Coming up on 2,000 miles

It is three and a half months since I took delivery of my Nissan Leaf and I'm heading towards 2,000 miles on the odometer. It is about time I wrote down my impressions based on months rather than days of use. So here goes.

For me, there has been one, and only one drawback to owning an electric car. You guessed it. Range. Let's get that out of the way for starters. I'm in the lucky position that we have two cars in the household and if necessary, I can use my wife's Aygo for long trips. If we didn't have that, it would be a significant problem. So what is the useful range turning out to be? I'd say that if a destination is more than 35 miles away, then I would need to think carefully about my options.

I wrote in an earlier post about driving to Bathgate (33 miles) and being left with about 16 miles indicated range by the time I got home. That was in summery weather. I did another trip in roughly the same direction when asked to give a talk at Forth, a village 33.5 miles away high up on the moors between Glasgow and Edinburgh. 

Before the trip out, I topped the battery to 100 per cent and we left well wrapped up, choosing not to use the heater heavily - just enough to keep the windscreen clear. It was a wild night. Mild temperatures but heavy rain blowing in from the south. As we climbed from the M8 motorway into the Lanarkshire hills, we were driving into the wind and I watched the instruments as the battery's charge smartly headed towards 50 per cent. There was nowhere at the destination to easily get a charge and there wasn't time to set anything up, even from a domestic socket. We were busy enough trying to get props and books in through the rain and gales.

The one thought that told me it would be nothing to worry about was that, having come uphill, we would be going downhill on the way home. Additionally, having driven into the wind, we would have the gales behind us on the return journey. So it turned out. We took the battery to 54 per cent on the way there. The journey home took us to 15 percent and by the time we were hitting the Glasgow outskirts, I knew we were home and dry so chose to luxuriate in a bit of heat. I'd used the climate control for most of the journey because the humidity demanded a flow of air over the windscreen but I had kept the temperature at 20C and set a slow fan speed. Now, with energy to spare, we could raise the temperature and enjoy the last ten miles in warmth. A great night and an enjoyable drive in hard weather. But I wouldn't have liked to have had to travel much further.

There were contingencies. There is a rapid charger at Hamilton Services on the M74 that we could have diverted to and another at Whitburn, further out from Glasgow. Twenty minutes on either would have given us a buffer, should I have found myself short of charge, but it illustrated a continuing infrastructure shortcomings.

Despite Ecotricity having the Electric Highway rapid chargers along nearly all of Britain's motorways, an important service station they have yet to cover is the Harthill Services between Glasgow and Edinburgh. Another invitation for a talk illustrated this when I was asked to go through to the capital. At 48 miles distant, Edinburgh is firmly outside the radius I could do on a single charge. Plugging in along the way is a necessity if I am to use the Leaf for such a trip. Had there been a rapid charger at Harthill, it would have been straightforward. As it was, my wife kindly lent me her car for the trip.

I was also surprised to note that Edinburgh is very poorly served by chargers, especially when compared to Glasgow. A week spent working in Glasgow city centre illustrated how good Scotland's largest city has become for electric car drivers. Parking in Glasgow centre is expensive, like most big cities, and I took the train in for the first of five days. I knew there were charge points in the big multistorey carparks but I didn't know how the system worked.

It so happened that my wife came in that first evening to meet me and she parked in the Cambridge Street Carpark, only a few hundred metres away from where I was working. After dinner and before we returned to her car, we asked in the carpark office how parking worked for electric cars. Simple. Drive in and get a ticket as normal. Park at one of eight chargers and get plugged in. They use the 'Charge Your Car' network for which I have a smartcard and the power is free. I should then go to the office and sign in (name, date, car registration, time in, time out) and they would give me a second card. This second card would clear the parking cost indicated by the first card.

The next day, I drove in, plugged in, signed in and went off to work clutching two cards for the carpark. Over ten hours later, having put in a solid, busy shift, I returned to the carpark and put my main ticket into the pay machine: £24.50. Ouch! I put the second card in: £0.00. I must admit there was a bit of a grin on my face as I got to my car and unplugged. Thirty minutes earlier, I had used my phone to switch on the climate control so the car was not only dry but also cosy and warm, as well as having a topped-off battery. This went on for the rest of the week and there was never any problem getting a space.

I know I'm a bit of an evangelist about electric cars so I try to only talk about them when people actually ask. However, it is a distinct pleasure taking someone for a spin and watch their preconceptions about electric cars get left behind as the vehicle smartly takes off out of a junction. This is especially so because of people's expectations of me as a driver. I'm seen as a slow, cautious ecomiser with a light right foot, constantly trying to stretch my miles per gallon figure. Therefore the last thing they expect is when I take off like a thoroughbred fighter jet on afterburner and no gear shifting. In these scenarios, the only things shifting are paradigms in people's minds.

I had another long distance journey to make in the last few weeks as I wanted to travel to Pontefract to see a lecture by the great Jim Lovell, the commander of Apollo 13. As a purchaser of a new Nissan Leaf, I had read that Nissan will offer a loan of a long-range car for up to two weeks once each year. It was time to test this. Nissan customer services referred me to the dealer who could not have been nicer. They offered me a Nissan Pulsar demonstrator; diesel-powered and with even more fancy knobs and whistles than the Leaf (and that's saying something). I returned the Pulsar three days later with only two complaints about it: it had a gearstick and it had an internal combustion engine.

