The Nissan Leaf is a fun car that accelerates impressively, handles curves and turns smoothly, and just drives bigger than it looks.
If you’re reading this on Sunday morning, it’s likely I’m preparing myself to say goodbye to the 2011 light-blue looker and getting ready to take it for a last drive to the airport branch of Enterprise Rent-A-Car after a weeklong fling.
But am I ready for a long-term commitment? I need more time to think about it.
As is the case with other drivers I’ve spoken to, it all comes down to "range anxiety," that fear that you will run out of electrical juice and not be able to find someplace to recharge, the worry about the time it will take make a charge, or both.
Until there are more charging stations in public areas and the technology advances to the point that a full charge can be completed quickly, it’s going to be difficult for my wife and I, and likely many other households, to view a 100 percent electrical vehicle as a viable, full-time option.
EV LIVING
Visit HawaiiNewsNow.com for reviews on the Mitsubishi i-MiEV, Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt by Dan Cooke, Steve Uyehara and Tannya Joaquin.
For video reviews on each car, visit the following sites: Dan Cooke’s Mitsubishi i-MiEV: goo.gl/cgNZs; Steve Uyehara’s Nissan Leaf: goo.gl/TqjJW; Tannya Joaquin’s Chevy Volt: goo.gl/sWl8e
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The Leaf, at full charge, is supposed to go 100 miles. But that depends on how and where you drive it. The range gauge, which I affectionately dubbed "The Estimator," estimates how long you have left to drive on the current charge. But its estimates fluctuate wildly during a drive. Go up a hill and it will drop a few miles. Take your foot off the pedal as you cruise down a hill and it will rise back one or two miles.
My house is almost exactly 20 miles from my office in downtown Honolulu. And the trusty odometer on the Leaf confirmed that. But the first night I drove home, The Estimator started me with a range of 37 miles of juice when I left the office. Eight miles into the drive, it told me I was down to 25 miles. How did I lose 12 miles when I traveled only eight? When I pulled into my driveway, it was at 11 miles left. So The Estimator was off about six miles for my trip home.
The charge time is also a problem. Using the standard 110-volt outlet in my garage, some nights I plugged it in for 12 hours, and it was still not completely full.
Fortunately, the two 220-volt recharging stations at Ewa Town Center have been open each time I’ve been there, and that’s helped immensely.
I highly recommend that shopping center managers install charging stations in their parking lots. Especially if you have a coffee shop, movie theater or bookstore in your complex, an EV owner is far more apt to visit your mall if you have chargers than if you don’t. And that likelihood will only increase as more EVs and charging stations pop up in the coming years.
I would totally recommend a Leaf — which sells for $27,700 after a $7,500 federal rebate — for a family that lives and works in the same 10-mile radius and that has a pretty set daily routine.
For people who have an unpredictable schedule and live a ways from where they work, there are lifestyle issues to consider.
It’s got great acceleration, taking me from about 20 to 50 lickety split as I entered the H-1 freeway westbound at the Punchbowl onramp. Daniel Gatewood, Enterprise Airport branch rental manager, suggested that I keep the Leaf on the "economy" mode as much as possible to conserve on juice and range.
That’s OK when driving on surface streets downtown, or once I reach cruising speed on a no-grade strip of the freeway.
But throwing the Leaf into economy mode makes it noticeably sluggish, and it takes several seconds to get to a speed you want, which can be a concern if you’re accelerating to get onto the freeway.
The Leaf allows you to shift from economy to regular mode and back while the car is moving. That’s extremely helpful, but it does take some time to get used to it.
EV, it’s goodbye for now. But we’ll meet up again in a few years.
