Wednesday, October 26, 2011

In the driveway: 2011 Nissan Leaf SL

Well, technically, the 2011 Nissan Leaf SL is still "in the driveway," but most of it is on our concrete patio area in front of the house. Why? The Leaf's charging cord won't reach our 110V power source in front of the house when parked where it normally would be. No biggie, though.We still have it plugged in and charging.

The Leaf is a totally different vehicle than anything I've ever driven. It has surprisingly good acceleration from a dead stop, thanks to its torquey electric motor, yet it's nearly silent at slow speeds. There is a center console that features the gear select knob, which is very easy to use. It also rides well. It's surprisingly good around town, where easily zooms about with traffic.

The range is around 100 miles on a full charge. It was delivered with 55 on it. I drove it down to about 12, when I plugged it in at work for a while so I could get home. There wasn't a great place to plug it in at work, but they allowed me to drive it up a service dock, where there was a plug in. I will say, you often check the range gauge to make sure you can make it where you need to go.

FYI, with about 15 miles in range, the Leaf is estimating it'll take 17 hours to fully charge the battery. However, my commute is only 12 miles each way, so I should have plenty of juice to commute.

More later!

3 comments:

D2M said...

If they could figure out a way to make it at least 200 miles per charge I think the average Joe might find this more compelling of a vehicle. I know *I* would be interested in it. But a measly 100? That's really not enough, especially in the area where I live (which is Texas so you can imagine how far away things tend to be).

Jeff S said...

How much can the range fluctuate in cold weather? I'd hate to get somewhere and find when I come out I've lost enough range to not be able to get home, simply because the temp. dropped.

Andy Lilienthal said...

Jeff, I don't know much about the cold-weather performance. Good question, though.