This week I was at Nissan North America’s Headquarters in Tennessee for my second drive of the all new Nissan LEAF electric vehicle, teamed with a gentleman by the name of Dan Wiese. Dan is the automotive writer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and has a somewhat skeptical view of this whole EV deal. We made for an interesting odd-couple, what with my evangelical enthusiasm, but we actually got along famously well and I’m looking forward to reading his story of our time together.
Our day was broken into two test drives of about 30 miles each. The first drive appeared to be carefully choreographed, and covered 10 miles of highway driving and 20 miles of hilly country roads. But before I get to talking about that in detail, let’s talk about “range anxiety” just a bit.
Despite following the EV world for over 10 years now, I am somewhat ashamed to say that I don’t have a massive amount of experience driving the vehicles - all my prior drives have been at ride-and-drive type events, with the exposure limited to one or two city blocks. You can imagine then, when the first LEAF we drove lost 9 miles of range almost immediately from pulling away, changing from 90 miles to 81, that I experienced just a tad of this range anxiety. And it wasn’t just this particular LEAF….the second one we drove went immediately from 60 miles down to 51, so clearly behavior by design.
However, once we got going properly on drive one, the range indicator began dancing around in the familiar away, thanks to regenerative braking, staying within 70 and 80 available miles for most of a journey taken without ECO mode (which adds about 10% more range) and with the air conditioning on. Only when we got close to the end of our 30 mile loop did we drop into the 60s, and we finished with 65 miles remaining, despite plenty of spirited driving and a couple of 0-60 timed runs.
Nissan’s Mark Perry insists that after living with the LEAF for a couple of weeks, range anxiety will be a thing of distant memory. And I’m certain he’s right.
Speaking of 0-60 times, I’m pleased to say that our runs (we did one each) both came in at 10 seconds, precisely the time Nissan had told us to expect in our orientation meeting. Now neither of us thought to take the traction control off, and maybe that would have made our runs just a hair faster, but I don’t see any way to get a 7 second 0-60 (as has been reported elsewhere) out of this car. I’m equally glad to report a time better than the 11-12 second one seen in that Internet video of the LEAF on the Autobahn. I can live with 10 seconds (or even a hair faster)….my Ford Focus is a 9.5 second car, and that’s plenty quick enough for me!
Also speaking of 0-60 times, the way the LEAF put power down for those runs was a bit strange. Now I suspect this is also by design, but it seems impossible to spin the wheels from takeoff (at least with the traction control on) because the initial power comes in so gradually. It makes the car feel slower than it is, though I doubt you’d even notice under most day-to-day driving. Of course, it could also be a different story entirely with the traction control off, and I wish that was something we’d thought to try. A test to run the next time I drive.
This first run gave us the kind of roads we needed to properly examine the LEAF’s handling, and I must say that it also performed very well - body roll was minimal, thanks to the very low center of gravity, and the car went into bends with nothing in the way of noticeable understeer.
Being half-time passenger in the LEAF gave me an opportunity to check out the interior quality again. My previous encounter left me feeling that some of the buttons and switches were a bit wimpy. Now that I’ve had more time with them, I have done a complete 180, and feel instead that it’s the switchgear in my Focus that is too chunky. I also left the car with a better appreciation of the plastics used. Yes, they are hard plastics, but they aren’t what I’d call “coarse” plastics. Materials quality is very good for a car that would no doubt be stickered at $10,000 less had it been built with a conventional drivetrain.
The other drive of the day was supposed to be a short city loop through the nearby town of Franklin. But this was honestly not something I wanted to do, and I took the opportunity of Mr. Perry being at our table for lunch to lobby for freeway time instead. Fortunately, I didn’t have to step off the reservation because he agreed quite readily.
The second car Dan and I chose was showing 60 miles of available range when we stepped into it, which became 51 miles of range almost immediately after starting out (remember that also happened with the first car), so he and I agreed on a 30 mile loop at full highway speeds, again with no ECO and with the air conditioning on.
Why only 30 miles when the car could have probably gone 20 more? Well I did have a flight to catch early that same afternoon, so I was time constrained. But I also didn’t want us to be team towed back to Nissan. So, yes, we played it safe.
However, I am pleased to report that the car did very well, giving us between 3.8 and 4.6 miles per kWh. The 3.9 miles per kWh was even on a slight uphill grade with almost tornadic headwinds, which alone would translate into over 90 miles of range for the full pack under the same conditions. Outstanding performance for an EV of the LEAF's size and weight!
