We embark on three months of short trips in Nissan’s electric car.
"Date: May 2011
Current Mileage: 1734
Months in Fleet: 1
Average Fuel Economy: 80 MPGe
Average Range: 58 miles
Service: $0
Normal Wear: $0
Repair: $0
Welcome to an exceptional long-term road test, and our first all-electric experience. It’s also an exception to our normal long-term program. Nissan agreed to give us a Leaf for an extended, three-month loan, but we’re not going to cram our normal 40,000-mile regimen into that timeframe. The reason is obvious: With the Leaf’s maximum range of around 100 miles (on a good day, with the wind at your back, and the moon in the seventh house—more on this later) and long recharge times, it would take quite a while to reach the prescribed C/D long-term mileage. And as we’ve found from our brief encounter so far, we’re an impatient lot.
We’ve put the Leaf into rotation with our fleet of long- and short-term cars, sending it on errands and to and from work with anyone who dares brave this car’s new world of near-silent motoring. Instead of a mileage dash, we’re treating the Leaf like we believe most owners will—no long road trips in its future.
At the beginning of its stay, we took the Leaf to the test track. Performance was nearly identical to that of the last Leaf we tested: 0 to 60 mph in 10.0 seconds, a 17.6-second quarter-mile at 77 mph. The car is quick enough for around-town use, especially given the strong feel at takeoff provided by the electric motor. On the highway, big accelerator stabs summon enough power for anxiety-free merges, although at the expense of range.
A De-Ranged Runabout
But those aren’t the numbers with which we’re most concerned. Range, charge time, and, to a lesser extent, energy consumption are what we’re focusing on with this test. So far, the Leaf has provided an average range of 58 miles on a full charge of its 24-kWh lithium-ion battery pack. Charge times aren’t quick even using the 220-volt charger we have installed in the office garage, never mind the even-slower 110-volt standard outlets we use at our respective homes (or wherever we can find juice). But wherever we plug in, energy consumption is monitored just as we would measure fuel economy for any other vehicle, and we’ve thus far achieved a figure of 80 MPGe, or 2.4 miles per kWh. That falls short of the 97-MPGe and 2.9 miles-per-kWh numbers we achieved in our first Leaf experience, as well as the car’s EPA estimates.
The low range and economy numbers can be partly explained by weather conditions. Our blue car arrived at the tail end of winter, and electric cars are inherently less efficient in charging and discharging when it’s cold. We also noticed the lack of something: seat heaters. The Leaf is not yet for sale in northern states like ours (Nissan is aiming for the end of the year), but when it is, there will be an optional cold-weather package that fills the center console’s blanking plates with buttons for the chair warmers and also adds a heated steering wheel, heated mirrors, and an HVAC duct for the rear passenger compartment. In cold weather, a seat heater is a more energy-efficient way of keeping passengers comfy, especially when compared to the Leaf cabin’s electric heater.
Home is Not Always Where the Leaf Is
Trips to lunch and nearby errands are easy, and even occasionally pleasant given the serenity of the low-noise propulsion system and the no-shift, always-on power delivery. There’s plenty of space inside to carry people and stuff comfortably, although a powertrain-related lump in the cargo compartment makes accommodating big items with the seats folded a bit cumbersome. As a runabout, mixing it up with the best of Ann Arbor’s many Toyota Priuses, the Leaf is perhaps the best third car many of us who live in town could ask for.
But not all of our staffers live close to the office. Of the 21 drivers floating around our Ann Arbor HQ, 17 feel as though they could make it home and back with the Leaf if necessary. Twelve have tested the theory, two of them vowing never again to chance it.
Among those who technically could take the car home but haven’t yet, there are a variety of reasons they don’t feel comfortable with the prospect. There’s the what-if factor: I might not go directly home, and once I get there, I might need to go somewhere else, be it in an emergency or as a normal function of daily life. One subject lives in a condo and would make it home fine but then have no way to recharge and return to work the next day. There are worse fates.
These are problems we don’t encounter with hybrids and regular fuel-burning vehicles, and everyone’s learning something from the experience—some more than they’d like. After his first (and last) trip home with the electric Nissan, deputy editor Daniel Pund observed: “I had to drive like, well, like an electric-car driver, all right-lane and timid.” After driving 48 miles home, charging all night, and then returning to Ann Arbor, he got the low-charge indicator when the car reached our lot. With the constantly updating range readout staring up from the gauge cluster, it’s hard not to feel anxious and tailor your driving style accordingly. But it’s the need, not the choice, to do so that makes the Leaf so different, and difficult. Then again, we’re aware of the fact that no pure EV is intended for those with 50-mile commutes.
On the plus side, the car has asked for no oil changes so far, because it needs no such service. We have had to visit the dealer once because of a driver’s window that went off track. It was fixed under warranty.
The damage to our psyches, thanks to the stress this easygoing vehicle has imparted on some of us, may be more costly to repair. We’ll tell the whole story once our time with this rolling exception is over. For now, it’s back to racing Priuses to Whole Foods.
Em: http://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/car ... test_intro