Nissan Leaf review

Although electric cars have been touted as the eco-friendly future of motoring, they have yet to make much of an impact – you’re more likely to think of the much-mocked G-Wiz than a high-tech car of the future. Nissan hopes to change this perception with the Leaf, the first purpose-built, mass-produced family electric vehicle.

One of the key things about the Leaf is that, in order to banish forever thoughts that electric cars are just golf carts with wind-down windows, Nissan has built it to look and feel like a standard petrol-driven road car. We’re happy to report that the Japanese manufacturer has been largely successful.

From the outside its curved lines make it look like a regular family hatchback (it’s slightly bigger than a Yaris and slightly smaller than a Focus). Inside the cabin there’s plenty of room and the Leaf will comfortably take four adult passengers, with room in the back seat for a fifth for shorter journeys. The cabin is well finished with a pleasingly chunky steering wheel, but the plain fabric seat coverings and abundance of plastic mean the car will never be taken for a luxury model.

The Leaf is powered by an 80kW electric motor which produces 280Nm of torque – slightly more than a Porsche Boxster S. The healthy amount of torque means it’s quick off the mark and acceleration is rapid up to around 30 or 40mph, but drops off after that. Despite this it’s important to note that we had no problems reaching a comfortable 70mph cruise or joining fast main roads from a sliproad – the Leaf feels, to all intents and purposes, just like a normal car. In many ways it’s smoother and easier to drive than a petrol car as there’s just one gear. The only thing that gives you any clue that you’re in an electric car is the complete lack of engine noise. For a more in-depth look at the drive and feel of the car read the Nissan Leaf review on our sister site, CarBuyer.

As there’s no engine noise, Nissan claims passengers would notice other sounds, such as wind noise, more. Nissan has made some clever tweaks to achieve a quiet ride. For example, the headlights are shaped to direct airflow around the wing mirrors, and Nissan had to fit new windscreen wiper motors, as the standard ones sounded too loud without engine hum to drown them out. As the car is so quiet there was worry that pedestrians wouldn’t hear it coming – for this reason a speaker mounted in the bumper makes a whooshing noise at low speeds.

The Leaf doesn’t just have an advanced powertrain – Nissan has also spent a lot of time kitting out the interior with the latest technology. As there’s only a single version of the Leaf, all equipment is standard and comes with every model – which helps to make the relatively high purchase price easier to swallow. The Leaf’s UK list price is £30,990, but you qualify for a £5,000 government grant. This brings the price down to a still-hefty £25,990 – top-of-the-range Ford Focus territory.

Driving information

If you’ve been inside a Toyota Prius and looked at the hideously complicated dash, odd dials and distracting animations showing when you’re running on petrol or battery power, you’ll be pleased to know that Nissan has not tried to reinvent the wheel just because the engine has changed from petrol to electric.

The instrument cluster consists of LCD displays, which give you the electronic equivalent of a rev counter – only instead of revolutions it shows you how much power you’re using. The only difference between this and a standard counter is that there’s a negative section, which shows you how much power is feeding back into the battery from regenerative braking when you lift off, coast downhill or brake.

One of the main problems people have with electric vehicles is range anxiety, where they worry if they’ll make it to their destination before the batteries go flat – unlike with a petrol or diesel car, you can’t catch a bus to the nearest petrol station and come back with a gallon can. Nissan has attempted to mitigate such worries. On the dash is a prominent charge meter, which shows you how much power remains. The 7in touchscreen can also be set to show what systems, such as drivetrain and air conditioning, are drawing power and your estimated range. You can even hit a button to have a map display your range in two concentric circles; the white one is where you’ll definitely reach, the grey circle is where you’ll get to if you drive economically.

To aid economical driving, the Leaf shows a tree growing on the dashboard when you’re driving sensibly. The longer you keep this up, the more branches and leaves you add to your tree. It’s a simple but effective method of making sure that you’re not wasting power.

You can also set the car to Eco mode, which saves power and attempts to get more back from regenerative braking, but means acceleration goes out of the window. It’s the kind of mode that works when you’re pootling around town, but as soon as you hit the motorway you’ll want to turn it off and get more power.

Nissan quotes a range of 109 miles, but what you actually get really depends on how you drive and what other systems you have on. For example, the car showed us that turning on the AC would reduce the car’s range by 12 miles. All electrical systems have an impact on range, from lights to radio to windscreen wipers. In our test we weren’t driving particularly economically, but would have managed around 80 miles if we’d have driven the car to exhaustion.

In short, there’s enough battery power for the vast majority of commutes as well as extra headroom for additional diversions such as stopping at the supermarket on the way home.

