Of course, it can take years before the lower operational cost makes up for the higher upfront cost of the Leaf.
According to Nissan, the operating cost of the Leaf in the U.K is 1.75 pence per mile (1.09p per km) when charging at an off-peak electricity rate, while a conventional gasoline-powered car costs more than 10 pence per mile (6.25p per km).
If such investments of nutrients and dry mass are larger than the cost of new leaf construction, the deciduous strategy is favoured.
In short, these different leaf trait combinations represent alternative leaf economic strategies for balancing the cost of constructing a leaf vs. the carbon fixation return (i.e. rapid resource acquisition vs. great resource conservation) (Donovan et al. 2011).
Maintenance costs per unit of leaf weight were significantly greater in one deciduous species, L. calycina, than in the evergreen.
The construction costs per unit of leaf weight were similar among the three species and very close to values reported for other evergreens but considerably higher than leaf construction costs for other deciduous or herbaceous plants.
Nissan estimated the cost of recharging the Leaf, which has a range of up to 100 miles, at $1 to $3. G.M. has previously suggested that the Volt would cost about $40,000, but Mr. Henderson said Tuesday that the price had not been set and that the car would price "as it comes to market".
But Nissan is moving production for both cars and batteries to its Tennessee facility by the end of this year, which will not only provide more supply but help with the cost since the strong Japanese yen is driving up the cost of building the Leaf in Japan.
The cost of soil and leaf tests is small compared with the savings to production, fertilizer costs and the environment.
We can also assign equal, non-zero costs to leaf nodes to designate that the state of an interaction is unknown rather than present or absent.
