Post by Wyvern on Jul 13, 2011 15:48:28 GMT
Those of you who've been knocking around the board for a while may, if you have long memories and nothing better to think about, remember this thread, in which I talked about the launch of the Nissan LEAF. Almost two years on and the car is finally making its way to dealerships - and as far as I can tell, the only major change is the random capitalisation of the name, now presented rather more sensibly as the Leaf.
It's still a silly name, however you capitalise it, but it's not a silly car, and I know because yesterday I had the opportunity to drive one.
The first thing that struck me is that the Leaf isn't a horribly small, pokey little snotbox. It's actually a fairly sizeable C-segment car, and despite having a large charging unit behind the rear seats, there's plenty of room for two adults or three kids in the back without the need for leg amputation and a surprising amount of space in the boot. You're not going to get a sofa in there or anything, but the Sainsbury's run will be no problem at all. You might struggle a bit with large cases, because the boot's quite deep but that charging unit does reduce the width of it. On the other hand, if you're not using the back seats, you can fold them down to provide a flat platform. So in most ways, it's quite a practical car - perhaps not quite as practical as a Ford Focus or a Vauxhall Astra, but if you're buying a Leaf, the chances are you've made that decision based on other considerations anyway.
So just to remind you, this is what the Leaf looks like...
Two years ago I said it was a bit funny looking, but that I realised the shape was governed as much by efficiency and drag reduction as it was aesthetics. The funny thing is that as fuel economy has become a bigger concern throughout the motor industry, the same sort of design cues are filtering through to conventional cars as well. These days the Leaf doesn't look out of place. It looks like a car.
When you get in, it's a little bit Flash Gordon - a funny little gear knob and handbrake that don't look like the setup in a conventional automatic car (of course, being electric there's no manual version because it doesn't have a conventional gearbox), keyless start and a display that shows everything you need to know about available range, battery use and whether you're using or recovering power (the Leaf has regenerative braking, so energy lost when the brakes are applied is recovered and fed back into the system). There's even a little graphic of a tree that you 'grow' by driving economically, which is a bit patronising but nevertheless made me very happy when I achieved a whole tree...
Which brings me onto actually driving it.
I'd love to say that sitting in the Leaf is like sitting in a vision of the future, but despite the flashing blinkies and the quirky centre console, it's really just like sitting in a car. This is as it should be really, because that's exactly what it is - a very well equipped, well finished but quite normal car. The driving position is comfortable and familiar, you have a pedal to go and a pedal to stop and there's a steering wheel in front of you - you don't perch on an anti-gravity cushion and steer with a joystick.
Having said that, there is something slightly disconcerting about pushing the button to start the car and not much really happening. When you start a car, there's an expectation that it will make a noise, that you'll feel the car coming to life, but apart from a few lights coming on, you don't really notice the difference until you lift your foot off the brake and the car creeps forward.
The first thing that struck me was the smoothness of the ride. It's incredibly quiet and the Leaf pulls away effortlessly at low speed and the acceleration is almost too smooth - 50mph, I soon discovered, feels much like 30mph, and that's not always a good thing on the GATSO-riddled roads of London. Busy junctions and roundabouts are no problem though, because the Leaf's impressively quick off the line and can happily nip into tight little gaps as a result. The steering's very light and it feels agile and responsive, and it doesn't spring any nasty surprises on tight corners. It's not perhaps the most involving car to drive, but it's very easy and actually quite enjoyable. Behind the wheel of the Leaf is just a nice place to be.
I wasn't sure what to expect when I got in, but apart from perhaps not providing as much conventional feedback as a petrol or diesel car, I was pleasantly surprised by the Nissan Leaf. I would have liked to have driven it longer because I'm pretty certain that the smile on my face would only have got bigger.
So would I have one?
No. Don't be silly.
It's a fantastic little car, it really is, but it's never going to achieve its full potential as a mass-market people-mover while it costs - and I hope you're sitting down for this - £30,990. That's before you consider the additional £995 to install the charging point at home that will cut the charging time from 12 hours to eight. Admittedly at the moment the Leaf qualifies for a £5000 government grant, but £26,000 is still a lot of money for an everyday hatchback, albeit one that is luxuriously well equipped. Truthfully, as a daily driver I'd not kick it off the drive, but the price would have to come down a heck of a lot for it to challenge a well sorted, small, economic diesel as the best option for environmentally aware town driving - and the man from Nissan was the first to admit it when I'd parked up.
