Soldato
- Joined
- 19 Oct 2002
- Posts
- 18,223
- Location
- Shakespeare’s County
On Tuesday I took the opportunity to take a Nissan Leaf on a 24hr test drive – Nissan’s ‘The big turn on’ campaign to get people into EVs. Basically I would pick the car up from the dealer in Birmingham and travel 30 miles to work. Plug in to charge up the battery at one of the EV charging stations on site and then 40 miles home.
Whilst the stickers do little for the cars image atleast its clear the car isn't mine.... my car is far uglier
The dealer were aware of the test after I booked and chose the day from the Nissan website around 2 weeks ago. 1 week before the drive they had also called to confirm the booking and this allowed me to check that the charge lead was included, some dealers had not been including them on the tests leaving people confused and going away without the car as they wouldn't be able to get it back to the dealer!
Starting the car is similar enough to a modern auto, foot on brake, press power, select gear, drive away. It even has auto park brake disengage when you drive away to save hassle. Of course pressing the accelerator makes little noise other than the hush of tyres so the handbrake disengaging is quite intrusive. Battery is full, range saying 93 miles we’re moving.
Plenty of options in the infotainment and incorporates additional EV content to what seems to be a Clarion core. Timing feature allow charge delay to make use of specific tarriffs, ie economy 7 aswell as preconditioning the cabin.
Weird, strange, bizarre and remarkably smooth are your first thoughts when you move away from rest, just the dull whir/whine of the motor and hushing of tyres. I have to say from that moment I was immediately impressed with the powertrain refinement, albeit expected being an EV. Nissan have evidently worked hard on the NVH as its not a tinny feeling car and has a feeling of robustness to everything underneath you. Looking down the range had tipped to 101miles. Obviously this is going to prove interesting how well it works as a range gauge or recent driving guessometric
The performance is excellent. The throttle response instant, I noticed a standing start will graduate power introduction whereas stepping on the throttle right into the pseudo kickdown switch at 15mph+ gives full power in an instant. The 1.5 ton car picks up at an impressive (for the class) pace. What you will notice in traffic is that the car and you sit much higher than a typical C segment car, (Focus,Golf,Astra). You are on the battery back between the front seat mounts and the trunk floor. Thumbs up so far.
Speed control is predictable and the overrun will generate braking energy back to the battery to mimic typical car engine braking. The car is single speed but does offer and ECO mode selected by moving the drive selector to D again where the cluster graphics change from a D to ECO. This seems to be much like a ‘sport’ mode on throttle by wire cars. It cuts back the power supplied for the given throttle position, essentially increase lower power resolution. Hold throttle at steady speed and change to eco and the car instantly starts to slow as power is cut. This seemed to increase the zen like state you get into driving cars that have minimal powertrain noise, not a new concept to me with my Insight but certainly another level in terms of incabin silence and refinement, so basically it dulls the throttle back which can be welcome as D can be quite peppy in how the car behaves. Either mode allows the full 80 kW when you depress to kickdown. ECO will also increase regen levels when you back off the throttle so ‘engine braking’ increases, this will go down to the full 30kW possible for regen when you press the brakes. Its kind of a hybrid between a bumper car and Ford Focus interms of information your brain is telling you! You know that low speed lugging and cold start quirks are attributes not relevant to EVs.
Ride is good if left a little challenged by the torsion beam rear. The roll control is very good thanks to the low batteries but there is no hiding the cars mass coupled with limited tyre grip, you can sense the car has momentum as the dampers seem to struggle a little on undulations mid bump, there is little in the way of feedback through the steering and the biggest oddity to me was the brake feel. Not a linear pedal, the car is always managing the blend between hydraulic brakes and regen and the pedal effort varies with that guess work. Rough road low speed braking likes to play cautious and any hint of wheel slip disables regen which suddenly means the car isn’t slowing like it was, easy to correct with more pedal effort but its like reaching into the pedal box of an unservo’d Elise at that point. Weird and something I would suggest Nissan work on to normalise the driving experience to an ICE.
