After 2 weeks with a Bolt, here's everything I miss about the Leaf

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I managed to get a Bolt for part of a day and found it to very confined inside compared to my Leaf....from the narrow seats.....in fact the interior was cramped compared to the Leaf and I am only 5'7.
Power and acceleration and hill climbing were much better than the Leaf mainly because the Bolt has a mich bigger motor.
Cornering in the Bolt was good but not as good as the Leaf which feels much more planted.
Exterior fit and finish of the Bolt was sloppy with mis aligned doors, hood and non uniform gaps all around.
The Bolt is quite small....only ten inches longer than my 98 Geo Metro 2 door.
Visibility is pretty much the same with A pillars and side pillars taking some getting used too as they block a lot of visibility.

Would I consider a Bolt....in a word no, as I think Nissan is much more serious about electric than GM.
 
It seems to me the Bolt was designed with one and basically only one thing in mind, RANGE.
Not that range isn't important, but if I'm going to be paying $30k+ for a vehicle, I'd want something more than a $15k ICE could do with a full tank of gas......well I suppose a $15k ICE wouldn't have the acceleration and power as the Bolt and the Bolt probably has lots of bells and whistles a $15k ICE won't have but again from my little experience with the Bolt is it's basically that $15k ICE thats an EV and since I don't currently really need the range, I'll stick with my Leaf and be happier driving it :)
I do wish Chevy luck with the Bolt, IMO the more options in EV available the better, but I just don't see me driving one in the foreseeable future.
 
groingo said:
I managed to get a Bolt for part of a day and found it to very confined inside compared to my Leaf....from the narrow seats.....in fact the interior was cramped compared to the Leaf and I am only 5'7.
Power and acceleration and hill climbing were much better than the Leaf mainly because the Bolt has a much bigger motor.
Cornering in the Bolt was good but not as good as the Leaf which feels much more planted.
Exterior fit and finish of the Bolt was sloppy with mis aligned doors, hood and non uniform gaps all around.
The Bolt is quite small....only ten inches longer than my 98 Geo Metro 2 door.
Visibility is pretty much the same with A pillars and side pillars taking some getting used too as they block a lot of visibility.

Would I consider a Bolt....in a word no, as I think Nissan is much more serious about electric than GM.

I'm 5'10", medium build, and I don't find the Bolt cramped at all. In fact, to me, it feels more roomy than the Leaf did. It is 11 inches shorter, but it basically feels like the same size car, with more interior space because it's taller.

Regarding the "narrow seats", it's the cushions on the sides that people complain about, I think. I've read people saying that they dig into the sides of their butt. The thing is, the distance between those cushions is set up such that it gets wider towards the front of the seat, and narrower towards the back, so I would guess that the intention was to accommodate different butt sizes based on how far forward (or away from the backrest) you sit, and that makes sense to me. If I sit very upright, and force my lower back right up against the backrest, I can sort of feel the side cushions a bit more, like people say. If I assume a more relaxed posture, with my lower back further from the backrest, the seat feels much wider, and, in fact, those side cushions fit so perfectly that they form almost a custom seat. For people who can't find the right seating position for comfort, I would assume that simply inserting a lower back pillow would solve the "narrow seat" issue by moving them forward a bit.

Regarding fit, finish, and trim, I took some EV owners from work for a ride, and the general comments were that it was pretty nice. They liked the trim.

As for bells and whistles, having Apple Carplay is pretty nice. It interfaces with Music and Maps pretty easily, and even displays some of my notifications, like "hey, you have a 10am meeting". It's nice being able to be completely hands free.
 
You forgot the wonderful color selection available and the oh-so-styin' Nissan signature headlights :mrgreen:

Personally, I love my Leaf. I've only had it for about 18 hours but it fits great (I'm 6'4"), my commute is 10 miles and I live in a town that is about 5 miles from end to end. I wouldn't recommend it to my cousin in Wyoming who carries coolers in his car for the weekly trip to the grocery store but for me, it's perfect. Good luck with the Bolt. Hopefully GM got it right this time.
 
