Be Excellent To Each Other

LEAF Day!



Have done about 50 miles in it so far. Currently charging off a 3-pin plug at home, although my dedicated charger will be installed on Monday.

Happy LEAF day!
Picture not of leaf.

Isn't that really depressing after a 750i?

Nope.

The car is just as well specced as the 750i was - in fact, it's better. It's quieter, smoother, plenty fast enough, and of course is significantly cheaper to run.

Hippy!

My front left tyre had 13 psi the other day.

I'm a total convert. How much do you think you'd have to pay for a BMW with:

Heated leather seats
Heated steering wheel
Bluetooth handsfree (with Audio, usually a costly option)
USB/iPod connectivity and AUX IN
Sat-nav with a 7 digit postcode search (no BMW I've had does this, but newer ones might)
A BOSE sound system
Rear view camera
All-round view camera
Auto lights
Auto wipers
Various driving modes
Regenerative braking
Tyre pressure monitoring
Ability to set timers for climate control/heated steering wheel etc. to come on

And on top of all this, not pay ANY road tax (or VED or whatever you want to call it), have minimal servicing costs (no fluids to change and very few moving parts to worry about!) AND only pay about 2p per mile (or 0p per mile if you happen to have a handy free of charge rapid charger a few miles away from you that you can use)

They've tried it with the i3, but that falls short on the fact that it's totally impractical thanks to it's diminutive size, and is significantly more expensive for no range benefit over the LEAF.

About the only thing my LEAF doesn't have which I might have found useful was rear parking sensors, but given that it has a rear camera that's not a huge loss.

If you're ever near Wombwell, my brother hashas a fast charger installe

Before July I'd never driven a car before, and now I'm driving round in a blue 2003 Toyota Celica.

a) This is a pre-invation to my funeral.
b) It looks like your car in this picture, which probably means it is. Do you feel ashamed?

That's a Ford Puma.

Those are all things that I care about, so my interest is really piqued. What's the boot space like? Interested to hear if using the heaters, gadgets etc has much impact on battery life?

Leather seats? Not that much of a hippy!

That sounds lovely Gaz. I don't care for cars, but I like electric brum with gadgets! I hope they are affordable for greater numbers one day. They make me happy, like fields of giant wind turbines turning magestically in the sun.

I'm sure that MrsG's next car will be electric, she just got another Honda Jazz that's only a couple of years old so that'll probably stay with us for five years or so and by then I would reckon that electric cars will be starting to make up a good proportion of new cars sold. There's no way I could live with one as the only car in the household though, even the most ardent fans seem to have a fossil burner as well for longer trips.

The driver's side door handle does not work on the Ka. I had to climb in through the boot this morning.

I would get an electric car but it isn't a good deal right now. The Ka needs a tank of petrol every 2 weeks (£40) so unless one is available for less than £80 a month I'll leave it for now. Although a door you can open from the outside is a big draw.

Why the boot rather than the passenger side?

That thing is an affront to the gas guzzling money pits thread!

We need a lawnmower riding hippies thread.

(In all seriousness, I can imagine a car like the Leaf is absolutely amazing in a lot of scenarios, although I'm not sure I'd want to be charging to work and back over the mountain here every day in one.)

I parked it up against the fence on the driveway so it would be easier to get the pushchair in and out (like many houses in The North, we don't use the front door).

Do you crawl in your house via an open bathroom window?

Boot space is 370 litres in the standard model, 355 in the Tekna (the one I have) as it has a BOSE subwoofer taking up a bit of room.

And you can fold the seats down of course, so lots more space available if you need it.

Using the climate control has an impact on range, but seems to be minimal - 5 km. The car tells you what impact switching it on/off will have too.

Yeah, they're really not there yet as far as longer trips are concerned (Teslas excepted) but they will get there, and in the mean time there are always the plug-in hybrids - I was following a Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV through town this morning.

How far do they go on a charge? And how do they do with hills?

Like my drive in the morning is a climb up onto the mountain road (the clue's in the name!) and I have to do that twice a day, on the way to work and then back again.

I once got a an Aygo as a courtesy car, it didn't like the mountain climb. At all.

