About 6 months ago I got a Nissan LEAF ZE1 (2019 model) [1]. Generally it’s going well and I’m happy with most things about it.
One issue is that as there isn’t a lot of weight in the front with the batteries in the centre of the car the front wheels slip easily when accelerating. It’s a minor thing but a good reason for wanting AWD in an electric car.
When I got the car I got two charging devices, the one to charge from a regular 240V 10A power point (often referred to as a “granny charger”) and a cable with a special EV charging connector on each end. The cable with an EV connector on each end is designed for charging that’s faster than the “granny charger” but not as fast as the rapid chargers which have the cable connected to the supply so the cable temperature can be monitored and/or controlled. That cable can be used if you get a fast charger setup at your home (which I never plan to do) and apparently at some small hotels and other places with home-style EV charging. I’m considering just selling that cable on ebay as I don’t think I have any need to personally own a cable other than the “granny charger”.
The key fob for the LEAF has a battery installed, it’s either CR2032 or CR2025 – mine has CR2025. Some reports on the Internet suggest that you can stuff a CR2032 battery in anyway but that didn’t work for me as the thickness of the battery stopped some of the contacts from making a good connection. I think I could have got it going by putting some metal in between but the batteries aren’t expensive enough to make it worth the effort and risk. It would be nice if I could use batteries from my stockpile of CR2032 batteries that came from old PCs but I can afford to spend a few dollars on it.
My driveway is short and if I left the charger out it would be visible from the street and at risk of being stolen. I’m thinking of chaining the charger to a tree and having some sort of waterproof enclosure for it so I don’t have to go to the effort of taking it out of the boot every time I use it. Then I could also configure the car to only charge during the peak sunlight hours when the solar power my home feeds into the grid has a negative price (we have so much solar power that it’s causing grid problems).
The cruise control is a pain to use, so much so that I haven’t yet got it to work usefully ever. The features look good in the documentation but in practice it’s not as good as the Kia one I’ve used previously where I could just press one button to turn it on, another button to set the current speed as the cruise control speed, and then just have it work.
The electronic compass built in to the dash turned out to be surprisingly useful. I regret not gluing a compass to the dash of previous cars. One example is when I start google navigation for a journey and it says “go South on street X” and I need to know which direction is South so I don’t start in the wrong direction. Another example is when I know that I’m North of a major road that I need to take to get to my destination so I just need to go roughly South and that is enough to get me to a road I recognise.
In the past when there is a bird in the way I don’t do anything different, I keep driving at the same speed and rely on the bird to see me and move out of the way. Birds have faster reactions than humans and have evolved to move at the speeds cars travel on all roads other than freeways, also birds that are on roads are usually ones that have an eye in each side of their head so they can’t not see my car approaching. For decades this has worked, but recently a bird just stood on the road and got squashed. So I guess that I should honk when there’s birds on the road.
Generally everything about the car is fine and I’m happy to keep driving it.
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