Nissan Leaf - Three Years On

This is an old post, preserved for reference.

The products and services mentioned within are no longer available.

For the last three years, I've been driving around in a Mark I Nissan Leaf electric car, and it's been great. Three years ago, there weren't that many of them about, but they have certainly picked up. When I got it, things were a bit uncertain, there were lots of neighsayers warning the battery pack would go bad and cost half the price of the car to replace, and also that it would never be practical etc. I was pretty confident it would be fine, but to minimise the risk, I took a three year lease. At the end of that the car goes back to the leasing company and if it does need a new battery, that would be their problem.

Well, here we are three years and 9,000 miles later, and none of the doom and gloom has happened. Far from it. It's been a great car, very easy to drive, very cheap to run and maintain, and no massive battery replacement bills. Running costs have been minimal, servicing seems to be mainly replacing the pollen filter and the screen wash. Charging in many places is free (many car parks, Ikea, Metro Centre, my parents house), and checking back on my chargeyourcar charging card, I have paid in total £3.00 in the last three years. Yes, three quid. The most I have paid in one go was in a business park where a 75% charge on the Leaf's 24KWh battery pack cost £1.05, between 1p and 2p per mile. My old faithful diesel Golf was about 10p per mile (+ servicing, road tax etc.). I don't have figures for how much I spent charging it at home, but at 10p per kWh, it would cost £1.80 for a 75% charge, working out between 2p and 3p per mile. Given that, and all the free charging, I would guess the 9000 miles has cost me in total less than £100. Read that again, nine thousand miles for under one hundred pounds!

I'm quoting these as 75% charge figures as I generally try to recharge when it goes down to 25% charge. That is usually showing 25-30 miles left at that point. I have learned that the range estimates on the Leaf are frankly rubbish. Often double when you would actually get. In practice, driving with no consideration for economy, and enjoying the car and it's quite impressive acceleration, I could get around 40-60 miles before it got down to 25%. This was fine for me, I do lots of short local journeys, so this is great. From Tynemouth, I've driven down as far as Billingham, and up as far as Alnwick. These both pushed the limits a bit. However it was comfortable driving to Durham or Newcastle Airport etc. The Mark I Leaf starts in 'D' (drive) mode, which is full performance. There is an 'E' (economy) mode, that reduces the acceleration and the heater to conserve energy. It's still nice to drive like that, but that is more effort to engage (press the gear knob down twice), so I didn't use it much unless I had to. I think the newer Leafs reverse this to encourage greater use of Eco mode.

The online 'carwings' app shows charge and estimated range has got a bit better, but is still flaky, and suffers from the same poor estimates and still shows percentages that can only be one of 13 values, one for each of the 12 bars on the display, so no additional granularity. There was a bit of publicity recently about the lack of security on this. I was interested to see whether there was any more detail available in the raw data responses, but didn't want to get my IP address blocked by trying it. Credit to whoever created that animation, I wonder if I am the only Leaf owner with a collection of Commodore PETs?

Towards the end, the range has seemed to have dropped a bit. Not sure why. There are 12 bars on the side of the 'fuel' gauge which show battery condition. Mine is still showing all 12. I have seen some other Mark I Leafs for sale with 30,000 miles on the clock and the battery condition dropped to 11 bars. As an example, I was trying to work out the numbers. One day, I was down to 2 bars, so 17% charge, 83% to fill. I charged it on a 3.3kW charger (a 16A supply), and in 4 hours 15 minutes, it was full. That is 4.25h x 3.3kW = 14kHw, it should have been almost 20kWh. I suspect this is an instrumentation problem, so it may have been reading empty when there was quite a bit of charge left, but I was never confident enough of that to run it flat. As I say, the instrumentation of the fuel gauge on the Mark I Leaf is a bit rubbish.

