At last, a real world EE Times review of the Nissan Leaf and an insight into what happens when you do anything other than read the manufacturer’s specification sheet and live in fantasy land.
Charging seems a little confusing, but this is an American review and they have a 110V electrical system over there. It appears that a UK charge cycle from a home mains outlet would take 13 hours (26 hours in the US, unless you buy a 220V adapter). Charging time also appears to be heavily influenced by the ambient temperature.
As the article says:
Most Leaf owners would not want to put up with such a long charging time, unless they could limit their driving so as not to go below about half a full charge.
Quite. So you can buy a 3.3kW charging dock which costs around $2,200 when “installed in a new construction” (i.e. a newly built house as part of the design, so it isn’t a simple affair). Using this, a full charge cycle takes 8 hours (that’s just from the literature though – the reviewer hasn’t actually tested one).
For an extra $700 you can have a cord supplied so you can use 50kW charger kiosks that are supposed to be appearing everywhere. And the Leaf also has a feature to limit charging to only 80% so the batteries last longer (I told you about the damage the 50kW chargers do in a previous article on this subject). Of course, in simple terms 80% charge means only 80% of the maximum range – so 100 miles becomes 80 miles. Or does it?
The reviewer says that on full charge the range display read “93 miles”, but on driving for only 2.7 miles with the heater and headlights on this fell to 77 miles. He also indicates that the maximum “93 miles” fell to 82 miles when the climate control was on…
But the car can run with outside air flowing through the cabin without the climate control on (much like back in the day when most cars did not have air conditioning).
Sounds great, doesn’t it? Still, Mark Goodier seems to have sufficiently low standards to still be gushing about it, whilst simultaneously ignoring the blindingly obvious limitations.
I still want to know how far it will actually go without a charge and with the climate control and lights on. Otherwise, a very good review.