The driving experience in the Leaf is still enjoyable. The unfussy, easy but powerful acceleration doesn't get old. All four of us were returning from a restaurant and I took us up the nearby Boclair Hill, a 12 per cent gradient coming from a set of traffic lights that normally has all but the largest ICE powerplants roaring to provide the power to get up from the standing start. I floored the Leaf's accelerator and as we quietly reached the top close on an indicated speed of 50mph, my son commented, "So, what's a hill?" It was like it wasn't there. I wonder what it will be like if I ever get a Tesla.

Running costs are paltry. Our electricity bill will doubtless rise as I'm starting to see the effect of the occasional charging on the house's consumption. But as best as I can tell, and ignoring any electricity acquired for free out and about, fuel costs are roughly one quarter of what I would expect for an efficient ICE car. I've really stopped worrying about it. In addition, with only one moving part to the motor, servicing costs are likely to be minimal with brakes, tyres, wipers being the chief concern at the one-year service. I'll report on that when it happens.

Given our increasing awareness as a civilisation of the damage we do by putting carbon into the atmosphere, it is incumbent upon us to remove ourselves from our reliance on fossil fuel. My Leaf not only allows me to do my bit towards that goal, I'd argue that it has raised my standard of living in the process. Watching gases come out of the tailpipes of other vehicles seems just so anachronistic, so last century, and we're expected to breathe that stuff along with our life-giving oxygen.

I accept that a fraction of the electricity I use was derived from the burning of fossil fuel, but here in Scotland, that is a fast-declining method of generation as well as being a more efficient means of converting carbon to energy. Nuclear, wind, hydro and solar, all near-zero carbon sources, dominate the electricity industry here. If the Sun is shining, my own solar panels can put photon-derived energy into my car. This is a cleaner, quieter, more civilised means of personal transportation and I thoroughly recommend it.

"How's the car?"

It's a question I'm getting used to. Folk ask it regularly and I guess it's to see how, on a simple curiosity level, I'm getting on with the car. It's perfectly possible they are hoping to discover that it has been a disastrous decision in the first place. But I know that some genuinely see me as a pioneer in a new motoring paradigm that has a way to go before becoming mainstream, and that they are keen to see how it is progressing before taking the plunge themselves.

Driving experience

A modern electric car like the Leaf is no slouch. When asked to shift, it does so with split-second reaction, cranking up to the desired speed with smooth, quiet, almost ruthless efficiency. Take-off torque is instant; an unfamiliar response for anyone used to a conventional engine trying to get up past its inefficient low revs. Moreover, that quick, slick acceleration comes from merely a dab on the right pedal. There's no messing about trying to "stir a bucket of nuts" (manual gearstick).

I expect that such performance is normally the province of drivers of BMW, Porsche or Mercedes automatics. But I predict that when such sporty capability spreads into the hands of the wider driving population, especially the more impatient among us, we'll start to see more instances of people darting into tiny gaps in the traffic to gain those few seconds lead on their fellow road user during the rush-hour race. Me? I just like to tootle along with gentle acceleration, only gunning the pedal when the conditions require it. Honest!

Having said that, the Leaf is changing my own driving habits. For years, I drove to minimise petrol consumption. It was a game aided by the consumption meters included in modern cars. I wanted that MPG number as high as I could get it without being dangerous or annoying to other drivers. When I bought the hybrid Yaris, its characteristics made me modify my techniques whereby I could force the car into EV mode and keep it running on its meagre battery for a bit when it suited me.

Suddenly, having gone to pure electric power, there seems much less need to strive for such efficiency. More and more, I drive as feels appropriate for the surrounding conditions without much thought as to how much electricity I'm using. Compared to petrol, my 'fuel' is very cheap and often free. I'm still a relatively slow driver and tend to keep to the speed limit far more than other drivers so I am used to the whoosh-whoosh of cars on the dual carriageways overtaking me.

For the first time in my life, I engaged cruise control. It's a bit scary at first and a heightened sense of awareness was needed to think how I would transition to normal driving should the need arise. It's so weird taking the foot off the pedal while the car is still motoring forward. I could get used to it, however. Yet, having an electric car with limited range, I'm not likely to be doing much long-distance motorway driving, when cruise control makes particular sense. It's inclusion in the Leaf feels like a manufacturer throwing in lots of bells and whistles to justify the car's high list price.

Where the Leaf is most comfortable is city driving; fast or slow. The set-up of the accelerator pedal allows deft control throughout the speed range and that includes slowing down. I always drive in 'B' mode, which is the same as 'D' (Drive) but with added regenerative braking when backing the foot off the pedal. The car is particularly relaxing to drive in traffic jams.

Ecology

My Yaris Hybrid had an 'Eco' button. When enabled, it limited the car's acceleration somewhat. I tried it for a while and then decided to forego it. I felt that as I tended to accelerate slowly anyway, it was only forcing me to do on all occasions what I did on most occasions anyway.

Today I pressed the 'Eco' button on the Leaf.