Charging and iPhone App

You can charge the car in one of three ways. First, you can plug it into an ordinary three-pin socket, although a full charge takes around 12 hours. Alternatively, you can have a dedicated 16-amp power supply fitted in your drive for £995, which will charge the car in around eight hours. Finally, Nissan garages have 50kW fast chargers, which will top the car up to 80 per cent charge in just 30 minutes.

The built-in satnav has an option to find the nearest charging station, although at the time of writing the closest ones to our Milton Keynes test drive were more than 40 miles away in London. This situation will improve – Regional Development Agency One North East has plans to install 1,000 charging points across North East England by March 2013 – and the car will update the list of available stations automatically.

You access the charging dock through a dedicated flap at the front of the bonnet, which you release by pulling a catch inside the cabin. The dock contains both the fast-charge and regular charging ports, and there’s a cable to charge from standard UK sockets in the boot.

What’s particularly clever about this car, though, is the web interface and iPhone app (an Android app is also on its way). Once you’ve configured a username and password through the touchscreen in the car, you can access its vital statistics from the web interface or iPhone app using the Nissan Carwings system.

The web interface and apps are simple to use and let you check the car’s current charge status. You can set a schedule for automatic charging, so you can make the car only charge at night and take advantage of cheap rate electricity, and even set a minimum charge limit. Even smarter, you can configure the AC in the car to come on at a certain point, so that you can climb into a cool or warm car depending on the weather outside. This last feature is best used when the car’s on charge so you don’t drain the battery with the energy-intensive aircon.

The car connects to Carwings over existing mobile networks, but there are no bills to pay and you only need a web connection from your iPhone or PC to access all the features.

Entertainment

You access the car’s entertainment features through the 7in touchscreen. The car stereo supports AM and FM analogue stations and will play music from CDs; the screen hinges automatically downwards and forwards to let you access the CD slot when you press eject.

Alternatively, you can plug in an iPod to the USB port or use the 3.5mm auxiliary input to hook up any MP3 player. A more convenient method is to connect to your handset via Bluetooth, which takes just a few seconds to set up. As well as giving you hands-free calls and voice dialling, you can stream stereo music from a compatible player.

We had no problems getting either our Android or iPhone 4 working this way. Even better, the track skip buttons on the touch screen and steering wheel let you skip tracks on the phone. This worked on both the iPhone’s iPod app and in Spotify with our offline playlists. The system can’t pull track names from the device, so you need to check your phone’s display to see what’s currently playing.

Navigation

The on-screen display also provides navigation through the Nissan EV Navigation System. It’s pretty quick to set a destination, and the directions it gave us were clear. We like the way that when you get to a junction it present a split-screen view, with the close up of the manoeuvre on the left, and the continuation of the route map on the right.

Voice instructions were easy to understand and you can set instruction volume separately from the rest of the entertainment system, so you can listen to music at full volume without being deafened by a sudden voice prompt. It made a couple of errors, such as asking us to turn left when it really seemed to mean right, but this was a rare occurrence.

Reversing camera

Putting the car into reverse turns on the rear reversing camera and shows the image on screen. It also has one of the best reversing aids we’ve used. An orange box the width of the car is superimposed on the rear camera footage. As you turn the wheel, the box curves to show the arc and direction that the car will take, which helps you see where you’ll end up and adjust your trajectory accordingly. Using the camera we managed to park perfectly every time.

The video footage also has a visual proximity meter; you’re safe if an object is in the green zone, but let it stray into red and you’re in danger of hitting it. It works fairly well, but can sometimes be confusing to understand. A parking sensor with an audible beep would have helped to make parking even easier.

Cruise Control

The steering wheel controls also give you access to the cruise control system. You can set a speed and use the plus and minus buttons to adjust it on the fly, speeding up or slowing down the car as you go. There’s no adaptive speed control to follow the car in front, but having just one gear on the car means you can turn on cruise control and not have to worry about changing gears.

There’s also a speed limiter system, which lets you set the maximum speed that you want the car to go. It’s a neat way of making sure you don’t get caught out by speed cameras. This is as easy to set as the cruise control system, with the controls easy to reach.

Conclusion

The Nissan Leaf isn’t just a good electric car, it’s an impressive car in its own right. Its smooth ride and well-equipped interior make it a pleasure to drive. Whether it’s worth buying really depends on the types of journey you intend to make. It’s fine for driving around town and short commutes, but even taking into account government grants it’s expensive. Some of this is offset by the cheaper running costs – Nissan claims you’ll save £1,680 a year versus a petrol-powered car on a 12,000-mile average mileage – but you may still have to rent an internal-combustion vehicle for longer journeys.