And there's the bigger problem. Competition and economies of scale will bring prices down, but even if the Leaf cost the same as as a VW Golf Bluemotion (about £19,000 for the five door), there's still the issue of range. The Leaf has a much better range than more familiar EVs like the hideous Reva G-Wiz quadricycle, and can manage around 100 miles on a full charge if driven carefully. That's plenty for most daily commutes, and if workplaces install charging points, you can obviously commute twice as far as if they don't. It's plenty for doing the school run or going to the shops. That's great.
However, if I want to visit my family, I have to travel about 250 miles each way. People are getting behind the technology and trying to make this more practical, and Little Chef is installing fast charge points at their roadside restaurants, but a fast charge only fills the battery to 80%, or 80 miles range. This means that if I start out with a fully charged battery, assuming I can find a charge point that coincides with when I'm about to run out, I'll need to recharge at least twice during the journey, and this will only give me 10 miles leeway. I will more likely end up needing to recharge three times, and this will add an hour and a half to my journey and cost me a small fortune in Olympic Breakfasts and something that claims to be tea. That's annoying.
In comparison, I could do that 250 mile journey three times and be halfway through the second return leg before I needed to fill up the Golf Bluemotion. Remarkably, it claims a range just shy of 900 miles out of a single tank, and when it runs out of juice it'll take five minutes to fill it up again.
Does all that make the Nissan Leaf a bit of a white elephant? I don't think so. I don't think it's the future of motoring - I don't even think it's the future of electric motoring, primarily because of the price - but where its strength lies is that as a proper, five star Euro NCAP rated, fully electric car, it proves that it's possible to make an ordinary car worth driving that just happens to take its power from the mains instead of a pump. People might not buy it, especially in the current economic climate, but if they get the opportunity to drive it, it will change people's minds.
Specifications:
Power: 80kW (equivalent to approx 107bhp)
0 – 60: 10 seconds approx (although unofficial tests have apparently managed it in around 7 seconds, which isn't too shabby)
Top Speed: 80mph (although it has been unofficially clocked at 94mph)
Maximum range: 100 miles
100% charge time: 12 hours from standard domestic supply, 8 hours if domestic charging point installed
Price £30,990
It's still a silly name, however you capitalise it, but it's not a silly car, and I know because yesterday I had the opportunity to drive one.
The first thing that struck me is that the Leaf isn't a horribly small, pokey little snotbox. It's actually a fairly sizeable C-segment car, and despite having a large charging unit behind the rear seats, there's plenty of room for two adults or three kids in the back without the need for leg amputation and a surprising amount of space in the boot. You're not going to get a sofa in there or anything, but the Sainsbury's run will be no problem at all. You might struggle a bit with large cases, because the boot's quite deep but that charging unit does reduce the width of it. On the other hand, if you're not using the back seats, you can fold them down to provide a flat platform. So in most ways, it's quite a practical car - perhaps not quite as practical as a Ford Focus or a Vauxhall Astra, but if you're buying a Leaf, the chances are you've made that decision based on other considerations anyway.
So just to remind you, this is what the Leaf looks like...
Two years ago I said it was a bit funny looking, but that I realised the shape was governed as much by efficiency and drag reduction as it was aesthetics. The funny thing is that as fuel economy has become a bigger concern throughout the motor industry, the same sort of design cues are filtering through to conventional cars as well. These days the Leaf doesn't look out of place. It looks like a car.
When you get in, it's a little bit Flash Gordon - a funny little gear knob and handbrake that don't look like the setup in a conventional automatic car (of course, being electric there's no manual version because it doesn't have a conventional gearbox), keyless start and a display that shows everything you need to know about available range, battery use and whether you're using or recovering power (the Leaf has regenerative braking, so energy lost when the brakes are applied is recovered and fed back into the system). There's even a little graphic of a tree that you 'grow' by driving economically, which is a bit patronising but nevertheless made me very happy when I achieved a whole tree...
Which brings me onto actually driving it.
