Matty
Member
Greetings all. After much wailing and gnashing of teeth at the upward-spiraling price of petrol here in New Zealand, my wife and I recently picked up a JDM 2013 Leaf X, with 43K km (~27K miles) on the odo and 11 bars. I'd already spent some time looking through the threads on here before purchasing, so a belated thank you to all for your unwitting input. Currently the Guessometer says we should get about 127km on a full charge, which is more than enough for the trips it'll be doing around our small town and the surrounding area - it'll rarely be asked to do more than about 70km in a day.
Unfortunately it wasn't the best introduction to EV motoring as the 12V battery went flat part-way through the school run on the first day, stranding my wife at my daughter's school. However since getting the dealer to replace the 12V it's been fine since. We're very much petrolheads so it's been a real change of mindset, and my wife has even started wavering on her two previous absolutes of vehicle purchases, namely RWD/AWD and as big an engine as will fit in the chassis.
I've been quite surprised by how spritely the car is - on the test drive I was a little underwhelmed and figured maybe coming from our current car (essentially a wagon version of an Infiniti G35X) was just tainting the impression, but once we'd picked it up I tried a few "what'll she do Mister" runs and was surprised to get wheelspin off the mark, and even at 40km/h on a wet road.
We're still hoons at heart though, so we've already tossed up the idea of suspension mods and more performance-oriented tyres. I know it'll drop the range somewhat, but we have plenty to spare so losing 10% or so won't matter. I also have a mate who tunes high performance vehicles (and heavy vehicles like CATs etc) and is reverse engineering a Leaf control unit, so maybe there's more options to come in future too, it's early days yet.
TL;DR: Hi, I bought a 2013 Leaf and I type a lot.
Cheers,
Matty.
Unfortunately it wasn't the best introduction to EV motoring as the 12V battery went flat part-way through the school run on the first day, stranding my wife at my daughter's school. However since getting the dealer to replace the 12V it's been fine since. We're very much petrolheads so it's been a real change of mindset, and my wife has even started wavering on her two previous absolutes of vehicle purchases, namely RWD/AWD and as big an engine as will fit in the chassis.
I've been quite surprised by how spritely the car is - on the test drive I was a little underwhelmed and figured maybe coming from our current car (essentially a wagon version of an Infiniti G35X) was just tainting the impression, but once we'd picked it up I tried a few "what'll she do Mister" runs and was surprised to get wheelspin off the mark, and even at 40km/h on a wet road.
We're still hoons at heart though, so we've already tossed up the idea of suspension mods and more performance-oriented tyres. I know it'll drop the range somewhat, but we have plenty to spare so losing 10% or so won't matter. I also have a mate who tunes high performance vehicles (and heavy vehicles like CATs etc) and is reverse engineering a Leaf control unit, so maybe there's more options to come in future too, it's early days yet.
TL;DR: Hi, I bought a 2013 Leaf and I type a lot.
Cheers,
Matty.