Also only having rake adjust and not reach limits adjustment for driver comfort, tall drivers like me will no doubt lift the rake up which then means the steering column cowl shrouds the A/B trip reading…. Hows that for managing range anxiety?! Look round the column cowl a bit more and you will find the blanking plug for a key hole aswell, not sure which part this car has been carried over from.
So, round town, and in urban traffic its brilliant. I then hit the motorway…. And the racetrack that is the M40 at that! Joining the slip road and building speed was easy enough the acceleration does drop off as speed builds but its certainly not insufficient. Felt like the car needed to change up a gear as the whine increases in pitch, akin to joining a motorway in 3rd gear I guess, but you can only really hear it due to the wind noise being managed so well from the airflow guidance offered by the headlights.
The car has cruise control so I just stuck it at that at 72mph, economy gauge sat at 0.3kWh/mile which seemed okay and plenty of range to get back to work. Forward vision is challenged on the drivers corner thanks to the obscuration of the A pillar. 300kg of batteries upside down will put some extra requirements on meeting federal roll over roof crush though! Side mirrors are small, aero has no doubt had a hand in that so checking blind spots over your shoulder is important. It saved me from collecting a transit at one point!
Unfortunately I didn’t have the carwings working or enabled to allow comms with the iPhone app where you can preheat/cool the car on demand so instead set a climate timer for 15mins before I got back to the car…. Perfect to get into a conditioned cabin and for your sanity as a final check before you go to bed!
The cabin climate when driving is confusing though, it makes a guess at your range hit when you turn it on. Either the fans running with A/C off or everything on seems to give the same drop. Digital buttons are poor for HMI, not intuative and dont allow rapid change. I dont know why Nissan as avoided that as a degree of analogue control is such a bad thing even in an EV
If you turn airflow off to recover that range then you get little in terms of cabin natural airflow through the car and then the wing mirror air management offered by the headlights seems to be good and discouraging air to come in through an open window! Pretty significant vanes! Digital buttons are poor for HMI, not intuative and dont allow rapid change. I dont know why Nissan as avoided that as a degree of analogue is such a bad thing in an EV
I think running for a while will change the prediction the car makes and being able to ensure the heater is off is something you can’t really do. So I guess I should have checked that the temp demand was right down to make sure the heater doesn’t start pulling juice. I didn’t really use AC for much of the driving but turning it on seemed to peak the load at 1.5kW (ECO mode) so less than 10% of what the traction motor is using when your moving along. Of course that’s a totally different proposition in traffic.
For energy use information you can choose the screen to show what the energy in the car is doing.
I did 153miles over the two days. Topped up once at work to recover 33 miles, where 10kWh was put into the car from the post, I’m not sure how much went to the battery as the use would have included conditioning. I then drove 37miles home on that charge where I took this picture. With 37miles each way.... I could do it on charge when its warm weather.... winter would concern me.
At home I pay 9.2p/kWh so that’s in the region of 2.8p per mile with 15 miles at 72mph. I charged from 18miles range back to full (91 when I woke in 8 hours from a household socket) and then got to the dealer at 30miles.
Essentially to break that to simple terms a full charge will do 75miles with typical driving including ‘demo’ drives which tended to focus on performance of course. ‘Aren’t these slower than a normal car’ hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn. ‘Not really no’.
The carwings average in the car was 0.24kWh/mile. So whatever you pay for electricity that will take you 4 miles and plugging in at home (10A) will give you 6miles for every hour plugged in.
Nissan will be launching the 2013 model, rumour is of a 6.6kW charger. So the current car SAE J1772 socket will allow 16A and is what I used at work, the update will allow 32A and match the charge time of the Ford Focus EV of ~ 4 hrs.
A more efficient heater is on the cars aswell, which could be a heat pump?
I looked at lease costs. £300 exVAT a month on a 6+23 business plan with 10k miles isn’t bad. Attractions of course are 100% write down in year 1 for a company fleet buyer and no tax for the user.
Overall I was very impressed with the car, more than comfortable for 4 adults and a proper sized boot with typical dynamics for a Nissan product in that class. Underneath its brilliant just the frock ontop spoils its attraction to Joe Bloggs I guess. The refinement is just not expected of the class and makes for a superbly relaxed drive with minimal effort whilst you chat on the Bluetooth integrated stereo in only a hum of tyre and whir of motor in the background, just don’t expect to have a desire to take it for a hoon down your local B road, there is minimal reward.
