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!