Goodbye Prius, hello Leaf

Yes, there's loads of three yr old ones appearing over here in recent months! Noticed that.

The price of a new one here isn't too bad either, about €22k after the gov grant

Must have a nosey on Autotrader or Pistonheads at the prices over there. The PCP deal is pretty good. Lots of people are it here now, whereas it seems to be a lot more the norm in the US for years

Re running costs, it's a bit of a no brainer really, especially if you've just tipping about on short journeys

 

Just had a quick look at UK prices, wow, some value! 8-9k for a 3 ye old car with less than 25k on it

Impressive

 

GC may be the only LEAF driving AGW denialist in the world.
I hope he starts a movement

 

Absolutely.

 

+1

...and a bonus if you add an 'A' to the GW.

 

sounds like the perfect storm.

 

You seem to have no idea how a BEV works. With the radio on (loud), headlights on, and brake lights the drain barely measures a couple hundred watts. With the air conditioning on it usually draws about 1KW. So if you sat in traffic with the air conditioning on for an hour, you would drop 4-5%.

The 2011 and 2012's had crappy batteries and degradation. The 2013's and up have been very resilient.

I drive my Leaf as my primary car and do lots of side trips, commutes, errands, and unexpected trips all over town. When you get somewhere, you plug it in. At night you plug it in. When you get to work, you plug it in. When you get to the store, you plug it in. Driving 40-80 miles a day on average because I drive much more than normal I rarely ever even get the LBW (Low Battery Warning) at 18%. Only once I've received the VLBW.

Grumpy, enjoy the Leaf. It's a great car. Even if you got a pre-2013, I am sure it will be fine in the UK where everything is very close together.

 

Well, congratulations! I have heard many good things about this car.

People have expressed concerns about range, but I think it's worth noting that it is only about 35 miles from Harrogate to Civilisation. And once you've got to Lancashire, you're not really going to want to go back.

I am a bit concerned about your comments on charging infrastructure, though. Do they have electricity in Yorkshire now?

Anyway, I think you've made an excellent choice. One of my favourite facts about the car is why the headlights look so weird. Apparently, the car is so quiet at speed that the wind-rush around the door mirrors was noticeably annoying (you'd have the same wind-rush around the mirrors on any other car, but you wouldn't hear it over the engine). So the headlights were sculpted to steer the air around the door mirrors in order to get rid of the noise.

I'm sure you'll really enjoy it. And, as you said, British towns are so close together that range really isn't going to be much of an issue, and when it is, there's always Mrs Grumpy's car.

Congratulations again!

 

Don't go!

I'm still here, and I've replaced the Prius.

 

He lives in the North of England.

You might need aircon one summer in ten.

The first day of summer is August 13. The last day of summer is also August 13.

Spring is August 12. Autumn is August 14.

August 15 to August 11 is winter.

 

Grumpie may upgrade in a couple of years. Nissan Testing 250-Plus-Mile Range Leaf Mule With New Battery Chemistry

 

"If summer falls on a weekend this year we'll have a picnic."

 

Instead, anyone in Britain with any sense plans going to the pub, and then going for a curry.

 

I'll second this comment and add some personal experience...I bought a 2011 LEAF in late Feb 2014. The battery capacity was down one bar at that time (CARFAX showed it was put in service in TX--hot!). In late August 2014 the car dropped another capacity bar. Getting somewhat concerned I checked out the LEAF forums and was told that I should probably only charge 80% instead of 100% each charge-up. The early LEAFs had that option: to charge 80 or 100 percent; the newer models (2013+ ?) have better batteries and BMS so they always charge 100%.

Knowing the above...starting with an 80% charge, my dad and I (he was 84 at the time) took an unplanned cross-town trip...about 25 miles, most of which were highway speed. On the way back...taking secondary roads because the battery level was lower than I liked...I got my first and only LBW. With little choice, I looked up charging station locations (the LEAF nav locates them nicely) and drove about 2 miles out of my way to plug-in (L2 charger). Since we had to kill at least 30 mins to get a minimum charge to complete our trip, we decided to do a little walk-about (remember dad was 84 at the time...I was about to turn 60 myself). We hiked about 1.5 to 2 miles up the street and back doing a little sight-seeing (such as it was) and when we got back I had enough charge to complete the return trip without another LBW.

All in all, I've been EXTREMELY pleased with this LEAF, in spite of it being #7918 off the line.

 

So 80% charge and another 30 minutes of L2 charging from low = Whatever remained when you got home + 50 miles. IIRC the 30 minutes of charging would have added 3.6 kWh (240v @ 30 Amps), worth about 10 miles

Or put another way, if you had charged to 100% you were limited to less than 62 miles. I hope you had an unusually high consumption/mile that day or else your battery is not sounding too great.

Addendum: L2 charging numbers corrected

 

I bought the LEAF with 22300 miles on it. I guestimate that the 2nd bar dropped somewhere around 30k miles...I'm hoping the previous owner used up a lot of that second bar too. I haven't tracked miles a whole lot since I bought it...no reason to since I don't need to change the oil.

I just passed 40K miles this week. I drive between 1100 - 1200 miles per month.