Wet blanket or what! The Leaf suddenly becomes a granny's car. All at once, this lively, keen and instant panther transforms itself into a sloth. Slow and lugubrious, it feels unwilling to go anywhere. Engaging 'Eco' did add a few miles to the range prediction so I guess it could be seen as a range extender if the occasion required it.

Long distance Voyager

Bathgate is a former mining town that sits nearer to Edinburgh than to Glasgow. It is home to a well-known heavy rock venue, the Dreadnought. As my son and brother-in-law were playing there with their band StillMarillion, I decided, at 33.5 miles distance, attending this concert would be a fun test of the car's range and what it was like to use most of its capability in a single journey.

It was a lovely evening, early September with the Sun out so we could get away without climate control. The battery was topped up to 100% and the range prediction said 95 miles. If it was accurate, I would be using 67 of those, leaving 28 in the battery. We set off on the M8 motorway and climbed to the its high section where the main Central Scotland transmitters are, altitude about 900 feet.

Throughout the climb, I watched with only the mildest concern as the battery percentage dropped and the predicted range dropped even faster. It was then with a little relief that we started down the other side of the country to Bathgate. As soon as we did, the range figure just stopped changing. By the time we parked, we had used 41% in order to go our 33.5 miles.

Since Bathgate is a couple of hundred feet higher than home, I figured my return would be more frugal. It wasn't. For a start, I had headlights on as it was dark. Additionally, part of the motorway had been closed, taking us off on a diversion. I also think the higher density of the colder air increases the drag on the vehicle, and I did use the heater for a short while. These influences more than cancelled out any gains that would have been made by going downhill. A mile or two from home, the battery hit 19% and the range prediction began to flash. The battery status display was then replaced by a warning notice telling me that its charge was low.

As we pulled into the driveway, the stated range was 16 miles, a good bit less than my original guess. Our diversion had added a mile or two and it's clear that in colder weather or with unexpected diversions, it would have been easy to find ourselves short. A good lesson on what expectations should be, especially as we go into winter.

Here comes the Sun

With the battery low, I elected to leave it on charge overnight and figured it would take about 18 units of electricity to top it off. Here's how I figure that. Although the battery has a capacity of 24kWh (24 units), I read somewhere that only about 21.5 of those are useful. If the battery was at 18%, then 21.5 x 0.18 = 3.9 units remaining. I'd have to buy 17.6 units at a cost of £2.10.

It turns out that had I decided to charge the car during the afternoon of the next day, I could have saved myself a bit of money. These past few days have been unusually sunny here in Scotland. Today I wanted to top the car off by putting 4.5 units in it. I started the charge once the Sun had come around to face our solar panels and I was getting over 2kW from them.

Normally what happens when there is lots of power from the panels is that the house takes what it needs and the rest of the power goes into the grid. Since the quiescent consumption of the house is about 500W, there is a substantial amount of power available at these times and my feed-in tariff from the energy company will pay me whether I use it or the grid does. By plugging in the car, all that spare power goes into its battery. By the time the charge was over, my retail meter (the one that tells me how many units I'm buying) had only clocked up a single unit, plus or minus a unit. (It doesn't have a decimal point so is inherently lacking precision.) In other words, most of the electricity that went into the car came from the Sun.

Of course, it will be different in winter when the low Sun and the Scottish clouds will cause my solar generation to head down to barely a unit a day. Still, the lesson is to charge when the afternoon Sun is shining.

I love spreadsheets

I have a mug sitting in front of me here that says "I [heart] spreadsheets". I get a real kick out of using spreadsheets to log data of interest to me and I use them to understand and analyse its trends. Among the list of parameters I track (a list too long and embarrassing to mention here) is the house's electricity purchase, measured in units called kilowatt-hours (kWh).

When the Leaf arrived, I began a comparison of last year's consumption with this year's. It turns out that we are generally using less electricity now than we did a year ago. Therefore, in my mind, if I can charge my car without buying any more units than I did last year, then effectively, those units are free because I will not have increased my electricity bill. To help this, I've finally convinced my son to put his computer off at night and at any time that he's away. Computers are quite stiff power sinks, especially when left on 24/7.

Thus, 24 days after acquiring my new car, and even despite charging it overnight after the Bathgate trip, I have one unit in surplus compared to last year. In other words, over these 24 days, I've had to buy one unit of electricity less than I did over the same period last year.

Noises off

The mystery of the missing noise has been slayed.

I was led to believe that the car was designed to make a sound at slow speeds to warn pedestrians of its proximity. I was damned if I could find it. There is a switch to the right of the steering wheel that suggests its purpose is to allow the sound to be turned off but it seemed to have no effect. What sound was I expecting? A Spitfire Merlin engine? A Ferrari V12? A petrol-powered Nissan Note? Some folk I spoke to laughingly imagined that it might be possible to hack the car's electronics and install custom sounds. I'll have a Saturn V lifting off, if you don't mind!

Then a friend who was standing outside the car mentioned that as I manoeuvred into a parking space, the car was making a faint high-pitched whining noise. This I put down to being as a result of the power switching to the motor. Today, as I drove around a car park looking for a space with the window down, I thought to press the switch. Silence! At slow speeds, the car really is silent. The quiet whine is purely artificial and can be switched on and off. It is known as "Vehicle Sound for Pedestrians" or VSP. To my ears, it is at an incredibly low volume.

Six days of Leccy!