In all that time, I never actually ran out of charge. That was always the first question, 'what happens when you run out of charge on a motorway'. Of course the answer is the same as a petrol or diesel car, people point and laugh. The trick is also the same as with a conventional fuel vehicle, plan to not run out of fuel. I won't name any names, but in the three years I've had the Leaf, another member of my family has run out of diesel twice.

So all in all a great car. I would certainly recommend a Leaf to anyone who drives less than 50 miles a day. That's about 90% of car owners apparently. Cheap to run, very easy to drive, low maintenance costs. I've got a loan of a petrol car at the moment and I'd forgotten how much more effort it was to change gear all the time, go out of your way to stand for five minutes filling the tank with foul smelling flammable chemicals and then paying £60 for the privilege. (N.B. that's £60 for a tank of petrol to maybe do about 400-500 miles, I got 9,000 miles for less and two tanks full).

Like any used cars, the prices on used Leafs are quite low these days. There aren't many of these Mark I Leafs around, but it is well worth considering a used Mark II, which has a better heater, better range etc. It is now the end of the lease, and the lease company (Arval) has messed me around quite a bit offering to sell me the car at the end, then saying they couldn't, then saying ask again 30 days before the end of the contract and so on. The final conclusion is no, they won't sell me the car. Bit of a shame as I would have been happy to buy and keep it. The car has now been collected and I am soon to take delivery of my new Electric car. No, not a Tesla model 3 (I'm waiting for the model X), it will be another Leaf, one with more batteries, bigger range, seemingly better range estimates and a better stereo. More on that when it arrives.

2022 Update: I still have the 2016 Leaf that was on order when this was written. That's nearly 10 years of driving electric cars and would not go back. I don't like the styling of the current Leaf, so I am happy to stick with this one, it recently passed it's MOT with no problems, other than the tyres which were starting to show their age. They would normally we worn out by this age, but the regenerative breaking on the Leaf puts less stress on the types than traditional breaks.

Nissan Leaf Review - One Year On

This is an old post, preserved for reference.

The products and services mentioned within are no longer available.

12 months and 6,000 miles later, the leaf is still going strong. It's still a great car to drive and is still very practical. 

The car itself is great, it just works, and it is the way things are going. It’s sort of like the change from mechanical hard drives to solid state hard drives. Initially, SSD’s were faster and quieter, but were more expensive and had lower capacity and a few teething troubles, but now they are getting faster and cheaper and a very viable alternative to traditional hard drives. Yes, the mechanical drives are still cheaper and offer large capacity, but are still noisy, slow, higher power and vulnerable to shock. 

The electric car / SSD analogy does hit a lot of similar points, the early adopters pay more and get more limitations and need to tell the world about how good they are. There are still people who will prefer multi terrabyte mechanical drives or 3 litre petrol engines, but for general day to day use, you don’t really need either of them. There are also hybrids that try to offer the benefits of both solutions, but purists don’t like them. And like the combined VHS recorder and DVD player, may not be around for ever.

There are still a few annoyances, the dashboard instrumentation, at least as far as the battery charge meter, is still rubbish, and the website, although better that it has been, is still flaky. The range I am getting in practical terms, is about 70 miles driving around town, 50 miles if you include motorways. So given this, it is really important to know how much is left and frustrating that the information is not available. What you get is 12 bars. 12 bars lit is 100% charge, 1 bar means alarm bells flashing and get somewhere to plug in very soon. And that's it, not much details. It does also give an estimate of the mileage remaining. This is usually somewhat optimistic. It is based on your current useage, so if you are driving on country roads, it will be higher than on motorways, even if you're on a long downhill bit, it will be higher than an uphill bit. So unless all your journeys are on roads which remain identical, the estimates are usually way out.

As an example, I had one of my longer journeys, 29 miles each way. As I left home, I had 12 bars and the estimate was 105 miles. So that should be easy right? Well, as I go there, 29 miles later up the A1, driving slower that usual to improve the range, I was down to 6 bars and 45 miles estimated remaining. The tricky thing, is was that 7 just dropped to 6 which would mean there would be enough left, or was it 6 just about to drop to 5, which would mean I wouldn't make it home.

