Our Nissan Leaf Test Drive

What has no engine but can travel at 90 miles per hour?  A Leaf!  The Nissan Leaf, the first fully electric mass-produced car, is making it’s way onto the streets.  Last weekend my family traveled to Memphis, Tennessee to get an up close look and a test drive at the Drive Electric Tour.

The Nissan Leaf has a lot of features that appeal to my lifestyle as a mom (aka kid taxi).

The 100 Mile Tool (click image to see detail)

Range:

The Leaf can travel about 100 miles on one full charge. (Give or take, depending on speeds, how much you’re hauling, and road conditions.) This car is not for cross-country road trips (yet).  It’s for my typical day of criss-crossing town, to school, to gymnastics, the grocery store, playdates, back to school, and so on.  There’s even a 100 Mile Tool that you can use to plot your route for the day to make sure you’ll have plenty of charge.

Ease of Charging:

The Charging Station – works with any electric car

The Leaf drives like my cell phone – drive it every day, and charge it every night.  (A full charge on a 220v charger takes about 7 hours.) But, if you’ve got further than 100 miles to go, you can pick up partial charges along the way. The Leaf’s battery doesn’t have a memory, so you can do a partial charge without shortening the life of the battery.  Whole Foods, Walgreens, Cracker Barrel, and Walmart have all committed to installing charging stations at their locations across the country.  Charging stations show up on the car’s navigation system, which is automatically updated as new stations are added.  There’s also an App called Plug Share that shows public charging stations as well as home-based charging systems that owners are willing to share. Your best bet at this point is to keep your Leaf within range of your own home charging system, but certainly more options are coming on line quickly.

Drive:

Sure, it’s novel, but the Leaf is pretty fun and easy to drive too. The acceleration and ride feel pretty much like any other car, except that it is super quiet.  When you really gun it, there’s a high pitched wind-up noise as you gain speed, but that’s it.  The brakes, if anything, were overly sensitive, but maybe that’s just because it was a new car.  When you first turn the Leaf on, it makes a series of beeps and chirps reminiscent of a video game.  Please don’t be confused, though, as it does get up to 90mph, and can do so quickly without you noticing because there’s no engine noise.  One of the folks test driving with us was pulled over for speeding. Here’s a little video of the Leaf’s start up and the navigation system (with me laughing – sorry).

Under the hood – they made it look like an engine, but there isn’t one. There also isn’t any heat being generated.

Cost:

The 2012 Nissan Leaf SV has a MSRP of $35,200.  There’s a federal rebate of up to $7,500, which still makes it pricey at $27,700. The charging station costs approximately $2,300 to install.  So, total, you’re looking at an investment of $30K.  Without a trade in or money down, that would put your car loan in the neighborhood of $600 per month. BUT, you can subtract the cost of gas from that, since it costs about $2.50 in electricity for a full battery charge.  You can also take away the cost of upkeep, as there is no oil to change, no muffler to rust, no belts to break.  The dealer wants to see the car once a year for a checkup, and that’s it. Still cheaper than many of those SUVs and minivans we mommies often pilot. Which leads me to…

Interior Space:

The two sleepy kids are optional.

No, it is not a minivan, and if you have more than two kids in carseats, fugetahboutit.  But, it is surprisingly roomy on the inside (when looking at it from the outside in person, I had my doubts).  We fit two carseats in the back with room enough in the middle for one mid to skinny sized person to squeeze in.  The front seats are comfy and manually adjust four to six different ways. There are cup holders in the doors and the front console.  The trunk is just as roomy as any other hatchback, and the rear seat folds down in a 2/1 split.

The cargo area

The Nissan Leaf Battery. It appears to run off of a tape deck…

Safety:

The Nissan Leaf was given a five star safety rating worldwide and is an insurance institute top safety pick.  The Battery is non-combustable and acts as a 600 pound brick that sits in the center of the car’s chassis, so it absorbs the energy of an impact in a wreck.  It comes equipped with six standard airbags.  And, because the Leaf is very, very quiet (there’s no engine, remember?), it has a mp3 player mounted under the hood that emits a fake engine noise when you are traveling at 0-18mph so that pedestrians will be aware of you.

Coolness:

If you ask me, the Leaf is way cooler than a mini van or SUV.  It has all the normal cool stuff like navigation, blue tooth, XM radio, USB port for iPod interface, and auto LED headlights.  PLUS it has cooler than cool stuff like a photovoltaic solar panel rear spoiler, a keyless push button start, and the ability to communicate with your car from your computer or smart phone.  The Leaf App allows you to see how much charge the car has and to tell it to start charging.  You can also program your car to heat up or cool off at a certain time in the morning. That way the hard work of climate control is done while it is still plugged in to the charger (saves battery life).  AND, if you’re driving efficiently, a little forest of trees grows on your dashboard display.  PLUS, there isn’t anything cooler than NO EMISSIONS in this day and age.

You can reserve (order) a Nissan Leaf in several states (including Tennessee) right now.  The Nissan reps at the Drive Electric Tour told me that Arkansas dealers would start getting the Leaf in 2012. There are also a couple other fully electric cars coming on to the market in 2012, which would likely help drive down prices and increase the number of charging stations available.  We’ll definitely be considering purchasing an electric vehicle as our next car.

To see more pictures of our Leaf experience, visit the public album on the Instead of the Dishes Facebook page.

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