Nissan Leaf

Hello and welcome to another one of my self indulgent rambles (you never know, someone might find them interesting)
Today I finally got around to test driving a Nissan Leaf (and yes, I know this is a motorbike forum but there are a lot of geeks in the crowd, maybe even some (environ)mentalists).

I'd wanted to try an electric vehicle for a while after following Robert Llewellyn on twitter (@bobbyllew) he is big into his green motoring and such and has tried and reported on lots. Finally the Nissan leaf was released to the unwashed masses and people could get a test drive, well not really, you could get a 90 second spin around a car park with a rep. I'll pass thank you.

I checked last week and they had a second round of "roadshow" events but also had another link to test drive it at your local dealer. Put my name down and got one booked, a guy from the garage called me back and arranged it, all I had to do was wait (curses, I don't do waiting very well).

Our nearest dealer was Stockport, a bit of a trek but I fancied giving it a go. Headed out there today with driving license in hand, expected the place to be empty given that it was for an hour before the FA Cup kicked off but apparently not lurked around for a few minutes and perused the other models then the guy I'd spoken to came over and after a few questions and a copy of my driving license we were off!

Playing it cool on the outside asking the right (geeky) questions but inside like a kid at Christmas getting a go on someone else's coveted toy.
The guy reversed the car out and gave me a quick guide as he did so, I was glad he got it off the car park as it seemed pretty mountainous! built on a bumpy hill but off we went, my wife and stepdaughter in the back.

The car gets powered on and is somewhat reminiscent of a nokia phone, it makes a welcome noise to tell you its done and the screens display things and at that point its ready, simple as that, no juddering as the engine settles to idle, no noise from any components. OK so here we go then...

There is no gearbox or gear lever but it's not an automatic, automatic means it changes gear automatically, there is no gear to change in this of course. This makes power delivery unbelievably smooth, almost unimaginably so, it takes some getting used to. By the end of our 10 mile(ish) drive I was still marveling at it.
I had mercifully driven a colleagues automatic A3 sportback back from Bristol yesterday so my left leg was primed to do nothing. Foot on the brake and move the "joystick dooberry" across and forward to put it into reverse. The reversing camera comes on and shows you where you are going to end up, quite nice. Push the joystick dooberry across and backwards and you are in drive, but take your foot off the brake and nothing happens. (in an automatic it would idle forwards)
I tentatively pressed the accelerator, feeling like a learner all over again. Expecting at any moment to get kangaroo juice or something but nope, nothing like, it was so smooth and silky to pull away, there was no dead zone on the throttle like in either auto or manual cars where you rev and feel for the bite etc. It is just there right from the first millimeter of movement, it sounds a little odd but its quite reassuring.

Once you are in motion the next thing you notice is the absence of any noise from the engine or vibration that you expect and subconsciously gauge speed from, it glided down the streets and I pulled out onto a main road with an oncoming car without any qualms that it might be slow or lag when I pressed the go pedal. (I'd have been apprehensive in some auto cars I'd driven and even in some cases engages sport mode heh)

Right, I've settled down with how it performs I don't need to pay too much attention to it so I can look around the dash, there are displays for your battery level and its expected range from this. The range is useful but less so if someone else has been driving it as it estimates based on their habits so in a test car it isn't so handy but the battery meter is fine, 3/4 charged, I barely used any despite my heavy footed, ham fisted approach to it today. There is a display of a tree to indicate how well you are driving, the tree fills up and then gets added to a small forest you can accumulate to the side. Now I realise how cheesy that sounds but it is actually a very good tactic and idea, it makes you aware of how you are driving and it makes you want to complete the tree and better yourself. Definitely designed for the Nintendo generation, conditioned for digital rewards. You can even go online and contribute your trees and compare I'm told.

I didn't get chance to test the "turbo" section of the go pedal as it was on city roads and I was accompanied, but I'm told if you press the pedal down and it feels like it stops, press it some more and it sort of clunks into the final section which drains the batteries fast but really shifts!

It feels (and is) a real car, It doesn't feel like a toy or anything different as you drive it around. Size wise, it's not too dissimilar from our current Peugeot 307, perhaps a tad roomier but the boot is smaller. The headlights are LED looking at the specs, not sure how they perform as it was the middle of the day but I'd imagine they are sufficient if not better then normal bulbs.

Audio and IT kit.
The Leaf is choc full of gadgety goodness, it has iphone/mp3 integration built in, bluetooth, satnav, reversing camera and air con all as standard. The navigation also shows nearest charging points and will update the list from satellite as this is an ever changing list. Along with this there is also a feature called CARWINGS, this lets you connect and interact with the car remotely. (sadly not like knightrider but thankfully it also doesn't have a camp voice either) You can use your iPhone (probably other smart phones) or PC to check on the charge level, start or stop charging, initiate AC to get the correct temperature before you start depleting your batteries or plan your route and upload it to the satnav in the car (how cool is that, google maps integration and I'd be sorted!)