It’s a bit like having a digital watch and someone putting some tape over the last two digits, so rather than 10:30, all you can see if 10:##. If you depart on a journey and it says 10:## when you leave, and when you arrived it still shows 10:##. All you know is you have travelled for less than 1 hour. If, when you arrived, it read 11:##, then again, it’s you don’t have enough information to work out if you could make the same journey again before lunchtime. It may been 10:59 to 11:00 and have only taken one minute, or it could be been 10:00 to 11:59 and been nearly two hours, or anywhere in between. So yes, the instrumentation is a bit rubbish.

Pushing the limits of the range, I've managed 80 miles in one day, on one charge, and that's as much as I generally need to drive. To achieve that, I did need to drive a bit like a pensioner on a day trip, keeping to below 60 MPH, and I had to keep the air con off as the heater uses quite a bit of energy. When you drive in such a way, the dashboard slowly lights up segments of pine trees, and you accumulate theses over a journey. On that, I got three or four on the way there and another three on the way back!

These days I'm not commuting as much so it's fine, I just jump in the car and go. Press a button to open the car, press a button to start, then just press one pedal to go faster, one to slow down and turn the wheel. On the odd occasions I've driven other cars it amazes me how much effort is involved, using keys, having to constantly change gear to keep the revs in the small practical range of the engine and so on.

Living in a terraced property, it's not always easy to plug in and charge. Some of my neighbours are very considerate, some less so. These days, I just plug in when I visit my parents, so free lunch are a charge up at the same time, but at less that 1p pre mile, it's not that draining on the electric bill.

So with production having moved to Sunderland, and with more than 100,000 sold the Leaf is going from strength to strength. 

Free Electric Vehicle Charging Point

This is an old post, preserved for reference.

The products and services mentioned within are no longer available.

When I got my Nissan Leaf (see my Review of the Nissan Leaf Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3), I knew that one thing that was going to be a bit of an issue was charging the Leaf at home. The best I had come up with was using the 'Emergency Charger', plugged into a normal 13A socket and run out of the door.

This wasn't ideal as the charger box either hangs down from the socket, or is precariously balanced on a nearby shelf.

As I'm using this more, I've been thinking about some different options. The first was to attach some sort of cradle to the wall beneath that socket to better hold the charger up. But that would still leave it running under the door. The next option I considered was to get a box fitted to the outside wall with a 13A socket and a space for the charger. That seemed like the best option, but I thought I should have a look around and see what other solutions had been found. During that process, I found that British Gas were offering to install free charging points for electric vehicles. Don't worry, it's not the traditional meaning of the word 'free' on the internet, it is actually government funded, so no cost to me. Other than information, it contains a GSM device which provides information about how I use the charging point. Seems fine to me. They could gather the same information by looking a the back of my house every day and seeing if there car was there and plugged in or not.

The device was installed in the same place I'd been planning to put my box, but is self contained, and wired direct to the mains, so can charge at 16A rather than the approximately 10-12A limit of the 'emergency' charger.

I can then close all the doors and leave the car on charge. No needs to prop the door closed with a half brick, or use extension leads and have to worry about rain.

More details of the British Gas Free electric vehicle charging package. The program is running until March 2015, so get your free charging point now!

Update:
The unit really is in exchange for data provided, and unfortunately that means you need to have a good mobile signal at the location you plan to have the charging point installed. If there isn't a sufficiently strong signal, they won't install it, so best check first.

Enough Leafs to fill an autumn

This is an old post, preserved for reference.

The products and services mentioned within are no longer available.

They're multiplying! The three charging bays at work were full again today, three black Nissan Leafs. Is it 'Leafs', I don't think 'Leaves' is right, although I'm not sure there are normally enough of them in the same place for anyone to have thought about a collective noun.

