My wife’s car if overdue for replacement - she likes the idea of a Nissan Leaf, her friend has one, she has been in and likes it.
Fine with that but this is the only EV we have talked about and neither of us really know much about what is on the market.
A couple of questions if I may
- What other EVs should we look at, comparable ones, similar price range
- Those that have a Leaf already, did you go for the standard battery or the bigger E+ battery. There is a significant price difference which is swaying my wife at the moment so interested in hearing your experiences.
Cheers,
Nigel
Hi Nigel, I know you've already said that you won't go down the EV route at the moment, but I'll put my experiences as a new Leaf driver here anyway - it might be interesting/ useful for others if not you
My wife is leasing a N-Tekna Leaf (not the top-of-the-range, but near) through her work on a salary sacrifice for the next 3 years. Our experiences after a few weeks look a bit like this:
Charging - the biggest issue for most non EV owners; but it's
easy. For some reason, non-EV drivers, (including myself in the past) have this hang-up about charging a car. There seems to be this odd creating of problems that simply don't exist, a typical one was mentioned by
@domtheone; 'cables trailing everywhere'. It's really not a problem. It's one cable going between 2 points, it's not 'trailing everywhere' at all. No different to have the lawnmower cable out or a hosepipe.
As mentioned above my
@LV426, it's quite good going to Tesco, parking up in your own 'special' bay pop the cable in and come out to find the car is fully charged - the company that installed them at 800-odd Tesco superstores (Pod Point) don't even charge you money - it's free!
I also think that when I look at the whole 'I spend 5 minutes filling up with diesel and I get 500+ miles range' point, in actual fact, my wife or I probably spend less than 5 minutes connecting a cable from the house to the car three times to get the near 500 miles of range too. The difference being, no matter how expensive your electricity tariff is, it will never cost you £70+ to travel 500 miles...
Cost of ownership - I don't see a great deal of point in discussing this too much, as people have different budgets and I think that 'value for money' is very subjective. I don't think I'd buy this car from new, but then, the same applies to ICE cars too. It's not an EV thing, it's a wallet thing.
Performance - I'm a petrol head. I've never owned a big V8-engined car, but I think I'd like to before they die out. My company car is a 150 bhp 2.0 litre diesel Audi A3. I would say that the Leaf is faster off the mark, simply due to having no gears to change and having all the torque available at once (although the traction control prevents it from simply wheel-spinning when pulling away from every junction!).
My wife is 100% convinced that her Leaf will do my Audi in a drag race, so we might be heading to a local airfield to put her money where her mouth is at some point soon! I will admit that when I was following my wife driving the Leaf on my motorbike recently, I planned to overtake her soon after pulling onto a main NSL road, I carried out my mirror check, glanced over my shoulder and when I looked forward, she'd taken off at a much more rapid pace than I'd imagined! Perhaps she is right about the speed...
Personal feelings - I honestly don't think that I'd go back to owning/ driving an ICE car now. My next company car will be a dirty diesel, but that's the company's choice, I don't get to choose my next car
However, when I'm in a position to do so (after promotion, when that happens), I 100% won't want an ICE car.
I tell everyone that asks about the Leaf, my main feeling above all else is that I feel like I'm driving in the future! The amount of gadgets, the quality of the screens, the finish is excellent, I could go on. It might not look the best car from the outside (although my wife's car is much less offensive on the eye than previous generations), inside is a nice place to be.
Would I want a Leaf myself? Yes...But it would have to be the fast motor/ bigger battery version - a petrol head still has standards y'know
I'm so convinced by the Leaf that I'm even looking at replacing my motorbike with an electric version. Brand new, they're still prohibitively expensive for me (I can't justify £15-20K+ on a toy), but there are some making their way onto the secondhand market...