Electric Dreams - 25th January, 2017

Loading...

Photo 1 of 20

The Nissan Leaf - or “Leading environmentally friendly affordable car” to use its full name (shouldn’t it be LEAFC then?) - is a fully electric car. Sure it looks like a Tiida with the nose of a bottom feeding fish but what it lacks in style and excitement it makes up for with its frugality. You see if you spend $100 on petrol in an average sized car now the Leaf will go the same distance for $20. And prices for used ones are starting to look quite attractive. Read more.

 The Leaf has been somewhat of a success for Nissan but you wouldn’t know it driving around NZ. Many of the ones here are used Japanese imports (as this one is) or the few sold by Nissan NZ before they yanked it in 2015. There aren’t many of them but it’s still the most popular EV in NZ. But between America, Europe and Japan, Nissan has sold 250,000 Leafs (or Leaves, I guess) making it the biggest selling “highway capable, all electric car” of all time. It also produces zero emissions “at the point of operation”, which means emissions may have been produced in the generation of the electricity. It’s won a load of awards and will generally make you feel a bit better about your impact on the planet while saving you money.

And the Leaf isn’t slow either. It’ll do 150kph and 0 – 100kph will take around 10 seconds – all in near silence. Where some people may have an issue with the Leaf is its range. Depending on what mode you are using and the type of driving you will get around 120km on a charge and using the supplied cable plugged into a household power outlet it’ll take up to 12 hours to charge.  All of this is perfectly acceptable for a city car. The cost of running a Leaf is estimated to be the equivalent of 23 cents per litre and it requires next to zero servicing. Some more great info here.

So if you want to save the planet one trip to work at a time while saving a bunch of cash then this Nissan Leaf is definitely worth considering. More details here.