6.6KW Charging Acenta or 3.3KW Tekna

rodneytrotter15

I'm about to import a 2016 Leaf and am torn between the above two specs. Have it shortlisted to 2 or 3 cars but need to move quickly. My commute is 45KM each way, have free charging in work from a 32amp charger and have a 16amp outside charger at home.

I'm hoping to only have to charge in work and appreciate I may need to topup at home during nasty weather. Just wondering which option people would go for. I''m leaning towards the 6.6KW Acenta so that I don't tie up one of the two chargers in work for the full day....any thoughts....

Gumbo

Me personally, I'd take the 3.3 Tekna due to the better spec. It just makes the car a better place to be.
If you have free charging in work, and a charger at home, you will rarely run low.

What's the 45km like, motorway, N Roads, traffic?

Are there any other EV users In work?

In my place we have 4 chargers for staff and we run a whatsapp group so we can move if full etc to share them.

slave1

Well your home charger won't be able to benefit from the higher on-board charger, whereas you will at work and you will need to charge every day in Winter.
Personally I don't like how much boot space the speaker takes up in the Tekna and leather does nothing and I find the Acenta seats very comfy.
6.6 will prove very handy should you need a quick top up when out and about and your only option is a public 22 charger..

Is there anything else separating the cars you're looking at, colour, mileage, service history?

Orebro

If someone offered me right now to change to a Tekna, or make my Acenta a 6.6, I'd keep my car and take the 6.6. It's rare, but there have been occasions where an hours charge would have put a much more meaningful amount of charge into the car when i needed it.

slave1

It's rare because at the time of purchase it was a circa £1.1k optional cost

KCross

rodneytrotter15 wrote: »

I'm about to import a 2016 Leaf and am torn between the above two specs. Have it shortlisted to 2 or 3 cars but need to move quickly. My commute is 45KM each way, have free charging in work from a 32amp charger and have a 16amp outside charger at home.

I'm hoping to only have to charge in work and appreciate I may need to topup at home during nasty weather. Just wondering which option people would go for. I''m leaning towards the 6.6KW Acenta so that I don't tie up one of the two chargers in work for the full day....any thoughts....

^^ That

I'd say the 6.6kW car because you are planning to use that work charger daily and it will be a matter of time before you start pissing off your colleagues by hogging it for hours on end everyday. Get on and off the charger in 2-3hrs instead of 4-6!


The extras on the Tekna (off the top of my head) are
Leather seats
Heated seats and steering (Acenta will have those too if it has the "cold pack"... does it?)
360° camera (useful but hardly a deal breaker)
Nicer 17" alloys
- with the downside that the tyres are a good bit more expensive


Go for the 6.6kW if thats your only choice.

Orebro

slave1 wrote: »

It's rare because at the time of purchase it was a circa £1.1k optional cost

Yes, but I meant it was rare that I would have appreciated having a 6.6, and would take it over the Tekna spec.

krissovo

Faster charging for me, I don’t think many workplaces soon will be able to handle the amount of EV’s for everyone. In my place charging bays are now treated like a meeting room and we book 3 hour slots to enable as many to benefit from the facilities.

Also i think destination charging will really kick off like the Netherlands where most car parks have charging facilities and you can go off shopping or a meal and come back to a charged car.

rodneytrotter15

Thanks for all the replies, my commute is motorway 95%. Limerick to Ennis. The Acenta has circa 10k lower mileage than any of the others......colour doesn't really bother me....think I'll stick with the Acenta given there's only 2 chargers in work, although all that gets plugged in to them at the moment is a 330e it could change very quickly.

krissovo

We have 6 chargers which were mostly redundant until the last 2 months. Its gone from 5 EV’s to at least 15 and lot more 530e’s & outlanders. There are also 6 model 3’s on order.

DM1983

It's a 2016 but is it a 30kwh? If so you wont need to charge at work if you drive at 110km/h and only a very short one if you drive at 130km/h. In winter. That's with the 3.3kw charger.

Have you sat in both? You really need to sit in the acenta if you haven't. I thought it was awful. Really cheap feeling. Pretty personal taste obviously as someone else above said they liked the acenta seats!

Once I sat in both I limited my search to Teknas. I have 3.3kw charger and never wanted 6.6kw but all my charging is done overnight so use case dependent.

unkel

Orebro wrote: »

Yes, but I meant it was rare

Not in 2016. When I looked into buying a Leaf 24kWh in September 2016, the only ones one sale had the 6.6kW from the Windsor group. I got a quote of €19.9k for one on the road all in including 6.6kW charger and metallic paint

Unkel, that was definitely an outlier. The reason why there are many 6.6 kW cars on sale is because in UK market (=imports) until 2016 the 6.6 charger was a free upgrade for HP buyers (the residual value used in calculations kept the monthly rental the same). This changed in 2016 and therefore most of the 2016 and newer cars are 3.3.

In Ireland Windsor did their best dissuade me not to upgrade to 6.6 when I got my first LEAF in summer '15.

For OP 6.6 all the way and also the Acenta is also more efficient due to the smaller wheel size and rides better.

Zenith74

If you haven't already, go and sit into a Tekna and Accenta at a Nissan garage and compare them. Personally I think the Tekna feels quite close to a premium car, while the Accenta feels more like an economy car. I'd take the Tekna all day every day, but you might get in and ask who that Zenith74 numpty is with his ""premium feel"" nonsense.

unkel

samih wrote: »

Unkel, that was definitely an outlier.

I believe it was the whole Windsor group, who sold a significant percentage of Leafs in Ireland in 2016. But it looked like that was a new program from around September. And remember some people picked up a 2017 Leaf 24kWh Tekna brandnew for €19.9k on the road, an even better deal