I'd love to say that sitting in the Leaf is like sitting in a vision of the future, but despite the flashing blinkies and the quirky centre console, it's really just like sitting in a car. This is as it should be really, because that's exactly what it is - a very well equipped, well finished but quite normal car. The driving position is comfortable and familiar, you have a pedal to go and a pedal to stop and there's a steering wheel in front of you - you don't perch on an anti-gravity cushion and steer with a joystick.
Having said that, there is something slightly disconcerting about pushing the button to start the car and not much really happening. When you start a car, there's an expectation that it will make a noise, that you'll feel the car coming to life, but apart from a few lights coming on, you don't really notice the difference until you lift your foot off the brake and the car creeps forward.
The first thing that struck me was the smoothness of the ride. It's incredibly quiet and the Leaf pulls away effortlessly at low speed and the acceleration is almost too smooth - 50mph, I soon discovered, feels much like 30mph, and that's not always a good thing on the GATSO-riddled roads of London. Busy junctions and roundabouts are no problem though, because the Leaf's impressively quick off the line and can happily nip into tight little gaps as a result. The steering's very light and it feels agile and responsive, and it doesn't spring any nasty surprises on tight corners. It's not perhaps the most involving car to drive, but it's very easy and actually quite enjoyable. Behind the wheel of the Leaf is just a nice place to be.
I wasn't sure what to expect when I got in, but apart from perhaps not providing as much conventional feedback as a petrol or diesel car, I was pleasantly surprised by the Nissan Leaf. I would have liked to have driven it longer because I'm pretty certain that the smile on my face would only have got bigger.
So would I have one?
No. Don't be silly.
It's a fantastic little car, it really is, but it's never going to achieve its full potential as a mass-market people-mover while it costs - and I hope you're sitting down for this - £30,990. That's before you consider the additional £995 to install the charging point at home that will cut the charging time from 12 hours to eight. Admittedly at the moment the Leaf qualifies for a £5000 government grant, but £26,000 is still a lot of money for an everyday hatchback, albeit one that is luxuriously well equipped. Truthfully, as a daily driver I'd not kick it off the drive, but the price would have to come down a heck of a lot for it to challenge a well sorted, small, economic diesel as the best option for environmentally aware town driving - and the man from Nissan was the first to admit it when I'd parked up.
And there's the bigger problem. Competition and economies of scale will bring prices down, but even if the Leaf cost the same as as a VW Golf Bluemotion (about £19,000 for the five door), there's still the issue of range. The Leaf has a much better range than more familiar EVs like the hideous Reva G-Wiz quadricycle, and can manage around 100 miles on a full charge if driven carefully. That's plenty for most daily commutes, and if workplaces install charging points, you can obviously commute twice as far as if they don't. It's plenty for doing the school run or going to the shops. That's great.
However, if I want to visit my family, I have to travel about 250 miles each way. People are getting behind the technology and trying to make this more practical, and Little Chef is installing fast charge points at their roadside restaurants, but a fast charge only fills the battery to 80%, or 80 miles range. This means that if I start out with a fully charged battery, assuming I can find a charge point that coincides with when I'm about to run out, I'll need to recharge at least twice during the journey, and this will only give me 10 miles leeway. I will more likely end up needing to recharge three times, and this will add an hour and a half to my journey and cost me a small fortune in Olympic Breakfasts and something that claims to be tea. That's annoying.
In comparison, I could do that 250 mile journey three times and be halfway through the second return leg before I needed to fill up the Golf Bluemotion. Remarkably, it claims a range just shy of 900 miles out of a single tank, and when it runs out of juice it'll take five minutes to fill it up again.
Does all that make the Nissan Leaf a bit of a white elephant? I don't think so. I don't think it's the future of motoring - I don't even think it's the future of electric motoring, primarily because of the price - but where its strength lies is that as a proper, five star Euro NCAP rated, fully electric car, it proves that it's possible to make an ordinary car worth driving that just happens to take its power from the mains instead of a pump. People might not buy it, especially in the current economic climate, but if they get the opportunity to drive it, it will change people's minds.
Specifications:
Power: 80kW (equivalent to approx 107bhp)
0 – 60: 10 seconds approx (although unofficial tests have apparently managed it in around 7 seconds, which isn't too shabby)
Top Speed: 80mph (although it has been unofficially clocked at 94mph)
Maximum range: 100 miles
100% charge time: 12 hours from standard domestic supply, 8 hours if domestic charging point installed
Price £30,990