The price is £25k after a £5k government grant. I was looking at the price on the way to drive it as a lot of money but typical fare for early adopters, and that's what this car is, the first generation. But still, £25k will get you a good deal of car, I was checking around the show room, a 2.0 Qashqai
was 22k, a Nissan Note was 13k, almost half that of the Leaf and not significantly smaller. The Leaf was starting to look like an increasingly bad financial proposition at this point, compounding my preconceived opinion.
But after testing it and the sales guy mentioning one startling revelation that you will never need to visit a petrol station again, it starts to look a little better, hmm maybe its not just for carbon abhorrent hippies then....

Charging.
A normal charge using a home installed "power pod" I think they call it, will take 8 hours, so you could drive 100 miles in a day, come back and charge it while you sleep, simples.
If you take it to work or visit a friend you can use a typical 3 pin plug lead and it will charge in 12 hours.
Or, call at your local Nissan dealer and charge it on their fast charge point in 30 minutes. (this gives an 80% charge)
The advice is the same as most batteries, charge it, use it till almost flat then recharge. If you drove only a few miles a day and put it on charge every night you would shoot yourself in the foot with regards to the battery longevity.

Personally I don't see charging as too much of an issue, its like anything else, if you plan for it, it isn't a problem. Charging points are becoming more common and lets face it, electricity is everywhere already, its just a matter of getting the hardware in place to plug in. I can see Nissan or other car dealers partnering with a major coffee shop chain to get a small coffee bar in their dealerships (where there isn't one within 100ft already!) so that customers can park up and take a quick charge and have a coffee.
Also NCP could install 5-6 bays in their car parks (they already have lights in there so just take a feed) and charge a small surcharge on the existing parking fee, you are likely to be there for some time anyway, thats my prediction anyway. Hotel chains will be announcing deals with charging point installers soon too I suspect, some small private ones already provide this.

Some quick ponderings on the way back and I came to the conclusion that its a 15k car with a 10k upfront fuel charge. That is the best way I can find of looking at it, and doing so, it makes sense, even for normal people, right now. If you spent that £25k on a 2.0l Qashqai, you would then spend 5-6k on a drip feed to keep it running that year, its an accepted cost and we are conditioned to it. Like a loan that has been running for years you expect to have this chunk of your monthly income gone so you work around it. If you could pre-pay £10k to fix your tank fill up cost to £5 for the life of your vehicle I bet you would jump at the chance looking at the current fuel prices. Incidentally, filling the batteries on the leaf should cost less than that on most electric tariffs.

OK, back down to earth, when all said and done, this isn't the savior on four wheels, it's the first generation iPod, expensive and uncommon. But this will fund the second generation which was better, cheaper and more usable. It's the first step, it won't be taken by many but I find it very interesting.

I'm not driven (no pun intended) by the need to be green, I don't even mind that my electricity to fuel one would come from the usual coal fired station. The argument is moot as petrol requires the same electricity to refine it, coming from the same source so the way I see it, they cancel each other out. When EVs really take off, we will be looking for better ways of getting the electricity so it will naturally come about, people will come up with cheaper ways in the inevitable price war that drives most industries and technological advancement. My main attraction to EVs (2 or 4 wheeled) is that of a geek, they interest me in a technological way. Electric seems to make the most sense for getting around, its just the charging and storage of that electricity that is holding us back at the moment.

Anyway, if anyone still is, thank you for reading. I don't mean to sound like an electrical zealot but I'm very enthused by trying this out today. I know it isn't for everyone, but even me as a rural located driver could make use of one as I have a short commute (15 miles) and our shopping/family visits are all less than the 109 miles quoted range by quite some margin (even factoring in getting back before being able to charging it) After trying this today I'd be very interested in trying one of the Brammo electric bikes or similar!

Ooh, almost forgot, heres a picture of the car I tried:
http://twitpic.com/4xkpgs
Twitpic still seems to be confused, heres the link to the full sized image:
http://www.brettnet.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Leaf.jpg

i enjoyed that read, nothing to do with the fact that the lady is watchin eurovision

but was a good read nonetheless. i have a feeling that the go faster pedal would feel alot like the pedal on a forklift truck, no roll forwards when the brake is disengaged but just put the weight of your foot on the pedal and it will creep forward.

just wondered, can you hear the whine of the electric motor or is it near as damnit silent??

