Quote:
Originally Posted by Isaac Zachary
The Leaf is terribly un-ultra-aerodynamic and super heavy.
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Can confirm, own leaf. Is a box. Actually pretty stunning how bad it is from an aero standpoint, for it being an electric car and all. In city driving, it's easy to blow the EPA estimates out of the water--but get on the highway and suddenly you're struggling to break 4.2 mi/kWh, even driving reasonable speeds and drafting (SAFELY, 4 second gap, right lane only) semi trucks.
Hell, even UNsafely drafting at ~2 seconds is still not improving that number much. Hey, guy's gotta test here and there.
Since the world ended about a year ago, I've been pretty much just driving highway miles to a town that doesn't suck for curbside pickup of library books and groceries, and every so often to the fish store ~40 miles away and back (also curbside pickup. Pretty swanky). Generally average a solid 4.0-4.2 mi/kWh. I feel that if you could put the same electric guts in my old Yaris I'd probably get closer to 5 just from the better aero profile alone.