Took a Bolt for a test ride and was impressed with the power - easy to spin the wheels. I found the center console distracting - very busy. The seat was OK for me. Liquid cooled battery also a very compelling feature.

Range of course wonderful but for me not a key selling point - my "trip car" is a Lexus ES350 so only need a "local" car. Considering Bolt MSRP around $40,000, a Leaf around low 30s with a 40 kw pack would be ideal.

A total guess but I suspect a Gen 2 Leaf S with a 30 kw pack with MSRP in the low 30s would be the base car.
 
Well, I've only had the Bolt for four days, and haven't even returned the Leaf yet, but already I'm going to miss it. Sure it's a first gen car, but it was the best EV I could afford at the time. I was lucky enough to be able to easily integrate a short range EV into my life and neither vehicle ever gave me a problem. I never saw a turtle. Only once, in a wild blizzard, was I worried enough to seek a station to ensure I'd make it home. But that was part of the game. And although I thought it would end sooner, that stage is finally over. Now 60 kWh cars are affordable and we're moving on. We're actually talking about the elimination of ICE. That's a giant leap.
 
A week and a half in and what I miss most about the Leaf is the built in nav, bad as it was sometimes. Up in the mountains, Apple maps goes blank. Had to break out the ancient Garmin.
 
DNAinaGoodWay said:
A week and a half in and what I miss most about the Leaf is the built in nav, bad as it was sometimes. Up in the mountains, Apple maps goes blank. Had to break out the ancient Garmin.
Perhaps use Google Maps and download the region for offline access? Then it won't ever "go blank". When we were vacationing in UT/CO last year, I had both states saved offline. As it is, I have parts of NH, NY, and VT saved offline for when I travel across them.
 
DNAinaGoodWay said:
A week and a half in and what I miss most about the Leaf is the built in nav, bad as it was sometimes. Up in the mountains, Apple maps goes blank. Had to break out the ancient Garmin.

Same here. I also enjoyed being able to flip to a map, even when not navigating. On the Bolt, I'd need to fish out my phone and plug it in - something I don't do in normal daily driving.

I also miss being able to see battery temperature on the dash. The Bolt doesn't tell me at all. Yes, I know it has a TMS system, but it would be nice to have the information even if it was buried under a menu or two.
 
It would be good to know pack temp just in case of malfunctions.

I also miss seeing cell voltages via LeafSpy. AFAIK there's no BoltSpy.

And when the map is up, you lose the outside temp display.
 
jlv said:
DNAinaGoodWay said:
A week and a half in and what I miss most about the Leaf is the built in nav, bad as it was sometimes. Up in the mountains, Apple maps goes blank. Had to break out the ancient Garmin.
Perhaps use Google Maps and download the region for offline access? Then it won't ever "go blank". When we were vacationing in UT/CO last year, I had both states saved offline. As it is, I have parts of NH, NY, and VT saved offline for when I travel across them.

Google maps doesn't come up on my CarPlay, only Apple maps.

But I haven't tried sending anything to the car yet, is that how you're doing it?
 
I see people talking about the Bolt and often refer to the Leaf as a "short range" car. I certainly do not see the Leaf as a short range car. For me, a short range vehicle is like a golf cart, with big heavy SLA batteries, and can only go 15-20 miles...

I see the Leaf as an unrestricted commuter car, able to travel to neighboring cities. I don't see being able to make a straight shot of 60-70 miles, or a round trip of 35 miles (each way) as short range.

Yes, the Bolt may be an attractive car for new EV drivers that want to do a round trip to a destination 70 miles away. I have been with my '15 Leaf for 3 years, and have come to depend on it daily for my 50 mile round trip. Cant sneeze at that for a "first generation" car. SO.... I don't see missing my Leaf for a long while....
 