Yeah I had hoped to corner the captive eurovision refugee audience

The motor is silent for all intents and purposes, there is a very slight whine but is only barely audible when accelerating quite hard. Apparently it has the exterior noise maker for idiot pedestrians but I also couldn't hear that. Even at motorway speeds I was pleasantly surprised how quiet it was, road noise is a big part of the noise in any car but this has that chunk less and has no vibration that is ever present in normal cars, we are so used to it we don't really notice it but you do notice the absence of it.

I'd imagine it is pretty comparable to a forklift in terms of drive as I've seen them pick up and go (again no pun intended ) but I'd imagine ride comfort is higher heheh, and weather proofing.

[Mr Speirs]

I'd love one.
Too expensive for me at the minute though.

100miles tank range isn't very good though. For example 90% of the time It would be fine, but there is times where I need to travel more than 100 miles 1 way. I can't stop and charge my battery just to get to my destination. It's too inpractical right now.

They need to do what Chevvy did and whack a small fossil fuel engine for the times where you need to travel any real distance.

what they really need to do, is find a way of storing more and more electricity in a smaller space. the eurovision refugees applaud your entertainment

Originally Posted by Mr Speirs

I'd love one.
Too expensive for me at the minute though.

100miles tank range isn't very good though. For example 90% of the time It would be fine, but there is times where I need to travel more than 100 miles 1 way. I can't stop and charge my battery just to get to my destination. It's too inpractical right now.

They need to do what Chevvy did and whack a small fossil fuel engine for the times where you need to travel any real distance.

Yeah I completely agree on that, the Chevy isn't a bad option, its another option. For the people it will work for, the Leaf is the purest solution (that has been released so far of course). For those needing something more versatile the Chevy Volt is the next best thing. After all "electric" trains have been using diesel engines for years, they use the electric engine more as a gearbox to get the power to the wheels. They are still quite big steps away from purely internal combustion cars and a I can't wait to see where we go from here.

I read an interesting point that the future of EVs isn't in battery tech, more likely its in capacitors, very quick to charge when needed and much lighter than current batteries. making stops more equivalent to your petrol stops now. Interesting times, I wonder how many said the Model T would never catch on, "where will you find fuel for something like that?" etc.

Interesting, but i cant make the figures stack up,

I spend £2000 a year on fuel, and what would the car be worth in 5 years which is what it would take to pay back the 10k extra cost from a year old ford focus tdci..

add to that 100 miles at a time, what use is that to the current car user? those who only do a few miles are being pushed to sell because the costs are now massive, how wud paying 25k for a car suddenly see,m a decent investment?

so what is their demographic?

add that to the fact i bet it has lithium batteries which all the present evidence indicates the life co2 is still hideous, hardly green is it, let alone the civil and human unrest regarding the lithium mines.

now lets actually realistically try and get hydrogen cars off the mark shall we..?

ps.. nice write up

Originally Posted by 454697819

Interesting, but i cant make the figures stack up,

I spend £2000 a year on fuel, and what would the car be worth in 5 years which is what it would take to pay back the 10k extra cost from a year old ford focus tdci..

add to that 100 miles at a time, what use is that to the current car user? those who only do a few miles are being pushed to sell because the costs are now massive, how wud paying 25k for a car suddenly see,m a decent investment?

so what is their demographic?

add that to the fact i bet it has lithium batteries which all the present evidence indicates the life co2 is still hideous, hardly green is it, let alone the civil and human unrest regarding the lithium mines.

now lets actually realistically try and get hydrogen cars off the mark shall we..?

ps.. nice write up

All valid points, sorry for the quick fire responses, I'm over enthused today

I suspect you are right about the batteries and I'm not arguing against anyones points, I quite like to hear others and learn when I'm wrong.

Hydrogen and such is where it is likely to end up but I don't think we can go directly to there, I think there needs to be this EV stepping stone, and this is the first step on that I think. Clive Sinclair envisioned all this in 1980 but couldn't make the technology stack up, now we are just beginning to make it work, barely, for some people. And it is those eco friendly evangelists who will pay the premium for the car and help fund the Leaf 2.0 which will lead us to the hydrogen utopia but we can't leap frog this stage I think. LPG never took off because of the delivery network, hydrogen will suffer the same thing until it can be produced cheaply enough and easily enough to be available everywhere.

Electricity is already there, just needs storage on the move.

[SoulKiss]

Nice write up but its a pain to read because the pic makes the text go off the screen.

Any chance of cropping it/resizing it to less than about 800-900 pixels wide?

Originally Posted by SoulKiss

Nice write up but its a pain to read because the pic makes the text go off the screen.

Any chance of cropping it/resizing it to less than about 800-900 pixels wide?

Thanks and Doh, sorry, thought I linked it to the smaller version, will upload a proper sized one in the morning. Have removed it to make life easier, only put it up there as twitpic seems to be having a dicky fit.