Let’s Hope The Nissan Leaf Never Falls

My boss decided to send me up to our San Francisco head office to work for a while and I am glad of the opportunity, since a few of the other engineers working here own Nissan Leafs. Having heard about my own electric car conversion, they were eager to show me their Leafs, three of them parked side-by-side on the parking lot above our office, all three in the beautiful ‘sky blue’ color (someone joked that’s the only color they come in. Surely not!).

Having only been driven about in a Mitsubishi MiEV in Australia, I was keen to compare it with the Leaf and my first instant impression was that this car looks like any mid-sized family car, not some purposeful differentiation in aesthetics just to outwardly state that it is different, i.e., electric, ‘so that’s why it looks quirky’.

Putting aesthetics aside, the Leaf is a typical AC production electric vehicle at a cost of some $25,000 and each owner is proud to say he bought it outright, not on some lease program. Steve, the one who got me on the lunch date to turn the new Leaf was also a proud EV1 ‘owner’ some years ago before they were all recalled and crushed. Like everyone else, he didn’t want to give up his car but would be cited with ‘grand theft auto’ if he refused to obey the corporate giants and their evil ways. Even as a Leaf owner, he still wants to do his own conversion so we were happy to exchange new ideas as even the backyard scene has changed since my conversion was done, and AC is definitely the way to go as parts become cheaper. The only complaint about the Leaf that was mentioned is the fact that the horn is not loud enough, probably because it is buried under so much hardware under the hood. Of course an air-horn replacement can be fitted.

It is time more people got on the EV wagon, so to speak. The Leaf is comfortable, easy to drive, has all the modern features found in other cars and it even has a solar panel on the tail wing for 12v accessories top-up charging, on a good day. Lifting the hood one would be mistaken for believing the motor controller is an east-west internal combustion type, looks (sort of) similar, but then I guess the makers didn’t want to scare potential purchasers with an unusual configuration. “Oh, looks like a regular car engine,” the dealers say, quoting their customers and it’s this familiarity coupled with contemporary design that makes the car so attractive.

The Leaf has a charger port located at the front below the hood, for use with the various Charge Point stations around San Francisco (like those in Sydney, London etc). Steve and others have also gone to lengths to engineer charging adapters for easy home charging or wherever they wind up to stay – kits can even be found on eBay.

Let’s hope this generation of electric vehicle never falls to the unyielding fools who tout ‘human energy’ at the cost of a clean future.

So is there anything wrong with the electric car future?

Maybe this… :)

Electric Roller

 

Tagged as: electric vehicle, Mitsubishi MiEV, Nissan Leaf