"Mark Vaughn and Co. are currently on their first month of AutoWeek‘s three-month loan of the all-electric Nissan LEAF, and they seem to be liking their experience so far. They even went so far as to say that they wished they could have the vehicle for more than the 3-months they were given.
The only issue that they documented so far, was having to call AAA after miscalculating the miles they were going to travel on that particular day and then divide by 24 kilowatt-hours of battery.
AutoWeek is aware that the Nissan LEAF vehicle doesn’t have the range to go certain distance, therefore, they used other means of transportation on certain days.
“One thing everybody wants to know about the Leaf–just about the only thing–is how far it’ll go on a charge,” said Vaughn. “The answer, of course, is that it varies. A readout on the dash says it has averaged 3.8 miles per kilowatt since we got the car 560 miles ago. That’s 91.2 miles average range per charge, according to the on-board computer. We have never tried to go 91.2 miles under normal, gentle-throttle driving. We definitely will soon.”
Vaughn took the time to chronicle how much the range varied depending on his/their driving, check it out below:
When the car is fully charged in the morning, the range readout on the dash has read as high as 111 miles. Nissan Leaf salesman and EV advocate Paul Scott, who works at Nissan Santa Monica and owns a Leaf, says he has gone as far as 120 miles on a charge (he is a very conscientious driver).
Yesterday we went 43 miles and used up 14 kilowatt-hours of battery. That was with a fair amount of A/C going. Driving as we were that day we could have continued for a total of 73.1 miles before the battery was empty.
On March 30, we went 47 miles on 14 kilowatt-hours for a range of 80 miles.
On March 28, we went 44.4 miles on 14 kilowatt-hours for 76.1 miles range.
On April 11, we went 53.9 miles of mostly 55-mph freeway driving and used 14 kilowatt-hours, giving a potential range of 92.4 miles.
On April 5, potential range was 81.2 miles; on April 1, it was 62.6.
Mark also offered some tidbits about the Nissan LEAF vehicle for those who will be driving the vehicle long-term:
“The LEAF is watertight. We plugged it in and left it plugged in several times outside during heavy rains and never once got electrocuted. This may seem like a given, but is probably on the list of fears among people who don’t know that this is a well-thought-out car. The SAE J1772 connector fits over the top of the car’s electrical connectors like a, let’s say like a sock over a foot. You can use a different analogy if you like. And since the foot is pointing up and the sock slides over it, there’s no way water can get in unless you drive into a lake.
As soon as you hit the air conditioning, the indicated range drops by about 12 to 15 miles, sometimes more. With an indicated range after a full charge of usually more than 100 miles, that means climate control eats up 10 percent to 15 percent of the battery for A/C use, about the same figure we found in last summer’s Mitsubishi i-MiEV electric car. It hasn’t been cold enough to measure range depletion with the heater on.
We have never had any problems speeding up to merge onto the freeway. There is plenty of torque to handle all accelerating needs and even some stoplight drag races, the latter which you will almost certainly lose. As we found out at the drag strip, 0 to 60 mph comes up in 9.2 seconds, which isn’t a performance-car number but is perfectly fine for city and freeway driving.”
So far, the people over at AutoWeek haven’t found anything that has given them a negative impression of the Nissan LEAF car. Apparently, they feel the Nissan LEAF may be a little greater than the i-MiEV “because it goes a little farther and has a little more room and refinement.”
Em: http://nissan-leaf.net/2011/04/21/nissa ... ssan-leaf/