Not quite all charging away, as the middle one didn't have a Type 2 charging lead, and only the post on the left had a domestic three pin socket for the 'emergency' charger supplied with the Leaf, the others have the faster Type 2 Mennekes socket. Mine (on the right) is using a type 2 cable which goes direct from the post to the car. The one on the left is using the 'emergency' charger.

I'm not keen on the box that hangs down about a foot from the plug, I'm not convinced that's going to last or be waterproof. I was hoping they would have gotten around to supplying a suitable type 2 cable with the new cars, but it appears not.

1,300 miles in and I'm still enjoying mine. I'm living with the range without a problem. A couple of occasions I've had to plan in advance when I was going to charge up, in order to make longer journeys, but nothing insurmountable. I'd still recommend one to anyone who drives less than 30 miles a day and has a place to charge up.

2022 Update: I am pleased to say when I bought my second Leaf in 2016, they did supply a Type 2 charging lead with the car.

Nissan Leaf Review - Part 4: One Month On

This is an old post, preserved for reference.

The products and services mentioned within are no longer available.

I've now had the leaf for a month, and driven 500 miles in it. I really like it, yes there have been a few minor issues, but solving those has been quite interesting, and it's now just an automatic part of the daily ritual to plug in and charge.

I've only had to charge up at home a couple of times to make a longer journey, so that's the only time I've had to pay. All in, the 500 miles has cost me about £2. (plus £250 for the charging cable, and the initial cost of the car).

As you're driving the dashboard shows via a series of dots how much power is coming out of or going back into the batteries. Given such a clear indication of the way your driving affects how much energy you use makes it easier to make minor adjustments to the way you drive to save energy, and extend the range. Things such as thinking about when you accelerate and when you actually need to, and braking sooner to slow down more gradually, making more use of the regenerative breaking.

The main annoyance for me at the moment is a minor one, with all the instrumentation in the car and the carwings website and app, nowhere does it give the one figure that would be most useful, the actual percentage charge available. The estimates are always going to be off as they can only be based on assumptions the the type of road you're currently driving will remain the same for the next 80 miles. It won't, I know it won't, I know exactly what the roads will be like, so given the vital missing information, I would be able to get a more accurate estimate. As it is, the best I can get is either the 12 bar gague or the misleading 'percent' on the carwings website which jumps is steps rather than giving the actual figure. Hopefully they'll be able to do something about it in future.

In summary:

• There were a few initial problems getting insurance and the correct charging cable, but those are soon forgotten about
• It's a very nice car, roomy, well built, fast, responsive, quiet, comfortable and easy to drive
• The range is comfortable around 60 miles driving normally (less that quoted, but perfectly workable)
• There are probably an additional 10 or 20 miles available past where I take it to, so 80 miles tops
• You can get a better range if you drive slower and more carefully
• It should be fine for anyone who drives up to about 40 miles a day, and has the option to charge at home or at work
• Once you're using it, although they are getting better, it's still wise to ignore the dashboard, app and website estimates, and just count the bars on the battery gauge
• The battery is 24kWh, so in the UK, that's about £3 to charge from empty, so at 60-80 miles, that works out around 4p per mile if you charge at home, although many charging posts are currently free. My old diesel would do 10p per mile at best.

Here's to the next 35 months of my 3 year contract!

2022 Update: 9 years later, I am still driving a Leaf, albeit my second one. The range estimate is a lot more accurate on the 2016 model, and shows a percentage remaining, and I get between 100 and 120 miles range, depending on the weather.

Nissan Leaf Review - Part 3: Living with a Leaf

This is an old post, preserved for reference.

The products and services mentioned within are no longer available.

