2018We\u2019ll take care of you.\u2019 Maybe it does - in a Bill Cosby way.

And if you think that\u2019s expensive, check out this $50,000 Jeep repair bill, on another car worth maybe $15k.

So, let\u2019s think about this, and what it really means, because the conduct of organisations tells you more about them than the statements they make.

This is a tacit admission by Nissan that the Leaf is a disposable car. A $50,000 disposable car. Which doesn\u2019t seem very environmentally sustainable to me.

Obvious conclusion on the fucked-up cost of replacing this battery: For $30,000 you could buy about 20,000 litres of petrol. Which is enough to drive a Leaf-sized conventional car about 400,000 kilometres.

So if you are buying your Leaf EV to save money on fuel, even if you are getting your electricity free from a fat rooftop solar array, every day, you better hope you get 400,000 kays out of the battery. #unlikely.

If you don\u2019t, you\u2019re just kidding yourself. And the leaf is about $30,000 more expensive than a Leaf-sized conventional car. So make that 800,000 kays - to break even, financially. In what universe does that sound like a sound financial plan?