When I wrote my last entry, I had a thought in my mind that said I ought not to be too glowing about the Nissan Leaf. Rather, I should be unbiased and critical where I needed to be. Otherwise I'd be seen as one of those people who, having bought into an idea, then determined within themselves that they must have made a good decision and therefore could not bring themselves to admit that there could be a negative side to their selected path.

So, in fear of being seen as an unquestioning evangelical electric car proponent, I decided to mention anything negative I could see about being the owner of this new electric car. In this posting, I'm throwing away any such double-think and just say it as I see it, good or bad.

Truth is, I struggle to find much that is truly bad about the experience. Most of what I wrote last time consisted of inconsequential minor niggles. Some of them have been addressed. What is easier to write about is how much I am loving the experience.

Having got me to work, my Leaf is safely parked in its place, wing mirrors tucked in.

Believe me, this IS the future of motoring and the intermittent combustion engine (ICE) will fade into the realm of old-fashioned curiosity in much the same way as black Bakelite telephones, Instamatic cameras and long-playing records have. These item can still operate, but few people can be bothered with them in this age of the smartphone. I'm sure there will be a strong subculture of die-hard lovers for the crankshaft, the camshaft and reciprocating pistons. I, myself, have a fondness for cathode-ray tube televisions, especially the Philips G8 chassis and I recently put a couple of rolls of 120 film through a Hasselblad 500C of 1966 vintage, just for that genuine vintage photo feel.

But if what you want is something simple, quiet, smooth and powerful; something to get you to work, to the shops or to your loved ones without noise or hassle, a modern electrically-powered car has an awful lot to offer.

As a friend pointed out, it's just a car and it feels like a car, a normal well-appointed family car. Yet the acceleration at the low end is surprisingly good. Without having to play clutch against accelerator pedal and without waiting for a growling engine to rev up to speed, you just drop the accelerator pedal for the Leaf to firmly push you back in your seat and take you off from the lights smartly, cleanly and quietly.

The first time I entered the Clyde Tunnel from the tight slip-road bend on the Govan side of the river, I found myself having to quickly get in sync with traffic occupying the left lane, traffic you don't get to see until the last moment due to the layout of the approach. A dab on the pedal and, whoof! I was where I wanted to be in the traffic flow without effort or so much as a whimper from the car.

Braking new ground

In my last blog, I voiced some discomfort with the brakes of the car. My view is changing, partly through increased experience as my muscle coordination is rewired for the different response; but that's not the whole story. The way an electric car works and the way I drive it have much to do with this plot.

Cars that don't require the driver to manually change gears are normally called automatics. This is fast becoming a misnomer. Truly automatic cars have a mechanism to change the gears on the driver's behalf. These gears are required because an intermittent combustion engine has a very narrow power bandwidth. It's not good at working when turning slowly, nor when turning fast, so we change the gearing between the engine and the road in steps to keep the engine turning at speeds where it is most comfortable and most capable at converting fuel to energy. We either do this manually or have the car do it automatically for us. In an automatic, to go forward, you select 'D' for 'Drive'.

A very small number of cars, while still changing the gearing between the engine and wheels, do so on a continuous basis rather than in discrete steps. Cars with these types of continuously variable transmission (CVT) are still automatics because the car decides what ratio to use at any moment, not the driver. Hybrid cars use various technical tricks to do what they do, but they are essentially CVTs.

At first glance, electric cars seem to be like conventional automatics. They do not require the driver to change gear and there are only two pedals; a brake and an accelerator, just like in an automatic. But unlike the automatic car, the electric car does not need to change gear on the driver's behalf. This is simply because there is only one gear. That's all! A simple, step-down, reduction gear.

Unlike the intermittent combustion engine, the electric motor has a very wide power bandwidth. It's happy to provide the lashings of torque called for when pulling away from the lights and it's equally as happy providing the power required to keep a car breaking the speed limit down the motorway. The interesting part comes when you take your foot off the accelerator.

Like a conventionally-powered car, the electric car will slow down, and it will do so faster than if it were merely coasting, a familiar concept from conventional motoring. The ICE car slows down because an engine starved of fuel acts as a brake on the car. It's full of sources of friction and it is constantly compressing litres of air for no particular reason. We've all become used to this 'engine braking' effect.

The reason that an electric car slows down when you back off your foot on the accelerator pedal is entirely different. It's based on what happens when the way an electric motor works is reversed. Using principles demonstrated by Michael Faraday almost two centuries ago, if you mechanically rotate the rotor of an electric motor, it can act as an electricity generator. Electric cars utilise this fact by using the car's momentum to turn the motor and in doing so, generate significant amounts of electricity. This power can be used to recharge the battery. Moreover, the engineers can set the degree to which this regenerative braking occurs.

In an electric car or hybrid, there may be an alternative to the 'D' setting - the B setting. In Drive, when you lift your foot off the accelerator, the car slows a little more than if it were coasting, and a small amount of electricity is generated. Further slowing is achieved by use of the brake pedal which increases the regenerative braking and/or uses the brake pads and discs. This was how I drove the Toyota Yaris Hybrid. The balance between the small braking effect from taking the foot off the accelerator and the braking effect by putting it on the brake pedal was well judged. I never used the Yaris B mode because I found it to be too aggressive for my liking.

