The New Nissan Leaf

•  

  It's a moment I've been waiting for a long time – when I could get behind the wheel of a car and know that there would be no exhaust fumes coming out the tail pipe nor would there be any petrol powering it. The Nissan Leaf, the UK's first mass market electric vehicle, is fully battery powered and can be refuelled, or recharged, from your very own plug sockets. This week I got the opportunity to test drive one and put to rest a few burning questions I've had about electric vehicles. First and foremost the thing that concerns me least about electric cars is their greenness. Climate change sceptics forget that word green because there are too many other amazing ways in which the electric car will change your life. Cheaper to run, easier to maintain, better acceleration, quieter, sexier... The list goes on and even if the fact it is actually doing the environment a favour isn't enough think about ending the country's dependence on foreign oil and the jobs that the electric cars will be creating for this country.

  Of course there's the still the fact that Electric cars are different, they don't sound as good, in fact they don't sound at all, you'll never need to change the oil, and acceleration is impressive. And the bad differences are, well um, there aren't any and after a few minutes in one all doubts were removed from my mind that electric cars are the way forwards.

   Getting into the car it's hard to tell at first you're sitting in an electric vehicle but pretty soon a few things become apparent. First – it's not the Starship Enterprise, inside it looks like a regular car. The dashboard looks pretty cool with its built-in sat nav and glowing battery meter and speedometer but apart from that it doesn't look like anything out of the ordinary. When you look down past the steering wheel there's only two pedals, the accelerator and the brake. Yep no clutch, that's because there's no gears. There's a stick where you would expect it to be but it doesn't control the gears. Pulling it back puts the car into drive, pushing it forward puts the car into reverse, very simple. In fact it feels too simple, unless you're starting or stopping you don't really have to think about moving your left hand down to the stick. The best part is though the car has an on button (and a key which unlocks the doors when you come with in a certain distance) proving that an electric car is essentially one big gadget. The power is linear so not only do you not have to worry about gearing up or gearing down and acceleration is pretty fast as well and goes from 0 - 60mph in 7 seconds. As I gingerly set off on my first EV journey I was encouraged to put my foot down and for a short while it felt like I was driving a much faster car, the power was instant. Driving the Nissan Leaf felt no different to driving a regular car, the power assisted steering was very responsive and the ride was smooth. Braking was impressively quick too, another instance where my left hand was wondering what to do. When it comes to parking the car there's a camera on a back which feeds into the screen in the dashboard and overlays a diagram onto the picture indicating when to turn when reversing. This might seem like an unnecessary drain on the battery but was a neat feature and will help to avoid scratching up that beautiful blue exterior. Lack of sound made by the car could be considered a potential hazard for pedestrians but the Leaf is fitted with small noise generators underneath the car which are activated when the car is running below 30mph. If you slow down from a higher speed they will be activated when you hit 25mph. The noise produced is a gentle hum which is not noticeable when inside the vehicle.

   One of the recurring criticisms I've heard about electric cars is their lack of noise. “But they don't sound cool” petrol-head friends moan but as far as I'm concerned I'm prepared to trade the noise for all the other benefits. If the sound is really that important to you then it's worth pointing out the Leaf does have a CD player. So what's bad about it? I'm not going to deny it, you will feel range anxiety in the Nissan Leaf if you plan on using it outside a safe radius of your house. But as a second car for a family, for school trips and shopping runs or a local commute it's hard to pick fault with the Nissan Leaf. It has a range of about 100 miles, which can be influenced by a number of things including how you drive the car and whether or not the air conditioning is on but the dashboard makes it very clear how much juice you have left. It's also worth noting that the battery is expected to lose 20% of its capacity as early as 5 years after you purchase the car, depending on how much and how you charge it. This might sound off putting but Nissan do offer a five year warranty on all the cars as standard. And remember that in five years the battery technology will be miles ahead of what it is now, with increasing range and battery life.

  Thanks to Mark from Unthinkable.biz for this article. Link to the original article

  Here is Electric Owners Club star rating of the Nissan Leaf Electric Vehicle