Nissan Leaf – Intro

So yeah, I sold the black GD3 Fit and decided to try my hand at a different flavour of car.

The Fit was a good little car and I’m glad I could save it from the neglect it had been suffering, but once it was fixed and on the road I actually found I hardly used it. I had the Alto as the fun manual car, and the GE8 Fit as the CVT daily, so the GD didn’t really fit (heh) in anywhere. So I sold it.

With money burning a hole in my account, the next day I went to a “local” dealer and viewed a car that I had been interested in for a while, but wasn’t really sure about. A Nissan Leaf.

I have never owned an EV, and the closest I have come to spending some decent time with one was when I got to borrow an evaluation EK X EV from work for a weekend, and utterly fell for the little thing.

Being a Japanese Kei car, it has the same dimensions externally as my Alto, but is a full Battery Electric Vehicle. It was nippy, drove well and was a laugh to drive. It also had oodles of interior space, and with 130-140km realistic range, it was the perfect city car. Sadly I couldn’t buy one of those, so settled for the next best thing (that I could afford).

I’ve been considering a Leaf for a while. They make sense, an easy to drive, reliable and cheap to buy EV, but the cheap ones all tend to have trashed batteries with low maximum range. My commute is around 60KM round trip, so having a low range isn’t a huge issue, but I also want to be able to use the car for more than just going to work and back.

Currently they are a bit of a bargain as people frantically try to get rid of them before they have to pay their way with Road User Charges and the end of the free ride EVs have had approaches.

When this one popped up at a dealer, advertised as having 9 bars battery (from a maximum of 12) and 110km range, I viewed it as soon as I could.

It certainly looked good in the photos

The pearl white is much nicer than the silver, or the typical blue they come in. Being an X trim, alloys were an option, so this is rolling on steelies and caps, with very good matching Bridgestone tyres all around. Better for ride comfort, no doubt.

Details on the listing were a bit vague, it mentioned the range, and that the media system had been converted to English, but no other spec/features.

My wife and I drove the 75km to the dealer and had a look. In person it also looked good, albeit damp. The dealer had recently steam cleaned the interior, and since it hadn’t yet completely dried everything was a bit damp and the windscreen was dripping condensation.

The test drive revealed no real issues; it drove well, felt good on the road and everything worked as it should. I decided then and there that I’d be taking it home with me.

Money was exchanged, ownership was transferred and off I went.

I had a few things to learn about the car, which I know now, that would’ve helped on the drive home. One of them was that driving in B-ECO is not as efficient as D-ECO due to a mod done to the car that I wasn’t aware of. I like regen, it’s novel to me, so I burnt through more battery than I probably would’ve otherwise by having it in that mode most of the way home. To anyone that knows Leafs, no trees were grown on my drive back.

It does explain why I didn’t make it home though…

The battery wasn’t full when I picked it up, and by the time I got to this point I was down to 30km left on the gauge and it was flashing at me, so with about 30km left until I was actually home (including crossing a hill), I thought it best to do my first quick charge.

I had a Chargenet account from when I borrowed the EK X, so plugging in and chucking some juice into it was pretty painless. Going from 20-60% took 20 mins, cost less than $6, and gave me heaps of power to get home. People whinge about charging all the time, but it couldn’t have been easier and the 20 mins was spent checking Facebook and laughing at cat memes.

Before heading home I snapped some quick photos. The Leaf is a slightly awkward-looking car; I’d never say it looked good or cool, it kinda just is what it is. It’s inoffensive.

Under the bonnet is the powerhouse, or something

It’s a bigger/longer car than you expect. Over half a meter longer than the GE8 Fit and slightly wider. It does mean the boot is a decent size, and there is plenty of leg room though. A decent family car.

Being a 2014 Series 1.5, it has the much nicer black interior (earlier cars had a tan interior that always seemed to look dirty).

So now that it’s home, what have I ended up with?

A 2014 Nissan Leaf in X trim

It’s pretty well optioned for an X;
Cruise Control
Climate and Charge timers
Automatic LED Low beam headlights
Touchscreen Navigation (in English with NZ maps)
Bluetooth audio
Bose 7 speaker audio
360 degree camera
Automatic climate control
Heated steering wheel, front and rear seats
Heatpump heater and AC
Side and curtain airbags

And a parcel tray.

The only options I believe its missing are alloys, fog lamps, the solar panel spoiler and leather. Fog lamps would be handy, but otherwise I’m happy without the rest.

Since getting the car home I have also discovered a couple of other things. First was this little sticker, which I thought was someone trolling me

But it turns out NISMO did actually offer a couple of tuning upgrades for the AZE0, https://www.nismo.co.jp/news_list/2013/news_flash/130001.html

Including a “remapped” VCM

I poked my head up under the dash and sure enough, the tamper label is present

I had an idea that if they fitted that, what else has been done? I also found these when looking under the car

NISMO shocks and springs all around. This drops the car about 30mm all around. Before anyone asks, the fronts aren’t leaking, they’re covered in car dealer special silicone tyre spray, along with everything else under there >_<

This explains why the car handles pretty well, I presumed it was just the low center of gravity from the battery weight, but now I know it’s really a finely honed racecar.

The remapped VCM seems to make quite a difference in driving. When in B mode, it’s now “NISMO” mode as that’s when most of the changes have been done. The throttle is more responsive, to the point where when it’s not in ECO mode the throttle is quite twitchy, but the pickup is impressive. B-ECO mode dials it down a bit, but still has more responses on tap than in D, at the expense of economy. Apparently the regen has been retuned too, increasing the maximum regen, I don’t have anything to compare that to but it regens pretty hard.

Trust me to unintentionally buy something unusual.

So far I’m quite enjoying zipping around in it, and will be replacing the GE8 Fit as the daily for a while to see how it goes.

Don’t expect a lot of updates from this car, I don’t intend to be doing much to it. Unless you start messing with swapping motors, batteries and inverters, there isn’t a lot of scope for modifications.

I will also make this clear; I did not buy this to save the planet, fix climate change or be some eco warrior. I bought this because I want to play with something different and see what an alternate power source is like to use.