In the Nissan Leaf, the braking in Drive mode is very similar to the Yaris but the footbrake is too light at the start of its travel. I didn't like the feel of this. Then I tried driving the Leaf in the B mode. This is very similar to the Tesla. In both cars, although the regenerative braking is aggressive to make lots of power for the battery, the degree is well judged. Essentially, the accelerator pedal becomes a speed control pedal because most of the deceleration is also handled by this pedal.

It's like the right pedal has a continuum from high acceleration when fully depressed to mild braking when the foot is taken off. Somewhere in this travel is a point where power is neither been added or taken away from the wheels and you're essentially coasting. The foot brake is then only needed when a large braking effort is required or to bring the car to a complete stop. If I anticipate properly while I drive, I'll do almost all my speed control without having to touch the brake pedal. The brake pads are going to last a long time.

It seems to me that this is where the Leaf is getting it right. The light initial braking on the foot pedal makes sense if the car is already applying a high degree of regenerative braking in B mode. In fact, I've quickly settled into preferring B mode over the Drive mode at all times.

Other pleasantries of the car include its automatic wipers for which I've found the sensitivity setting I'm happiest with. The automatic headlights are also great. I've discovered that it brings them on and dims the displays when I enter the Clyde Tunnel. Neat. I found the button on the door that pulls in the wing mirrors when I park.

I've still to find out how to bring on the sound effects that the car uses when moving slowly, though I'm not sure it can actually do that. I did find out how to change the sound effects it makes inside the car when you switch it on or off. I've put them off as I can't stand the song and dance it makes when you just want to go somewhere. I've yet to try out cruise control; partly because I've still to take the car onto a motorway, but mostly because I've never used cruise control before and I want to read up about it in the very thick instruction manual.

Charge point blues

Meanwhile, a chap from Chargemaster has just been to the house and installed a 32-amp charger just in front of where the car sits. And this has hit me with a negative moment in my electric experience,

The UK government has subsidised my charge point for about 75% of its cost. I was told by Chargemaster that I can claim the remaining cost, £290, from the Scottish government via the Energy Savings Trust Scotland. However, I've just discovered that I missed the boat. You have to claim before the point is installed. Chargemaster had told me they would provide the quote that was required for me to send to the EST. I was waiting for that quote, not realising that time was running out. Having spoken to Chargemaster and the Energy Savings Trust, it seems they might make an exception. I'll let you all know.

Meanwhile, I'm biased and I'm loving the car.

Life with the Leaf

There was huge excitement around the house as I finally got to go to the car dealer and pick up a new Nissan Leaf. Two days previously, I had taken my old car, a Toyota Yaris Hybrid, to a petrol station to fill it up - a gesture to the next owner. With a bit of luck, it may be the last time I fill one of my own cars with hydrocarbon fuel extracted from the ground.

The Yaris Hybrid has been a great introduction to electric driving, even though all its power came from the petrol that was hosed into it. Its great advantage was that those parts of the driving experience that the internal combustion engine was poor at were handled by an electric motor and a small battery. The way Toyota had blended electric drive with petrol drive was very well controlled so acceleration was smooth and relatively quiet.

The Yaris is up for sale and I have the Leaf Acenta Flex which is a delightful drive. Very smooth, quiet and effortless, not just because it has electric traction but also because Nissan have given its style and build an effort that suits its £20K-plus price tag. There's inbuilt satnav, bluetooth, Carwings Telematics, daft things like auto wipers and auto headlamps. In fact, the depth and range of the car's electronic presentation to the driver is such that I keep feeling they ought to offer a course for buyers.

Having put the effort into getting this car, I am bound to say to folk that I really like it. That's a natural stance for people who have decided to buy into an idea. In order to counter this expectation of my unsullied adoration for the car, let me try to say what I don't like about it. First, having driven various generations of Yaris for twelve years, the Leaf feels bigger than I'd have liked. I expect this is because Nissan might struggle to justify such an expensive car as a small car. I feel higher up too and the car has a sense of lolling about from side to side when people are getting in and out of it.

As far as the driving experience is concerned, the one thing that doesn't feel right is the braking system. In an electric car (and is was the same for the Yaris Hybrid), the engineers go to lengths to gather the energy that is normally lost when a car slows down and turn it back into electricity to top up the battery; it's known as regenerative braking.

Great care has to be taken to blend the effect of regenerative braking with the braking that comes from the brake pads and discs. The former is most useful at speed. The latter is necessary to actually stop the vehicle and to mop up excess kinetic energy that the regenerative system cannot handle when hard braking is required. The driver mustn't feel the change between the two. Moreover, they must have a natural sense of slowing that matches the pressure they are applying.

In the Yaris Hybrid, Toyota have this perfectly handled and I never thought about it. It was just right. In the Leaf, the 'law' that determines how much foot force leads to how much braking does not feel right. The initial pressure on the footbrake seems to yield far too little effect, but then as more pressure is applied, the braking effect increases more sharply than it should. The feel of the Leaf brakes has been a topic on the internet forums and I can see why. While my system isn't bad and I know that Nissan have looked into this in the past, I think there's more work to do there. Knowing that the feel of these systems is essentially programmed into them and controlled electronically, I feel they can do better.