Being as I’m a reservation holder, I am left with zero concern about this being a car appropriate to my driving needs, and can’t wait to take delivery in a few weeks time. I’d count the days, if only I knew exactly when it was going to happen!
Our day was broken into two test drives of about 30 miles each. The first drive appeared to be carefully choreographed, and covered 10 miles of highway driving and 20 miles of hilly country roads. But before I get to talking about that in detail, let’s talk about “range anxiety” just a bit.
Despite following the EV world for over 10 years now, I am somewhat ashamed to say that I don’t have a massive amount of experience driving the vehicles - all my prior drives have been at ride-and-drive type events, with the exposure limited to one or two city blocks. You can imagine then, when the first LEAF we drove lost 9 miles of range almost immediately from pulling away, changing from 90 miles to 81, that I experienced just a tad of this range anxiety. And it wasn’t just this particular LEAF….the second one we drove went immediately from 60 miles down to 51, so clearly behavior by design.
However, once we got going properly on drive one, the range indicator began dancing around in the familiar away, thanks to regenerative braking, staying within 70 and 80 available miles for most of a journey taken without ECO mode (which adds about 10% more range) and with the air conditioning on. Only when we got close to the end of our 30 mile loop did we drop into the 60s, and we finished with 65 miles remaining, despite plenty of spirited driving and a couple of 0-60 timed runs.
Nissan’s Mark Perry insists that after living with the LEAF for a couple of weeks, range anxiety will be a thing of distant memory. And I’m certain he’s right.
Speaking of 0-60 times, I’m pleased to say that our runs (we did one each) both came in at 10 seconds, precisely the time Nissan had told us to expect in our orientation meeting. Now neither of us thought to take the traction control off, and maybe that would have made our runs just a hair faster, but I don’t see any way to get a 7 second 0-60 (as has been reported elsewhere) out of this car. I’m equally glad to report a time better than the 11-12 second one seen in that Internet video of the LEAF on the Autobahn. I can live with 10 seconds (or even a hair faster)….my Ford Focus is a 9.5 second car, and that’s plenty quick enough for me!
Also speaking of 0-60 times, the way the LEAF put power down for those runs was a bit strange. Now I suspect this is also by design, but it seems impossible to spin the wheels from takeoff (at least with the traction control on) because the initial power comes in so gradually. It makes the car feel slower than it is, though I doubt you’d even notice under most day-to-day driving. Of course, it could also be a different story entirely with the traction control off, and I wish that was something we’d thought to try. A test to run the next time I drive.
This first run gave us the kind of roads we needed to properly examine the LEAF’s handling, and I must say that it also performed very well - body roll was minimal, thanks to the very low center of gravity, and the car went into bends with nothing in the way of noticeable understeer.
Being half-time passenger in the LEAF gave me an opportunity to check out the interior quality again. My previous encounter left me feeling that some of the buttons and switches were a bit wimpy. Now that I’ve had more time with them, I have done a complete 180, and feel instead that it’s the switchgear in my Focus that is too chunky. I also left the car with a better appreciation of the plastics used. Yes, they are hard plastics, but they aren’t what I’d call “coarse” plastics. Materials quality is very good for a car that would no doubt be stickered at $10,000 less had it been built with a conventional drivetrain.
The other drive of the day was supposed to be a short city loop through the nearby town of Franklin. But this was honestly not something I wanted to do, and I took the opportunity of Mr. Perry being at our table for lunch to lobby for freeway time instead. Fortunately, I didn’t have to step off the reservation because he agreed quite readily.
The second car Dan and I chose was showing 60 miles of available range when we stepped into it, which became 51 miles of range almost immediately after starting out (remember that also happened with the first car), so he and I agreed on a 30 mile loop at full highway speeds, again with no ECO and with the air conditioning on.
Why only 30 miles when the car could have probably gone 20 more? Well I did have a flight to catch early that same afternoon, so I was time constrained. But I also didn’t want us to be team towed back to Nissan. So, yes, we played it safe.
However, I am pleased to report that the car did very well, giving us between 3.8 and 4.6 miles per kWh. The 3.9 miles per kWh was even on a slight uphill grade with almost tornadic headwinds, which alone would translate into over 90 miles of range for the full pack under the same conditions. Outstanding performance for an EV of the LEAF's size and weight!
Being as I’m a reservation holder, I am left with zero concern about this being a car appropriate to my driving needs, and can’t wait to take delivery in a few weeks time. I’d count the days, if only I knew exactly when it was going to happen!
