Anyone have a daily driver Nissan Leaf?

unkel wrote: »

For free? A Nissan Leaf is €30k but we will give you a massive subsidy, so you'll only have to pay about €25k

€25k is about 20 times what I paid for my car. And my car is much nicer

Electric cars are too expensive to buy and inherently unreliable due to limited range.

If you want ultimate cost-saving in motoring, there are far, far better options.

For example, diesel corsas, fiestas, 106/saxo's that will all do at least 60mpg can be bought for sub 1000 euro.

Save your money and buy one of those would be my advice. 25 grand for a nissan leaf or whatever is utter stupidity.

BTW, Sesshoumaru won't be here for a while. His pigeon just landed on my roof with a note attached to its leg. It says: "please help - I am stuck just outside Athlone - only 9 miles from free fast charging point - no phone reception here - please help"

Excellent!!!!

Hi OP, here are 2 recent threads on electric cars you might be interested in (one of the posters has a Leaf)

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056582106


http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056580765

Zurich insurance also have a special insurance for electric cars, with some electric car specific breakdown assist things that look good (I don't know if other companies have this, I just came across it when I was looking for quotes on car insurance http://www.zurichinsurance.ie/car-insurance/electric-car-insurance.htm ).

I'd love an electric car myself but cannot afford to buy a new car, so will have to wait a while until second hand ones are on the market.

Pkiernan wrote: »

Anyone actually drive one daily?

Do you like it?

Happy you got it?

What real world range are you getting?

I will have a round trip of about 100 km per day when I get back to our wonderful over taxed country.

I believe that I will get free charging at work (and better parking too).

I joined the dark side on April 21st 2011. After 3 months / 7500km I posted some of my thoughts about the car:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=73691736&postcount=21

That's probably a good place to start A few weeks to go until I've had it one year. I am going to do a one year report at that stage. But basically we've now covered 22,500 kilometers. I have a wife and 2 young kids, no other car but the Nissan Leaf. I do however own 1 motorcycle and one large scooter. After the extra mileage I'm now more impressed with the car than I was when I did the above post.

Your commute is 50km each way and you can charge at your work place, range wouldn't be an issue even if you couldn't charge at your workplace. However being able to charge at your workplace means you can be a little more carefree with your energy usage. You could set a preheating timer on the car or just activate it from the website or smartphone app a little bit before you leave your office. You could use your employers electricity to heat or cool your car before leaving for home.

In winter, real world range depends on how far you're going, do you need the heating on all the time and did you save some energy by preheating. But I've never seen less than 100km even on colder days and using the heating all the time.

In milder weather conditions we might get anywhere from 120km to 150km depending on whether it's predominantly motorway driving or city driving. I think the best we got on one charge in mild weather (which also included a fair bit of motorway) was about 154km with a mixture of slower country roads and faster motorway driving. That was my wife a few days after we got the car and she wanted to go to kildare village outlet. She missed the exit and continued for another 30km before she realised she'd gone by it. When she got home the battery was displaying 0%. Not bad range though considering we were pretty much driving it like our old diesel car at that stage.

RandomAccess wrote: »

Some questions.
The ability to remote pre-heat the car via your smartphone for example, does this require you to have a sim card in the car or something? Or is there a datalink via the charge cable?

SIM card is build into the car and is not user accessible. So to turn on heating you need smartphone with data plan or any internet connected PC would do.

The reason I ask is because I was wondering does the in-car GPS leverage any realtime updates in relation to the charging network.

No, Nissan has no idea about making usable software. They have some idea about making cars.

Such as,

• Whether newly commissioned chargers are added to the map

• No, they do not list even half of chargers

• Whether chargers that are offline due to a fault are communicated to the cars GPS

• No, but they list non-existent chargers

• Similarly, it would be useful to know if a charger was occupied or not if you were in an area with other chargers available

• No, but it can read RSS feeds to you

ironclaw wrote: »

Tires, service etc would be comparable, so theres no point comparing them.

Oh yes they would be comparable. Actually EV is more expensive to run, as you have to change engine oil much more frequently, high torque would kill your DMF and clutch. Clutches in LEAF are well known weak point. Mine is stuck in first gear since I bought it. Last time I went to Connemara I think I lost also my exhaust as I cannot find it any more. On other hand EV have not DPF or EGR, but who cares because they are extremely cheap. You change one for max 50 E and that would be for some BMW probably, much less for regular cars. Not to mention winter problem, when electrical engines die if used when cold on short distances, unlike modern common rail diesels. Not to mention that if you pick up a dodgy bunch of electrons they will stuck in your filter.


However to be serious I must add that tyres for EVs actually are significantly more expensive, everything else is cheaper (power train) or same cost (breaks, suspension). The reason is simple, modern diesel cars are super advanced, while people were connecting batteries to electrical motors for well over 100 years.

However to change the batteries could cost €10,000+ (€600 or so per cell) And Nissan themselves put a lifetime of around 5 years on them (10 years for 'short trips'). Not to mention the major inconvenience if you wanted to go on a long journey, which charging would then cost you. Lastly, given the micro market for electric cars, your resale prospects would be very slim in my eyes.

They are not dead after this, they just have capacity of 80%. You can still use your car as second car in family or sell it to someone who would be happy with smaller range. In worst case you could charge them at night and power house at day. Unlike components of ICE, electrical components have much more versatile usage.

Indeed resale value is propably the biggest risk connected with EV, what if price of petrol drops ? ESB abandons charging network? Cars would be worth very little.

David09 wrote: »

Electric cars are too expensive to buy and inherently unreliable due to limited range.

I made just 10kkm but never have been stranded without power anywhere. It is a little known fact but there are some villages that have no petrol station but have power sockets.

For Forks Sake wrote: »

No, don't think it's ever been mentioned by anyone on here before...







Sesshomaru to appear in 5,4,3,2,1......

8 mana in third turn? Two explores ?!