Autocar test the Nissan Leaf range

when i fist heard of the Leaf i thought of this...

Someone going home from work..starts to snow, heating on, demister,wipers,radio...stuck in traffic, bateries cant last long.
I cant see the advantage of them over a Insight/Prius

On my first day driving the Leaf my estimated range was a meagre 134 kilometres. At first I drove it like my old diesel car. It's not so easy to explain, but as you drive the car it constantly keeps you updated with how much energy you are using or getting back through various displays on the monitor and dash. After a while you begin to notice that the throttle has quite a high resolution and this combined with the constant feedback on energy usage begins to train you to drive in a more energy efficient way. On my second day I woke up and after a full charge the car was telling me my range was 172km, it keeps a record of your driving style, so the range estimation is based on more than just how you drive on the day. It is also based on how you drove the previous days and weeks etc.

Yesterday I had to make two round trips from Celbridge to Clonee via Leixlip. There was fairly varied terrain. A few good hills, back roads and some more open roads. This is a picture of my dash after I got home, 67.9 kilometres travelled and estimated range is 101 kilometres.



The guy in that video was joking about Nissan saying you should acquire a Zen like state of mind, it's not a million miles from the truth. For me, it just made me far more acutely aware of the correlation between throttle and energy usage. I haven't had it long, but I think figuring out quickly that the throttle had such high resolution and that instead of pressing it 1cm, I could press it 5mm or less and achieve a similar result with less energy used - that was the key for me.

There are other things you start thinking about as well. Like how you don't really want to come to a stop, so instead of maintaining speed, maybe I'll just coast towards that junction (gaining some energy back in regeneration) and then having to use less energy to regain momentum as traffic has hopefully started moving again.

Of course you could do that in a petrol or diesel car, but petrol and diesel cars haven't been designed around informing you so well about your energy usage.

Coming back to how it trains you to drive more efficiently. Yesterday my wife and I drove to a restaurant to have a bite to eat. On the way over my wife drove and she started wondering out loud why the estimated range for her was going down faster than it had for me. I drove on the way home and when we got home, the estimated range was higher than when we had left the restaurant.

Anyway, I've only had the car since Thursday. These are just some of my initial thoughts on the car

Sadly the likes of that autocar report are to be expected and certain to be repeated. Anyone remember the top gear tesla and eagle i-thrust that killed the green stig?:D "Real world" driving is a very relative term. For some it may mean 200-300k per day on a motorway , others perhaps 20k of winding back roads.

I wouldn't have expected the heater or aircon to have the impact it seems to have. I doubt they used the pre-heat , pre-cool option while still plugged in to the charger.

As Sesshoumaru pointed out even the charging wasn't realistic. Any house or business in the country can have a 32amp circuit installed by a competent electrician. This reduces charge time by a huge factor.

BrianD3 wrote: »

Good post, Sesshoumaru. Point taken about driving style but at a steady 60 mph on an open road there's not a whole lot that the driver can do (apart from slowing down) to improve economy. The same is true for IC engined cars but obviously reduced range is far less of an issue with them.

It's not a perfect car, travelling at higher speeds does consume more energy. I won't try to claim it has no weak points. But on balance, for my family it suits us quite well. The odd journey down to Kerry or maybe over to Galway should be very possible once the the 50kW DC charging stations are in place. It won't be able to make those journeys as fast as an ICE vehicle, but that for us is a small sacrifice.

But yeah clearly if you need long range on a regular basis, it's not the car for you

You can find all you answers here in this excellent post by Sesshoumaru:post #21 Electric Vehicles - Your thoughts - MotorMouth, Newstalk

Henry Ford III wrote: »

The Leaf's Achilles Heel is revealed? STG £19,000+ to replace the batteries!!!!

http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/news/autoexpressnews/271129/leaf_battery_could_cost_19k.html

http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1064332_nissan-leafs-battery-pack-should-last-as-long-as-the-car

To make the maintenance of the Leaf as easy as possible, the “battery” is actually 48 batteries in a large box which can be replaced individually to keep costs low. Each is connected to the Leaf’s advanced telematics system so Nissan can monitor the health of each module remotely. The price quoted in the press of [$31,795] for an entire battery is not indicative of the actual cost. It is an extrapolation of the individual price of replacing a single battery multiplied by 48. The cost of a conventional engine and transmission built up from individually sourced parts would be similarly high

mickdw wrote: »

Am I reading right that it is only costing €17.84 for 2120km driving?

€20 would be more accurate, that figure doesn't include VAT @ 13.5%

mickdw wrote: »

Much as I detest electric cars, that is a stunning figure to be fair. Something equivalent to 450 mpg at todays petrol prices or 10 times as efficient as typical car.
surely given those figures, there is huge room to produce proper luxury cars with alot of power and still maintain an efficiency of 2 or 3 times that of even the best diesels at the minute or even package more battery power on board to allow better range which would obviously reduce efficiency but many more people would be tempted by these cars if the range allowed more flexibility of use even if it meant efficiency was half of that of the leaf.

If you have the money...

http://www.teslamotors.com/models

*edit*

I see the base model is $50k and has a 160 mile range, not bad I think. Good power and acceleration. RWD as well.

Few points raised here I'd like to address. The statement regarding electricity being "dirty" when produced from a coal plant is valid enough. We'll ignore the fact that it is much easier to clean up a multimegawatt power plant than x number of passenger vehicles for now. However , to look at the CO2 output of an engine powered vehicle consuming one gallon of petrol or diesel fuel and doing a direct comparison with the CO2 output of an ev charged from electricity generated from a coal plant is invalid. Why? Ask yourself how that gallon of fuel arrived at the pump nozzle. In the US it has been estimated to require 7.5kwh of electricity to deliver one gallon of petrol to a passenger car fuel tank on a filling station forecourt. Add to the fact that all of the transportation of said fuel is done by oil buring vehicles (trains , trucks etc). The electricity is already at your house , place of work , on street charge pole etc.

Regarding the cost of Lithium batteries. Yes , they are comparatively expensive but not anywhere near the nonsense figures touted by media. How would I know any better you may ask. Back in '09 I shelled out €3,300 for a lead acid agm battery pack for my ev mostly beacuse i beleived the crap about lithium. Too expensive , dangerous and all that. Car was a disaster. Twenty miles if I was lucky. 0-60 in 6.7 iceages , 365kg of lead. This year I finished upgrading to Lithium Iron Phosphate. Cost €4,500 to build the pack. Delivered to my door , vat and duty paid. And i'm joe public. Not an OEM. Weighs in at 95kg total for 50+ miles of range , 70mph+ motorway speeds , 0-60 in 10 secs , 5000 cycles claimed by the manufacturer if discharged to 70%. 3000 cycles to 80%. Thats a good bit of driving in my book before the "fuel tank" wears out. And all of this done by a moron like me in a ratty old '96 E36.

So I very much subscribe to the view that the OEMs can do electric cars. And do them well. The Leaf is a prime example. They just have to learn.

keithclancy , I didn't mean it to sound like an attack on yourself:). Apologies if I came across that way and I would agree in principle with a lot of what you said. They don't suit everyone for sure. But some yes. And I would like to believe that as the manufacturers get more comfortable with the technology and it matures that the percentage of people who would consider an EV will increase.