MOTORING Electric dreams
Nissan’s Leaf is ideal for local trips and the fuel savings are impressive, but its short range makes it unsuitable for longer journeys and the price is hefty compared to rival hatchbacks
WORDS NEIL LYNDON
got on a year’s loan. The next question is always ‘How much are you saving on fuel?’ Between them lies the painful paradox that
‘H
bedevils electric cars. In principle, these cars may look like a cure for the world’s headache over carbon-dioxide emissions and also an escape from the weekly highway robbery at the fi lling station. At times, however, they can reduce you to a quivering jelly of anxiety. Take, for example, a recent trip to a meeting
near Perth. The superb satnav in the Leaf (all accessories on this car are fi rst class) told me the destination was 37 miles from my home. The nominal range of the Leaf on a full eight-hour charge – using the PodPoint I have installed at my home – is about 90 miles. When I arrived, I plugged in the 13-amp
cable that comes with the car and topped up the battery for an hour from my host’s mains supply. That should have ensured the car had enough juice. When I left the meeting, however, and set
the satnav for home, a mournful voice I had never heard the system use before intoned: ‘Destination might lie outside attainable range.’ Yikes. I had to creep home with everything switched off except the headlights. The tempera- ture inside the car plummeted. When I fi nally got through our gates, the range indicator was showing only three miles left.
How on earth could such a nerve-wracking
ow’s the range?’ That’s the fi rst question everybody asks about the electric Nissan Leaf, which I have
development happen? It was a winter night. I was carrying an adult male passenger. We were running the air-conditioning to keep warm. I think he might have used his seat heater at one point. I may have switched on the heater for the steering wheel for a moment. On top of those indulgences – all of which
‘If you want to go any distance, you need to rest your right foot on the accelerator pedal as lightly as if there was a soft-boiled egg beneath’
Below: At £31,600, the
top-of-the-range Nissan Leaf Tekna is expensive, even with the government offering grants of £5,000 to buy electric cars.
drain the battery – I drove the Leaf at normal, legal speeds on the A-roads and motorway to Perth. That was my big mistake. If you treat the Leaf as if it were a conventional car, it goes into nervous collapse. If you want to go any distance, you need to rest your right foot on the accelerator pedal as lightly as if there was a soft-boiled egg beneath and fully employ all the systems for regenerative braking and eco driving that conserve power. Even then, it would be impossible to drive
from Edinburgh into England. There are no charging stations on the way. For daily potterings close to home, however,
the Leaf is pure delight. Nothing could be better for a day that includes the school run, the library, the supermarket and lunch at the golf club. In our local town, the central car park has two no-charge parking bays designated for electric cars. Both are always vacant. That benefi t alone might almost justify the horrify- ing purchase price of this car. Except, of course, that no legerdemain can achieve that feat. The top-of-the range Tekna version of the Leaf I have borrowed would cost £31,600 if the government didn’t offer £5,000 to every purchaser of an electric car. Even deducting that bribe makes my Leaf screamingly more expensive than a comparably equipped VW Golf or Ford Focus, the family hatchbacks closest in size to the Leaf. Since we
started running our Leaf on
household electricity that costs 2p per mile, our
expenditure on fuel has more than
halved. But you’d have to keep it for many years before such savings came close to equalling the purchase premium. And, at the end of that time, the Leaf might be almost worthless because its battery could be completely fi nished.
So the last question everybody asks is ‘Would you buy one?’
Answer: only as a second car. And only if I was the Duke of Sutherland.
WWW.SCOTTISHFIELD.CO.UK 147
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