I've had the Leaf for a few weeks now, and I'm starting to get the hang of working with the range. The first thing to do it seems is ignore the estimates and the quoted ranged and just see what you get from normal driving. I'm getting about 60 - 80 miles, about half of what the estimates tell me. The range of the car is estimated differently in various places, but most are over 100, so what I am getting is a little disappointing. However, it's still perfectly usable.

It's a balance, if you want a car which is nice and easy to drive, fast and responsive, you will get a lower range. If you want higher range, you need to drive in ECO mode with the aircon off and don't accelerate too often or too hard, you may be able to get into the 100 miles + range. I've been enjoying the car and getting less range, but I know if I'm getting a bit low, I can just change my driving style a little and extend the range. So you get the best of both worlds, you can have the fast, responsive, enjoyable to drive car when you want it, and drop to the economic one if and when you need to. You don't get that choice on a normal car, it's one or the other.

The range estimates on the dashboard are getting better, it is currently showing I have 100% charge and a 75 mile range (although carwings - see photo lower down - still shows a generic average of 120-149 miles).

The one piece information I've been relying on is the charge gauge. This has twelve bars, and I'm working to the following rules of thumb for these:

• 1 bar = 5 miles of my driving on my usual roads
• 1 bar = 10 miles at a push in ECO mode with the aircon off and driving carefully
• 1 bar = 30 minutes to recharge from a type 2 charging post (32A rated, limited to 18A by the onboard charger)
• 1 bar = 45 minutes to recharge from 13A standard mains socket
• 1 bar = 2kWh = 25p (if you're at home and paying) or free at most charging posts

So from that, it works out at 5p per mile (if you're paying), and it charges at 10 miles per hour. That's what I'm getting at the moment, I'll keep an eye on those readings over the coming weeks.

The carwings website shows a percentage of charge, which I think can be a little misleading as I think it only show percentages converted from the number of bars. I've been monitoring charging and I've only ever seen it change in 7-8% jumps, as if it can only show 1/12, 2/12, 3/12 etc. It's estimate is also a generic one, and not biased by your driving style, so shows the rather optimistic range of 149 miles with the air conditioning off. The car itself, as shown above, is now showing a more realistically attainable 75 mile range, although this varies a little to frequently when you're driving. If you're in a short 30 mph zone, the range shoots up just as fast as it falls when you leave the 30 zone, so it's difficult to keep track of. Hence, I'm using the bars.

At one point, I left the car with a charge shown on carwings as 50%. The next day, without having moved the car, it was showing 42%. I initially thought it had lost 8% somewhere! However, what was seen as a jump from 50 to 42 may have been a lot less as it dropped from 6 bars (50%) to 4 bars (42%). It may have just dropped slightly, just enough to drop down to the next bar. A little misleading initially, but now I think I know how it works, less of a concern.

2022 Note: That 8% drop was probably the battery heater which kicks in when it's cold overnight. The Mark I Leaf's heater was a bit primitive, basically just a resistive wire across the high voltage battery.

Nissan Leaf Review - Part 2: First Impressions

This is an old post, preserved for reference.

The products and services mentioned within are no longer available.

Just a quick update following on from the rather long first part of this review. One of the longest journeys I regularly make is a 34 mile round trip from here in Tynemouth to an office in Houghton-Le-Spring. I've been driving that route on and off for the last five years, so I know it well. All the little twists and turns, all the places here I need to change gear, and the places where I can get away without doing so. That makes it an ideal test for Nissan Leaf on motorway (type) driving, lets see how it does on that journey.

I have to say I've very impressed, it's so easy to drive. Just press the accelerator and it goes faster. Press the brake and it goes slower. It doesn't have to be any more complicated than that! It's so easy in fact, that I'm finding it easy to be going faster than I expect. I think I must be tuned to listening for the engine noise combined with knowing which gear I was in and subconsciously judging speed from that. One nice feature the Leaf has is a speed limiter, a bit like a cruise control, but just an upper limit, with no lower one. So, if my right foot is a little enthusiastic, it holds back and only accelerates up to the set speed, thus avoiding wasting energy by accelerating up to a higher speed, realising and then decelerating  It also benefits from gravity in the mode, so driving through the Tyne Tunnel, I set it to 40 mph and it was applying the brake automatically and recharging the battery via regenerative breaking all the time it was on the downhill part, the same on the long downhill stretch of the Houghton Cut at 50.