Other concerns include charging the car in wet weather. Two charging sockets lie behind a door at the front that sports a blue-tinted Nissan badge. (Blue is design shorthand for electric, don't you know. My Yaris had blue trim and stitching for this very reason.) Though it's dry just now, this is Scotland and it will be pouring soon enough. Rain can be ubiquitous here and the moment will soon arise when I just have to give the car a charge while it's teeming down. I'll need to read up.

Tiny little user interface issues are beginning to creep up. There's a nice display through the steering wheel (where normal cars have a speedometer) that, as well as two great fan-like meters for battery charge and temperature, has a little screen for feeding you useful data as you drive, like percentage charge, miles/kWh, average speed. But you can only have one of these at a time. Well, I'd have liked more than one as a permanent display.

Final gripe, for now. I don't think the sound system is quite as nice as the Yaris's. Maybe as I tweak its controls, I'll find a setting I like.

Running the car for the first two days has been fine, apart from one bumpy patch. When I picked it up, it had about an 86% charge. This was down to about 70% by the time we visited relatives north of Glasgow who kindly allowed me to plug into their kitchen's 13A outlet using the cable that is supplied with the car. We took a note of their electricity meter, not because I was going to be charged for my charge. Rather, it was just to see how much it took. Off we went in another car for a long lunch and by the time we returned 2.5 hours later, the Leaf was back up to about 90%. If the battery is 24kWh and 21.5 of those are considered useful, then 20% of that is between 4 or 5kWh. The meter had only clocked three units but we realised that the solar panels on the house would have been contributing as well. Good news for me as I also have panels.

After some driving around Glasgow, I plugged into a 13A supply in our house for a few hours, then drove a friend home. Next day, I drove into work and decided to make use of the Electric Highway charging network on the way home. This is a network by Ecotricity that covers all the motorway service stations and all the Ikea stores. At these sites they have rapid charger 'pumps' that supply high-amperage AC for cars like the Renault Zoe and DC for cars like the Leaf. The latter is via a 'CHAdeMO' socket on the car. I drove into the Ikea car park and found both bays empty. They had both been occupied a few days earlier. This pump was out in the open yet its instructions talked about not using it with wet hands. Time for a cover, Ikea?

I plugged in no bother, used my smart card and started charging from 64%. Ikea profited from my visit as I decided to buy a clothes horse that I know will be so useful! By the time I got back 18 minutes later, the car was at 86%. This charger had achieved more in 18 minutes than a 13A supply had in 2.5 hours. I stopped the charge and tried to get the connector off the car. Could I hell!

The connector had a trigger like a petrol dispenser and a button at the top. I could not work out where I had gone wrong. Had I maybe failed to follow a correct sequence? I restarted the charge and went for a five minute walk. It was 90% full when I returned, so I followed the instructions on the pump's screen carefully, but still the damn thing wouldn't release.

I'm an introvert and ached at the thought of Ikea shoppers laughing at me struggling to 'cast off' before driving away. Of course, they weren't. They just walked by getting on with their business. My salvation came in the form of a phonecall to Ecotricity where a very helpful woman talked me through the proper way to release the lock mechanism on a CHAdeMO plug.

Drove home and plugged back into the kitchen socket, with the wire dangling from the window. Now at 100% with 101 miles range indicated. Lovely, and hopefully, a bit of afternoon sunshine halped out with that. Next week, I should be getting a proper charger installed.

Anticipating the SRV

A decade ago, I had the pleasure of hosting David Scott in Scotland for a few days. We were looking back on his 1971 mission to the Moon when he got to fly the Lunar Module 'Falcon' onto the lunar surface, then spend three days at the stunningly beautiful site near Hadley Rille carrying out the most extraordinary example of field geology. To get about, Scott drove himself and his colleague, Jim Irwin, around the plains and up the hills in an amazing little car called the Lunar Roving Vehicle, or LRV. I co-wrote a book about it a few years ago.

At the time Scott came to visit Scotland, we got about the landscape north of Glasgow in what was then my first new car, a Toyota Yaris. My friends called it the 'Scottish Roving Vehicle' and the name stuck. This went to the extent of being given a present of the registration 'A15 SRV' by my wife on my 50th birthday and my cars have had this plate ever since.

Now that I'm actually going to get my own electric car and it's going to sport the SRV plate, it seems fitting that, apparently, both the SRV and the LRV had a similar range. For although the LRV was only used for 20 miles at most, it was good for 75 to 90 miles, just like a Leaf!

It's about six weeks since I ordered the car. Originally, I had thought that it would arrive rather quickly. However, holidays got in the way and so did a phonecall from Macklin Motors to say that the car would be delayed a month. I should expect it mid-August - on my birthday as it happens.

The people who were tasked with installing my home charger went very quiet. I had expected a quote from them because I was to use it to claim the cost back from the Scottish government. I phoned them and was given a date just after I get the car for an installer to visit. I'm still waiting for the quote.

Meanwhile, Macklin have the car and I'll pick it up in two days. I went to sign the finance papers and got a chance to see it. It has no plates and has still to get it 'Pre-Delivery Inspection' or PDI. Funnily enough, there's another Apollo-related acronym. I think of PDI as meaning Powered Descent Initiation, the moment astronauts fired up their engine to descent to the Moon. What am I like!

