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.