I leased my SL two weeks ago, and I just joined this forum today, so I thought I would post my impressions based on these last two weeks.
I live in southern California, so the fact that the Leaf heating system is a bit lethargic didn't seem like it would be a problem. I might have been wrong.
The heated steering wheel only has one setting that I can find, and it gets way too hot way too quick. Turn it off, and it gets cold almost immediately.
The heated seats actually do help, although they don't put out as much heat as I expected.
The heater comsumes mountains of energy, but doesn't seem to produce much heat. I understand that you have to consume energy to produce heat when you don't have the "free" heat from an internal combustion engine, but you would think that when the heater is using 3 kw it would at least put out as much heat as my 1 kw space heater at home. This morning when I left the house it was 59 degrees outside. I tried to get comfortable with just the heated seat and steering wheel heat, but that didn't do a lot. I finally turned on heat, and set temperature to 90 degrees. It finally got comfortable, but barely. When it gets colder, it doesn't stand a chance, and it will kill my range. Being able to drive in comfort is something I just took for granted with my gas car.
Living in southern California, I often don't need any AC or heat, I just need to run the blower, but the car isn't set up to do that. I did find out that I can turn on the climate control, turn off the AC, and turn down the temperature to 60 degrees, and the climate control won't consume any power, although the the guessometer still shows lower range as if it was using energy. Of course the solution to that is to ignore the guessometer.
I noticed that the defroster uses 4.5 kw. That's as much as the drive motor uses at lower speeds. Once I found that out, I only use the defroster when I absolutely have to.
The ride is very comfortable, and the car is very quiet inside, not just because of the obvious lack of engine noise, but road noise is also very low as well. Acceleration is much better than I expected.
Although the total of lease payment and cost of electricity are less than I was paying for my gas car monthly, when I add in the additional cost of insurance (my insurance company has to insure the cost of the Leaf WITHOUT taking into consideration the federal and state incentive), the cost of a level 2 EVSE installed, and the cost of installing a second electric meter at the house, it is more expensive.
I've noticed that there is a phenomenon that I call "electric vehicle anxiety". When I take off to go somewhere, even though I should have plenty of range to make the trip, I always worry "will I really make it?". As I get more experience with the car, most of that should go away. Although the Leaf has over twice the range I need to make my daily commute, it still limits me. I can't decide to go somewhere any distance at all from work. I only charge to 80% in an effort to make sure the batteries will at least make it through my lease period, and that make the problem even worse. Of course if I anticipate the extra trip, I can charge to 100% or drive my gas car to work that day.
All in all, I really like the car, but most of the things I mentioned above came as an unpleasant surprise. Perhaps if I had done more research on this forum, I would have been better aware of the problems I would run into. I find that my range gets a bit better as I find little tricks like not using the defroster.