PICTURES:
Whilst the stickers do little for the cars image atleast its clear the car isn't mine.... my car is far uglier
The dealer were aware of the test after I booked and chose the day from the Nissan website around 2 weeks ago. 1 week before the drive they had also called to confirm the booking and this allowed me to check that the charge lead was included, some dealers had not been including them on the tests leaving people confused and going away without the car as they wouldn't be able to get it back to the dealer!
Starting the car is similar enough to a modern auto, foot on brake, press power, select gear, drive away. It even has auto park brake disengage when you drive away to save hassle. Of course pressing the accelerator makes little noise other than the hush of tyres so the handbrake disengaging is quite intrusive. Battery is full, range saying 93 miles we’re moving.
Plenty of options in the infotainment and incorporates additional EV content to what seems to be a Clarion core. Timing feature allow charge delay to make use of specific tarriffs, ie economy 7 aswell as preconditioning the cabin.
Weird, strange, bizarre and remarkably smooth are your first thoughts when you move away from rest, just the dull whir/whine of the motor and hushing of tyres. I have to say from that moment I was immediately impressed with the powertrain refinement, albeit expected being an EV. Nissan have evidently worked hard on the NVH as its not a tinny feeling car and has a feeling of robustness to everything underneath you. Looking down the range had tipped to 101miles. Obviously this is going to prove interesting how well it works as a range gauge or recent driving guessometric
The performance is excellent. The throttle response instant, I noticed a standing start will graduate power introduction whereas stepping on the throttle right into the pseudo kickdown switch at 15mph+ gives full power in an instant. The 1.5 ton car picks up at an impressive (for the class) pace. What you will notice in traffic is that the car and you sit much higher than a typical C segment car, (Focus,Golf,Astra). You are on the battery back between the front seat mounts and the trunk floor. Thumbs up so far.
Speed control is predictable and the overrun will generate braking energy back to the battery to mimic typical car engine braking. The car is single speed but does offer and ECO mode selected by moving the drive selector to D again where the cluster graphics change from a D to ECO. This seems to be much like a ‘sport’ mode on throttle by wire cars. It cuts back the power supplied for the given throttle position, essentially increase lower power resolution. Hold throttle at steady speed and change to eco and the car instantly starts to slow as power is cut. This seemed to increase the zen like state you get into driving cars that have minimal powertrain noise, not a new concept to me with my Insight but certainly another level in terms of incabin silence and refinement, so basically it dulls the throttle back which can be welcome as D can be quite peppy in how the car behaves. Either mode allows the full 80 kW when you depress to kickdown. ECO will also increase regen levels when you back off the throttle so ‘engine braking’ increases, this will go down to the full 30kW possible for regen when you press the brakes. Its kind of a hybrid between a bumper car and Ford Focus interms of information your brain is telling you! You know that low speed lugging and cold start quirks are attributes not relevant to EVs.
Ride is good if left a little challenged by the torsion beam rear. The roll control is very good thanks to the low batteries but there is no hiding the cars mass coupled with limited tyre grip, you can sense the car has momentum as the dampers seem to struggle a little on undulations mid bump, there is little in the way of feedback through the steering and the biggest oddity to me was the brake feel. Not a linear pedal, the car is always managing the blend between hydraulic brakes and regen and the pedal effort varies with that guess work. Rough road low speed braking likes to play cautious and any hint of wheel slip disables regen which suddenly means the car isn’t slowing like it was, easy to correct with more pedal effort but its like reaching into the pedal box of an unservo’d Elise at that point. Weird and something I would suggest Nissan work on to normalise the driving experience to an ICE.
Also only having rake adjust and not reach limits adjustment for driver comfort, tall drivers like me will no doubt lift the rake up which then means the steering column cowl shrouds the A/B trip reading…. Hows that for managing range anxiety?! Look round the column cowl a bit more and you will find the blanking plug for a key hole aswell, not sure which part this car has been carried over from.