Before today, I had begun to fret that there might be a problem with the sale. I just couldn't believe what I bargain I was getting and I was fearing that a ploy might be found to make me pay more for the car. My son (who once worked as a trainee car salesman) went through the figures with me. They made perfect sense. There was no problem and I really am getting a very good deal, one that is no longer available.

The crux of it was that the car and battery are two separate finance deals. The original advert had said that the total monthly payment would be £119.99. However, a headline figure (which was out of kilter with similar deals for other models in the range) said £199.99. The difference was £80, which just happens to be the cost of the battery per month. I worried I had missed something. But when we worked it out, my monthly payment for the car would be only £39.99 and I'd pay £80 a month for the battery. Stunning.

Macklin had never done one of these 'Flex' deals before where the battery and car were separate finance deals. All previous customers had bought the battery outright. Thus, when I went to sign on the dotted line (actually on an electronic pad), they hit a glitch. The arrangement meant having two agreements with the same chassis number, and the computer wouldn't allow that. Oops. I've signed for the car and will sign for the battery when I pick the car up in two days - I hope.

As part of my continuing preparation, I ordered a charging cable last night. The car comes with a cable that allows me to charge it from a conventional 13-amp UK domestic outlet. That will keep me going until the external charger comes next week. But to charge the car on most chargers, I need a cable that goes from the Leaf's low-power socket (a J1772 or 'type-1') to a standard outlet (a 62196-2 or 'type 2'). This was ordered from a company called EV Connectors and I added a carry bag to keep it tidy.

They screwed up! When I ordered, I had noticed that the price they quoted on one part of their site didn't match the price on another. I ordered anyway, annoyed at how much more expensive the cable was than I had been led to believe. Then today, as I was away at Macklin, my wife took a call from EV Connectors. They were very sorry that something had gone wrong and I had inadvertently been charged VAT twice. It would be refunded. I think what happened was that their site had VAT-inclusive prices but that the site then put VAT on top of those prices.

Next step is to actually drive the car in the real world and see how I get on. Can't wait!

Turning a new Leaf

Alternative energy has always fascinated me, as long as it is practicable. The solar panels I installed in 2010 were an expression of that but I've been equally interested in the idea of ditching fossil fuel as a means of powering a car.

Ever since I bought my first car in 1983, I've kept meticulous notes of all the fuel that's been hosed into my various cars over the years. Thanks to that and the recent use of consumption meters even in small cars, I've become very aware of the driving techniques that can drastically improve a car's mileage; steady cruising slightly below typical speeds, mild acceleration and anticipation of slowing or stopping to avoid the unnecessary use of brakes.

Since 2003, my car of choice has been the Toyota Yaris. It combines a relatively frugal consumption with half decent levels of trim. My most recent purchase of a Yaris Hybrid took this drive for efficiency one step forward. The main advantage of a hybrid car is that a battery and electric motor can take up the drive at those times when the internal combustion engine would otherwise return just awful mileage. This includes most city driving like sitting at lights or moving slowly. Comparing typical summer consumption figures of a 1-litre Yaris to a 1.5-litre Yaris Hybrid, I saw a jump from 55mpg to 65mpg.

I would note, however, that in the real world, Toyota's claimed consumption figure for the Yaris Hybrid of 80mpg+ is frankly unattainable across a full tankful of petrol. This from a driver who could just about achieve the manufacturer's numbers in a conventional car.

Ultimately, the hybrid car is only a halfway house. All of its energy comes from petrol. However, one thing I really gleaned from it was a sense of what driving an all-electric vehicle would be like. The drive train is so well designed that you hardly notice the change from electric to petrol. It's very smooth and very impressive.

A couple of years ago, I spotted mention of the Tesla Model S. Quite simply, this is an astounding car. While it's definitely out of my league (it's meant to turn wealthy petrolheads into leccy-lovers) it is nevertheless a game changer in the world of motoring. I place it as being perhaps the most influential, disruptive car of the last century. I had a shot in a Tesla about a year ago. Smooth, fast and responsive, it was an utter delight to drive and it most definitely points the way for the future. This is how cars should be. Ditch that engine!

Another important car in the electric vehicle field is the poorly named 'Leaf' from Nissan. First brought out in 2010, it has had five years of refinement but at first view, it is very expensive for someone like me. Nissan brochures show it as costing between £16,490 and £25,590 and the cheaper end of that range doesn't include having to hire a battery pack for at least £80 per month. This is way out of my range.

One option that excited me was to go for a second hand Leaf. I saw a video by Red Dwarf's Robert Llewellyn about how Orkney, a place I love, has become self-sufficient in electricity generation. The farmers there are busy putting up wind turbines and buying Leafs from a guy who trades in new and second hand electric cars. They get to drive around for next to nothing, and meanwhile, Orkney is wondering what to so with all the spare leccy being generated.

I decided that there's nothing to stop me having a test drive. I researched nearby Nissan dealers and headed off for a look. Macklin Motors is not far from me. Unlike the swish glass palaces that typify an Arnold Clark showroom, Macklin's was little more than a white-painted industrial unit. Two second hand Leafs sat on the forecourt and the salesman, apparently their electric car specialist, took the two of us for a spin.