There are charging posts at my destination, so I plugged in my hard won Type 2 lead and charged from about 15% to full capacity in under 4 hours. During that time, I was able to monitor progress via the Nissan Car Wings website:

There is also an iphone app and an app for android (although it doesn't support android 4.x devices like my Nexus 7). Not all of the buttons on the site seem to be working at the moment, but I've raised this with Nissan and they're looking into it.

All in all, a very successful test. The range estimates I'm getting are a little misleading at times, I don't know how much of the driving history it bases it's assessments on, but it's going up and down all the time. I've already found I'm more comfortable with hard(er) facts like charge capacity. It seems that journey uses about 30% of the charge each way (the way I drive), so it's much easier to calculate based on that. There are 12 bars on the charge gauge, so as long as there are 4 bars left, I should get there. In practice  I'd be wanting 6 bars+ before setting off. Although I know if it is running low, just slowing down and turning off the aircon should extend the range sufficiently to get me there, and if it doesn't, there are a number of places I can call at on the way for a topup.

So much for a quick update.

2022 Update: The phone app and website are still a bit rubbish and still work intermittently. Which is a shame.

Nissan Leaf Review - Part 1: Actually Getting One

This is an old post, preserved for reference.

The products and services mentioned within are no longer available.

After almost 11 years, it's finally time to replace my trusty VW Golf GT TDI. This has served me very well over the last decade or so, and even though it's now 14 years old and still solid and reliable, it's time to upgrade.

I've looked around at various options and have become very interested in the possibilities of electric cars. It's a tricky subject to get decent information on, because there seems to be a lot of bad press on them, but really when you get down to the facts, it seems to be a combination of lazy journalism or lack of understanding.

The first thing everyone says when I mention electric vehicles, is 'what happens when you run out of charge on the motor way'. When you think about it, the answer is exactly the same as 'what happens when you run out of petrol on the motor way'. The answer is this, people point and laugh and you make an embarrassed call to a recovery service. The point is, you don't get into that situation. In a petrol car, if the low fuel light was on and the gauge was low, you'd think ahead and refill before making a long journey. It's exactly the same with an electric vehicle.

The main difference is that the overall range when full on an electric vehicle is in the order of 100 miles, whereas my teenage diesel could get in the order of 600 miles with 50 miles to the gallon. So, yes, it needs charging more often, but you can charge at home, at work, various car parks, and it costs between £0 and £3 per charge. As opposed to £70 on my golf. Given that information, if you plan to take long trips or drive more than 100 miles a day, an electric vehicle isn't for you. But if you're like the vast majority of us and you commute to work and back, 10 to 20 miles, plus trips to supermarkets etc. there's no reason to consider 'range anxiety' an issue.

So, my decision was made, an electric vehicle was a good choice for me, so all I I had to do was pick one. There aren't many choices at the moment, and the Nissan Leaf seems to be the best choice for me. There is a dealer close by, so I arranged a test drive and tried it out. It was fine. It worked, I was able to drive up and down the Coast Road without a problem. I didn't run out of charge. I didn't have to push it home. I didn't have to stop half way for a charge. It just worked. I don't have much experience of driving an automatic, but it didn't take me long to retire my left foot and left hand and drive only with the accelerator and brake (although I'm still subconsciously trying to check I'm in first when I'm waiting at lights).

