Soo... Nissan Leaf. Drove with it a couple of hours today and will again tomorrow (sitting outside right now). There are a couple of spots where it surprised me. Namely it seems a decent enough car to drive from the inside. The acceleration is good off the spot and then it handles like a mid-range car. The turning radius was absurdly small so that was a positive one. But there are a couple of things that are a total No No for me. Firstly, the looks. Seriously, the car looks like a the ugly frog families ugly and usually not invited cousin. Yuck. Secondly the range. I charged it to 98% (getting the last 2% would have taken an hour) and it showed 124km of range. After driving not too passionately for ca 4km I had 110km left. Driving nicely and calmly in ECO mode I was able to keep the range going pretty much as it was promising, but the car was ultra sluggish as well (as it limits acceleration and is very aggressive on regen). Then at some point I was first at a signal light in a 70 zone so I floored it when it got green and it was some nice acceleration for the first few seconds (beyond about 40-50 it tapered off like a normal car with no real torque) and in that single acceleration I lost ca 6-7km of range ;) Drove 3km out of town at 110 km/h and lost ~10km of range. Overall driving from Tabasalu to home (~20-25km) I went from 124km range to 67km range and I only floored it twice in that period and had one 3km stint at 110km/h (which the car handled gracefully if you discount the rapid drop in range that was instantly visible). So overall if I were blind and only drove ~30-50km a day with NEVER going above that I could fully contemplate that car. But the design is not to my taste and Id rather not have two cars. Its an ok city car with instant torque and nice maneuverability and decent behavior in 0-70km/h range, but Id never take it outside of town for a road trip. Charging every 70-100km or so (if you really go 90+km/h etc) is not usable use case. But if you are wealthy enough that you go for two cars where one is daily commuter and the other is for example some SUV for hauling stuff and for long distance driving (say for example the upcoming Tesla Model X), then heck, why not.
Posted on: Fri, 01 Nov 2013 20:37:10 +0000
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