I don't know about Apple Carplay (I am a strong Apple opponent) but on Android Auto I can pre-download all the maps that I need for a given area or areas and then not need a cellular connection... I will sometimes do this just in case when I know I will be in an area of limited cell service and it works great.

DNAinaGoodWay said:
A week and a half in and what I miss most about the Leaf is the built in nav, bad as it was sometimes. Up in the mountains, Apple maps goes blank. Had to break out the ancient Garmin.
 
I didn't realize that CarPlay was limited like that. I don't have a car with CarPlay (or Android Auto. since I don't have an iPhone) support, so I can only wish I had such problems. You'd think Tesla would support such, but apparently it's not on Elon's wish list so support isn't likely to happen :(. At least if they ever decide to support it, it would be able to get added via an OTA update.

For the LEAF, I long ago gave up on the nav (and "send to car"). With GMaps & Waze, I just enter the address when I go. But the trips in the LEAF are limited; mostly commuting and occasionally 50 mile round-trips to Worcester in the west or Boston in the east and mostly I just want traffic reports (Waze).

For the Tesla, the best way to send an address to the car is to add an entry to your calendar ("Trip to MD") with the destination set as the location. When you get in the car on that day, the navigation automatically brings up the route and plots stops for SC as needed. The nav is quite good (it is Google Maps with some Tesla "stuff"), although there are a couple of cases where it routes weirdly. Like when I am going home, it wants to take the long way to the house around the far side of the reservoir for some reason.
 
There are 2 things I miss about our Leaf, than are not on our Bolt EV:

1) A light in the charging port.

2) The center front location of the charging port.

That's it.
 
DNAinaGoodWay said:
It would be good to know pack temp just in case of malfunctions.

Exactly. It's good to monitor these things, just like you have an Oil Temp gauge in a gas car in addition to the "engine overheating" idiot light.

DNAinaGoodWay said:
And when the map is up, you lose the outside temp display.

Yes! I forgot about this. It was annoying to have to switch to "home" view to see the temp, and then dig back into the maps (I found a way to do it with two button presses, but that's two too many).

NeilBlanchard said:
The center front location of the charging port.

Yes. At work, we have dual-headed EVSEs between every other parking spot. So for the Bolt, every other spot is on the wrong side. That's also true for Volts, i3s, Focus EVs (all of which we have), Energis, eGolfs, ... the list goes on. The right-hand spots are in high demand. The left-hand spots are second class parking.

Also related to views, I cannot turn on my seat heater with the car in reverse (the button on the screen turns into the backup camera). This is annoying because I often get into a cold car and then have to back out. Minor annoyance, like most of these things. Like all cars, it comes with tradeoffs based on when the designers and engineers chose to do.
 
My first Leaf had no port light. Used a stick on LED. Not sure if it'll fit in the Bolt port.

Port in front is better.

Remote heat comes on at the settings I shut it off with. Nice and toasty when I get in, seats and all.
 
powersurge said:
I see people talking about the Bolt and often refer to the Leaf as a "short range" car.

My 2012 was the longest range EV available here, that I could afford, at the time. Same with the '15. I lived with them for five years and they served me well. I could still, just don't want to. Leaf is only a short range car by comparison. When I'm down to 33% SOC, I know I'm still at full Leaf, and I'm very comfortable with that.
 
This is kind of like telling your ex-wife's family why you divorced her, and how awesome your new girlfriend is. It may all be true, but talking about it isn't going to reflect well on you.
 
dprendergast said:
This is kind of like telling your ex-wife's family why you divorced her, and how awesome your new girlfriend is. It may all be true, but talking about it isn't going to reflect well on you.

:lol:

I view it as the opposite. Telling your ex-wife's family why you sometimes miss her. Even if you have moved on.

I could keep adding to this thread, but to your point, I probably shouldn't. I should just move on and stop looking longingly back at some of the Leaf's better features.
 
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