I'm not the slimmest of drivers, but there was plenty of space inside, probably more than the Golf, even though it was about the same size externally (so it's 'bigger on the inside'). That's because there's just less stuff in an electric vehicle, the biggest item is the battery which is beneath the floor, the charger is behind the back seat, and the motor, transmission sit in the front where the engine would normally go. Also under the bonet is a standard 12v battery to power the lights and the radio etc.. That lot takes up much less space than an internal combustion engine, gearbox, transmission, exhaust, fuel tank, etc. This is front wheel drive, so there's a bit more going on, some of the older rear wheel drives were frighteningly simple and elegant with the wheels attached directly onto the motor shafts.


Having overcome what the press had said was the main issue (that of range), and my main issue (that of interior space), I couldn't see a reason not to get one, so I ordered one. Buying outright didn't seem the best option, and there is a potential issue of battery longevity. Nissan were quoting 5-7 years I think, and Renault had opted for a different solution and were actually leasing the batteries to the driver. Although it may be seen as a downside, all that will happen in reality is the maximum range will slowly reduce. It's not like a petrol car where when the engine goes, it goes at that's it. The solution seemed to be to go for a three year contract hire rather than an outright purchase. That gives me a good long time to try it out and see if it works for me. If it does, I'll be able to look around and buy a newer, faster, better, more version in three years time. Or a Golf TDI if it hasn't worked out.

That was what seemed to be the main objection out of the way, so it should all be plain sailing from then on.... Well, no it wasn't. I hit a few snags, the ones they don't tell you about when they're too busy driving around and around Lincoln waiting to run out of charge. I think most of these will be sorted over time, but in an emerging market, there are some teething troubles.

Firstly charging. That shouldn't be a problem right, that's one of the main functions of the car? Well there are essentially three ways to charge the Leaf. One is via a supplied charger which has a standard 3 pin 13A mains plug on the end and charges the car in around 8 hours (normally overnight). The second is to plug into one of a growing number of charging posts in public and office carparks, many of which have the new Type 2 Mennekes.sockets which with 32A will charge in about 4 hours. The third is to use a rapid charger, currently mainly installed at Nissan dealers, which can charge to 80% in 30 minutes. 

The 13A plug charger is supplied with the car. The rapid chargers have cables built in, much like a petrol pump. What's missing is the cable which connects the car park charging posts to the car. Nissan are apparently going to supply one in future models, but at the moment, they couldn't source one. I found one online and reluctantly ordered it (£200 for a cable!). After a week, no sign of the cable and the car delivery date approaching, I contacted them and found it was out of stock until some time in April - I wonder when they were planning to tell me that? I then searched further and found another lead from a different supplier, more expensive (£250 for a cable!!), but looked better with a longer flexible black cable as opposed to thicker bright orange. (and yes, it is thinner, but the conductors are still 6mm squared cable, so it is rated for 32A). That was in stock and was delivered the day before the car. So that one's sorted, and probably isn't going to be a problem for future purchasers.

The next issue they don't tell you about is insurance. It seems half of the insurers I called didn't have the Leaf listed or don't do electric vehicles (0cc? ok, but is it petrol of diesel?) and the other half don't insure leased vehicles. Again, I'm sure they'll get the hang of it over time.

It was quite a struggle in the end. It took a while to get the paperwork sorted and insurance setup, and after several days of emails, and phone calls, the Nissan dealers IT problems and three hours sitting in the dealership signing things, I finally drove away in my new Nissan Leaf. Being electric, there's no engine noise, only road noise and the depressing sounds of depreciation as a new car is driven off the dealers forecourt.

So I'll leave it there for this instalment  this is going to be an experiment, it might not work, but I think it will. Time will tell. There are only a few thousand electric vehicles on the road in the UK at the moment, so it's a bit new, but get over the few teething problems, and I think it's going to work. I'll continue this review over the coming months as I get to know the Leaf and report on my progress.

2022 Note: I think the experiment worked. I had to give that Leaf back after three years, and so I bought another new one, this time with an option to buy after three years, which I did, and I still have it, and it's still a great car. And I haven't run out of electric once.