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The Cities Blog
Dan Olson

Jukka’s new EV arrives

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Photo courtesy of Jukka Kukkonen

I don't expect you to have total recall of all my stories, so I'll offer this reminder of a piece I did a couple years ago.

It was about the future of electric vehicles, or EVs, in Minnesota, and the report included the voice of Jukka (pronounced YOU kah) Kukkonen, an EV advocate.

Well, more than an advocate, actually.

Jukka is founder of a Minnesota-based marketing and consulting group called Pluginconnect, LLC.

Jukka's EV is a Nissan Leaf, and the above photo he supplied shows it plugged into his charger behind his Twin Cities home.

The car arrived earlier this summer.

Here's a portion of an email from Jukka explaining the status of electric vehicles in Minnesota:

"I would estimate that there are about 75-100 Nissan Leafs, about 50 Chevrolet Volts, a dozen Ford Transit Connect Electrics, a dozen Fisker Karmas, half a dozen Tesla Roadsters, a couple Mitsubishi and about a hundred conversions. Many of these models have just started to be available here in Minnesota, but just to give you a perspective: GM has sold worldwide over 21 500 Chevrolet Volts and Opel Amperas (Volt's European sister) and they have been driven over 63 million EV miles (Source: GM). Nissan has sold over 34 500 Leafs worldwide and those have raked up over 122 million miles (Source: Nissan)."

Jukka says the Leaf costs about $37,000 before the federal tax rebate of about $7500.

He says he chose to lease his for about $300 a month with just under $3000 down and an option to purchase.

Jukka is an automotive engineer by training. He says he'll drive his Leaf this Saturday to the Polk County Energy Fair in St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin to talk about EVs.