I charged to 100% last night and the rangemeter (also known as the Guess-o-meter!) read 90 miles. Real world range you'd be looking at 80-90, but long climbs can have a significant effect on range.

Although of course, if the downhill section is just as long, you can use the regenerative braking to charge the battery back up again.

90!

Yeah, guessometer

Having lived in the North for many years... What?

I have an electric car question. Do they have gears and a clutch?

In The North, front doors are seldom used by Northern People.

We use the back door. Well, more of a side door. Leads to the kitchen, rather than the entrance hall.

No.

I don't think they have a clutch - I would imagine the "throttle" just controls the motor speed which turns the axles/wheels or whatever. Not 100% sure on that though.

The Tesla Roadster originally had 2 gears I believe, but it caused problems and there wasn't really any need for it, so they took the second gear out. I assume the Model S is also "single gear", and the LEAF certainly is.

There's no need for gears though - being powered by electric motors on each of the (driven) wheels, it can get full torque immediately - which is one of the reasons the Model S can do 0-60 in under 3 seconds, and why even the LEAF (despite a tested 0-60 time of about 10 seconds) will beat most cars off the line.

There's a "drive selector" in the LEAF which looks like this:


Press the button on top to put it into Park.
Pull it across and down to put it into D, and do it again to put it into B (D is normal drive, B is basically normal drive but with strengthened regenerative braking) or pull it across and up to put it into R.

No "handbrake" either - where the clutch would normally be is a pedal which operates the "handbrake", push it down to apply, and to release you then just push it again and it springs back up.

All surprisingly intuitive

//edit: That image is from a LHD car, incidentally, the direction you pull the lever is reversed.

Or, what Grim... said

There's a handbrake where the clutch should be?

I'd image that could get interesting.

Foot operated parking brakes aren't new, though. Can't remember what but I've driven something with one.

Sure, but having them where the clutch is, rather than buried off to the left? Fuck that - I'd be hitting it every time I came toward a corner

Does park stop the car from moving, or do you need to use the parking brake?

Is that so you can handbrake turn the corner, or by accident as you think it is a clutch?

I think an electric car would be ideal for me as I only use my car for work and I live about two miles away.

I can't afford one though so that's out of the question.

Two miles? Have you considered either a pair of shoes or a bicycle?

Or a segway?

Nope, it would be pointless as you'll never save enough on fuel to justify the cost.
The ideal useage case is when you have an 80 mile round trip every day to maximise savings.

The E38 BMW 7 Series that I bought off Trooper had a "handbrake" there.

It was the first time I'd driven an automatic.

I'm sure you can imagine how painful it was when my head catapulted itself forward into the windscreen when I came to a stop at the T-junction near Trooper's flat.

Well, it probably is further to the left than a clutch pedal would normally be, but not by much - especially for big-footed morons like me.


Park does, but I wouldn't like to rely on it on an incline.

I'm not 100% sure if the car creeps forward without any "throttle" either, need to test that more thoroughly.

I would hope it doesn't, there is no need for a tick over and the power can be applied instantly, it would be a complete waste of energy if it does.

Indeed, but then on the other hand most automatic vehicles *do* creep so they may have kept that feature so people get what they're used to.

May even be possible to turn it off, if it does!

It creeps when in "gear" and no throttle applied. But actually, thinking about it, it's not a waste of energy, if you're creeping forward then chances are you're going to be going in that direction anyway, so it's just a "head start"

Our big Mazda has a skinny wee pedal for parking brake. It's to the left, but it's up against the wall and raised higher than the other pedals so to activate the brake requires a very conscious movement, no confusing for a clutch pedal. To release, press again. Similar for Lady T's dad's car, except the release is a handle to pull, so quite a few times I tried to pull away with the brake on after mistakenly thinking that i'd released it with my foot. No big deal but a little jarring.

Yeah, higher and to the left is what I'm used to (in a Volkswagen Touareg).

Every US auto I've driven has it like that (well, on the far right though)

It makes sense in a LHD though, you're not going to accidentally hit the thing if it's off to the right.

If the parking brake pedal is accidentally depressed i'd say it's a pretty poor design.

Yeah, it is much higher in the LEAF actually, otherwise I'd be pushing it down every time I put my foot there to rest.