Loved it! The Leaf is no Tesla, but it is nevertheless a smooth, quick and impressive car. Still, it was not my intention to buy one at that point. At the end, I thanked the salesman and said I would think about it. He looked so deflated, poor soul. I did think it odd that he claimed never to have heard of Tesla when I mentioned it. I'd have expected he'd be all too aware of the coming competition, especially since their direct-to-public sales model threatens his job in the long term.

I then looked more closely at Macklin's website. The offers they had for the Leaf were strange. Some were incredibly good yet, quite frankly, they were inconsistent with others. Some deals had a low-spec vehicle costing a lot while for others, high-spec cars were astonishingly accessible. It appeared that a mistake had been made on the site. The thing to be aware of is that the sales model makes it mandatory that the car's battery pack be hired to the customer. The low end for this is £80 per month.

I decided to pursue this further. One apparent deal would cost me £50 less per month than my Yaris Hybrid was costing me and there ought to be a further £50 per month saving on petrol. This for a car that was in the middle of the Leaf range. Importantly, the small print said that the price included battery hire.

I toddled back to Macklin's to the surprise of the salesman. He later told me he had thought I didn't like the car. In truth, I had chosen to be inscrutable. I said I was interested in their web deal for the Leaf Acenta. "The £200 per month deal?" he asked. I told him that there was a much cheaper deal and we both looked on the website. "That must be a mistake," he said as he scrutinised the small print. I pointed out that as I understood it, I was within my rights to take advantage of it and he agreed.

So my new Leaf was ordered there and then. It'll be red to keep the cost down (no metallic paint charges), cheap as chips to run and a 2-year experiment in owning and running a leccy car. I've got it on a PCP deal so I'll hand the car back at the end and walk away. Nissan are adding a healthy contribution, the balloon price is large (which makes the monthly payments small), the government are contributing to encourage electric cars and I will add a small deposit. Oh, and it's zero percent interest. It arrives at Macklin while we are on holiday so we'll wait until we get back to take delivery of it. Anyway, we need the Yaris for our trip up north.

And there's a thing. Range is going to be an issue with a car that goes for 90 miles at most before needing a recharge. To counter this, I'm told that Nissan has an arrangement whereby I can borrow a petrol car for up to two weeks per year to cope with longer trips. I have two upcoming short drives to England coming up where I get to test this offer. I think it's a good time to try this out.

A charger is on order from Chargemaster. The UK government are subsidising this by 80% and the remainder, a couple of hundred, will apparently be covered by the Scottish Government. I pay nowt. I've signed up to Ecotricity's Electric Highway which offers rapid charging and it free. I've also bought a £20 swipe card that lets me access the Charge Your Car network and it's usually free. It feels like the system is bending over backwards to get folk to go electric. Okay, I'll bite!

Five years and counting

Across five years of operation, I've never tired of gathering readings from my solar panels and watching the daily variations in power generation. The long term changes are as fascinating as those that occur across days or weeks. I now grasp in a way that I never had before why nature shuts down in winter. Though the eye perceives daylight in mid-winter when the Sun sits low in the sky, there really is very little energy remaining for plant life to photosynthesise. An overcast day in January can yield so little power that the power meter doesn't even register a tenth of a unit and remains at the same figure as the previous day.

So I have had these panels for five years. Here are the results thus far. First, how this last year compares to the first four:

2010 to 2011 - 2613.7 kWh
2011 to 2012 - 2398.0 kWh
2012 to 2013 - 2414.2 kWh
2013 to 2014 - 2433.4 kWh
2014 to 2015 - 2573.9 kWh

Second best year thus far, and higher than my original estimate of 2,500 annually. However, the average over the five years is a little low. I certainly don't get a sense of a slow decrease in the panels' efficiency. There's too much variability in the totals to perceive that. Here's how each year rose to its final value:

One interesting point to make is that we had a very sunny April this year. As a result, this year's generation had actually overtaken the first year on a single day less than a month ago before the high pressure system collapsed and the rain returned. Also, with just a week to go before the fifth anniversary was reached, the system appeared to have died. Except for the fact that the Sunny Boy inverter is guaranteed for five years, I felt a pit in the stomach. In the event, I need not have worried. The generation meter was also dead, a sure sign that the system wasn't receiving mains power. It needs a feed of mains to know how to synchronise the alternating current it generates with the grid cycles. In the event, I located a circuit breaker in the mains feed to the inverter and found that it had tripped. At this moment, it was a sunny day and the panels were surely generating significant power. I took the precaution of phoning the engineers at the installation company and checking there was no reason not to reset the breaker before doing so. All is well.

This graph shows the daily generation over these first five years:

As if I need proof, it shows just how variable Scotland's weather is, yet how consistently variable it is from one year to the next.

An important question is whether the finances of the system are performing as expected. At the start, I had estimated that it would take ten years to pay for itself. After five years, I would hope to be halfway to that goal, and so it seems. The installation cost me £14,300. Payments from the Feed-in Tariff (FiT) system has brought in £5,600 so far and I reckon to save a further £300 annually in power that does not have to be purchased - about £1,500 thus far. That makes a shade over £7k. Since the FiT payments rise with the retail prices index and the cost of electricity is set only to rise, I'd expect gains from the next five years will be more than equal. My ten-year target seems spot on. Everything beyond that is pure gain.