So, round town, and in urban traffic its brilliant. I then hit the motorway…. And the racetrack that is the M40 at that! Joining the slip road and building speed was easy enough the acceleration does drop off as speed builds but its certainly not insufficient. Felt like the car needed to change up a gear as the whine increases in pitch, akin to joining a motorway in 3rd gear I guess, but you can only really hear it due to the wind noise being managed so well from the airflow guidance offered by the headlights.
The car has cruise control so I just stuck it at that at 72mph, economy gauge sat at 0.3kWh/mile which seemed okay and plenty of range to get back to work. Forward vision is challenged on the drivers corner thanks to the obscuration of the A pillar. 300kg of batteries upside down will put some extra requirements on meeting federal roll over roof crush though! Side mirrors are small, aero has no doubt had a hand in that so checking blind spots over your shoulder is important. It saved me from collecting a transit at one point!
Unfortunately I didn’t have the carwings working or enabled to allow comms with the iPhone app where you can preheat/cool the car on demand so instead set a climate timer for 15mins before I got back to the car…. Perfect to get into a conditioned cabin and for your sanity as a final check before you go to bed!
The cabin climate when driving is confusing though, it makes a guess at your range hit when you turn it on. Either the fans running with A/C off or everything on seems to give the same drop. Digital buttons are poor for HMI, not intuative and dont allow rapid change. I dont know why Nissan as avoided that as a degree of analogue control is such a bad thing even in an EV
If you turn airflow off to recover that range then you get little in terms of cabin natural airflow through the car and then the wing mirror air management offered by the headlights seems to be good and discouraging air to come in through an open window! Pretty significant vanes! Digital buttons are poor for HMI, not intuative and dont allow rapid change. I dont know why Nissan as avoided that as a degree of analogue is such a bad thing in an EV
I think running for a while will change the prediction the car makes and being able to ensure the heater is off is something you can’t really do. So I guess I should have checked that the temp demand was right down to make sure the heater doesn’t start pulling juice. I didn’t really use AC for much of the driving but turning it on seemed to peak the load at 1.5kW (ECO mode) so less than 10% of what the traction motor is using when your moving along. Of course that’s a totally different proposition in traffic.
For energy use information you can choose the screen to show what the energy in the car is doing.
I did 153miles over the two days. Topped up once at work to recover 33 miles, where 10kWh was put into the car from the post, I’m not sure how much went to the battery as the use would have included conditioning. I then drove 37miles home on that charge where I took this picture. With 37miles each way.... I could do it on charge when its warm weather.... winter would concern me.
At home I pay 9.2p/kWh so that’s in the region of 2.8p per mile with 15 miles at 72mph. I charged from 18miles range back to full (91 when I woke in 8 hours from a household socket) and then got to the dealer at 30miles.
Essentially to break that to simple terms a full charge will do 75miles with typical driving including ‘demo’ drives which tended to focus on performance of course. ‘Aren’t these slower than a normal car’ hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn. ‘Not really no’.
The carwings average in the car was 0.24kWh/mile. So whatever you pay for electricity that will take you 4 miles and plugging in at home (10A) will give you 6miles for every hour plugged in.
Nissan will be launching the 2013 model, rumour is of a 6.6kW charger. So the current car SAE J1772 socket will allow 16A and is what I used at work, the update will allow 32A and match the charge time of the Ford Focus EV of ~ 4 hrs.
A more efficient heater is on the cars aswell, which could be a heat pump?
I looked at lease costs. £300 exVAT a month on a 6+23 business plan with 10k miles isn’t bad. Attractions of course are 100% write down in year 1 for a company fleet buyer and no tax for the user.
Overall I was very impressed with the car, more than comfortable for 4 adults and a proper sized boot with typical dynamics for a Nissan product in that class. Underneath its brilliant just the frock ontop spoils its attraction to Joe Bloggs I guess. The refinement is just not expected of the class and makes for a superbly relaxed drive with minimal effort whilst you chat on the Bluetooth integrated stereo in only a hum of tyre and whir of motor in the background, just don’t expect to have a desire to take it for a hoon down your local B road, there is minimal reward.
PICTURES:
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