Got to drive a Nissan Leaf
 

The other day I had the joy of checking out and driving a Nissan Leaf. A member of the Milwaukee hybrid group mentioned that he was about to take delivery of one, so of course I bugged him about coming out to take a look at it. I had never seen one up close, only on a platform at an auto show. So, we setup a time and I went over to his house the other night. We talked for a while in his driveway going over the car and then we jumped in and took it for a spin.

Now, I've driven and ridden in a few EVs. I have a plugin kit for my Prius and run around in EV mode quite a bit. But, my first and strongest reaction was still 'wow, its quiet'. You hear a bit of whir from what I'm assuming is probably just bearings, and that is it. There is no Curtis controller frequency whine, there is no whine from a gearbox like the Prius has (Leaf is direct drive, one speed), there really isn't even any significant wind or road noise at the top speed of 55 mph that we had the car up to. Its almost like engine off coasting at 25 mph with your normal car, but its like that all the time.

As we strolled around I was shown the instrument gauges and what they did. MetroMPG specifically asked me to tell what does the car gives you for efficiency feedback, aka what kind of mpg gauge it has. It does give you some feedback, but not a ton, and its kind of in an odd metric too. But, it does give you a miles per kWh reading. Its not the normal Wh/mile that most EV guys use to calculate things, but its not too hard to convert over. Our not too long jaunt around I think we had it mostly around 5.4 Mi/kWh which is a pretty impressive 185 Wh/mile. We did not spend much time at highway speeds though so this makes sense.

The next major thing I noticed were the headlights. They do stick up quite a bit and as I mentioned above they really do their job of eliminating rear view mirror aero noise well. I've seen lots of pics of the Leaf, but I never noticed just how far they stick up until I saw it in person up close.

http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...1&d=1339946406

Other than that I saw the normal aeromods done to the car, spats in front of the wheels, stuff like that. It also has a pretty nice bellypan on it as shown above. I do think that the lower grill (there is no upper so thats a plus) is massively oversized. My Prius runs around with less than half the grill opening and does just fine. For an all electric I'm sure that it can be blocked off quite a bit if one is looking to improve efficiency a bit more.

http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...1&d=1339946811

Lets see, other impressions. Ah yes, the trunk. Why did they have to make it so oddly shaped? This is probably my only gripe/dislike about the car. I think they could have organized the batteries a bit better here. While the Leaf does have fold flat seats and I'm pretty sure they fold flat with that fairly large hump (which is made of batteries), its just a weird trunk layout. I prefer what Toyota did with the Prius where it has the battery hump there, but its not quite as high and they put a lid so its all level in the back.

So, lastly but not least. My driving impressions. After asking a million questions, the owner asked if I wanted to drive and I even waited until he came to a complete stop before jumping out and running around the vehicle. :) I've been working on my self control. So, really it drives great. I didn't push the vehicle or throw it into any corners, just drove it like I normally would a car (maybe a little heavy on the go pedal in one or two places). Its quick off the line, but its hard to tell. There isn't the usual feedback (noise) to tell that you really are accelerating quite quickly. Road feel is great, the power steering isn't too heavy or light. Go pedal doesn't feel odd and its not hard to get a feel for it. Regen braking is as expected superior to the Prius. With the larger pack you can shove a lot more power back into it. But, if you're going faster than you think, which is really easy when you don't have noises to clue you in, you can still engage the physical brakes.

Overall I think it really is a great car. I look forward to a few years passing so I can consider one after the prices have hopefully come down.

I'd disable the power steering!

That kind of brings up another thing I saw. The Leaf uses 205 wide tires vs the Prius' 185s. The owner had his Leaf parked right next to his 2nd gen Prius in his garage and you can see that the Leaf is just a little taller and a little longer. Overall the cars are quite comparable in size. Surprisingly, the Leaf doesn't weigh a horrible amount more either @ 3350 vs the Prius' 2900 lbs.

Did you remember to try coasting? How easy/difficult is it in this car ?

Coasting is the same as the Prius. If you let off you get a small amount of regen. So you have to reapply the go pedal a little to get a coast. The nice thing about the Leaf is it has a power/regen display kind of like a 3rd gen Prius. So, you have some visual feedback to help you coast.

The Leaf dash is shown below. The indicator is the top display with the bubbles. The bubbles fill up as you accelerate or brake. As shown would be the coasting position. If you let off the go pedal completely the regen bubble to the left fills up with a dot.

Keeping it in that area is IMO very easy, but I'm used to driving a Prius which acts the same way.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7035/6...aae8975d_z.jpg

I almost forgot to mention. There is an eco mode on the Leaf too. In that mode I believe it does the usual stuff like A/C isn't as aggressive and the pedal is essentially reprogrammed so you have to push it farther to get the same amount of acceleration. However, one thing it also does is increase the amount of regen you get when you let off the pedal. I'm not sure why they do this as coasting is obviously more efficient, but that is what happens.

I really like that car. If my living situation was different I would have considered one but the limited range and lack of charging at my work made it not feasible. Someday.....

I hope that Nissan learns from us ecodrivers and from the Honda Fit EV, which have free-wheel coasting when you lift your right foot off the accelerator pedal. In Eco mode the Fit EV only has regenerative braking on the brake pedal, and none on the accelerator.

(Insert broken record here...)

Customizable controls would be best, like the upcoming Tesla Model S sedan:

BREAKING: 2012 Tesla Model S Deliveries To Start June 22 - The Washington Post

Agreed! I would hate to be stuck without the ability to glide now that I have grown so accustomed to it after 6 years in a Prius.

BTW, just saw your appearance on some news channel along with Hobbit. Congrats! :)