Driving a Nissan Leaf – Internal Combustion Is In Trouble
Electric Cars, Blower Doors, and Dorks
Want to know the definition of a dork? One who brings his blower door over to a friend’s house. Oh, and then asks to drive his Nissan Leaf. Actually, that’s not quite true.
Seriously, it was great to get a quick look and drive of the Leaf. My buddy Will only has a 6 mile commute, so he can easily drive it 4 days between charges, despite it’s somewhat paltry 85 mile or so range. The picture above isn’t his car, it was dark out, so I don’t have one of the exterior. Here is the dash, though.
I recently wrote about how Oil Is Dead, and talked about how solar panels and electric cars are a big part of the reason why. When you can fuel your car from your roof, going to the gas station is silly. And electric heating and cooling equipment is often the best choice today, not gas, so everything in your life can easily go all electric, today, for little or no cost. I digress.
I hadn’t yet driven an electric car when I wrote that, now I can really say standard cars with internal combustion engines are in trouble. Electric cars give nothing up, aside from range which is a temporary thing, and are far quieter. The Leaf is delightfully spriteful and scoots off with aplomb. Acceleration is not a problem. Part of it is that electric cars are so torquey, like a V-8 engine, so it suits American tastes for MORE POWER! Rawr, rawr, rawr, a la Tim Allen. The 0-60 looks to be in the 8 second range, which is snappy, but not super fast. The torque makes it feel better.
I should mention I’m a car guy. I learned how to drift in my Jeep Wrangler in high school. Stupid, I know, but it slid on a wet day one time and I was hooked. I’ve owned 6 cars since that one, and driven over 50 from 1926 to today. I learned how to really 4 wheel drift in my Thunderbird Super Coupe, and took cloverleafs at 60-80 mph. I’ve rebuilt 3 engines, only one of which blew up (that sucked.) My family at its peak owned 14 cars. So yes, I’m a car guy.
Starting It Up
The Leaf has Nissan’s smart key, which lets you leave it in your pocket. My wife’s 370Z has this and it’s a great feature, I’m glad to see it in an entry level car. You just push a button on the door to unlock it, if the key is with you it unlocks. Climb in and push the start/stop button, hit the brake, and slide the gear selector into forward or reverse. Nothing happens. Then you push the throttle and the thing starts to move. It’s eerie. Even though I’ve experienced this in a Prius, a motor never switches on.
Driving It
At full throttle you can hear a little motor whine, not unlike a spooled up turbo, but much quieter, and that’s only when you really romp on it. I’d say it’s ⅓ as loud as most cars are under throttle. I should have checked with my Decibel meter, but alas, I forgot. It was an impromptu drive and my 15 month old daughter was wigging out with my friends back at the house, so I didn’t think about it too much.
I drove it for about 3 miles, checking out how it accelerated and braked, both are seamless. Everything worked like a normal car. Since I own a Nissan, everything was in the same place, and it just did what it was supposed to.
Here’s a little video of me driving it. Yes, I was bad and held the phone in my hand while I filmed and drove. Chill. Everyone was ok. Check out how quiet it is at full throttle.
Interior and Heating/Cooling
Once the range thing gets figured out, this is a very nice everyday car. The interior is HUGE, so plenty of storage and passenger space. In a strange quirk, all the seats are heated, and it’s a standard feature on even this base S model. That’s because the original heater was resistance heat, like a hair dryer, and burned a ton of energy. Now they have a heat pump heater, the first one in an electric vehicle, which uses about ⅓ the energy to heat the car vs. electric resistance heat, but they still have heated seats all around.
A heat pump is an air conditioner that can run backwards, so it can both heat and cool. I’m a big fan of them in houses now that the technology is good enough to use even in cold climates like here in Cleveland. In fact, a client is installing one next week and taking his home all electric.
I’m hoping to go electric with my next car, and this gave me a lot of comfort in that decision. It may not be a Leaf, but it’ll be electric. With cars this good, and this quiet, regular cars with internal combustion engines are in serious trouble. Maybe a new Tesla 3 if business is good. See, I told you I’m a dork.
Speaking of dorks, my buddy’s blower door was pretty high for a 15 year old house 2450 on a 1600 sf house, I’d like to see that more like 1600 or less, so we’ll be working on that and his comfort problems down the road… he is also a candidate for solar panels and is going to try to talk the Homeowner Association into it. Ah, fellow dorks…
Time for the Pitch
Really, this is kind of silly in a car review post, but if you want to let me drive your Tesla Model S, I’ll test your home for air leakage for free. No Tesla? Initial consultations aren’t very expensive, and we can help you get to the root causes of comfort, health, safety, durability, and efficiency problems in your home, then help you design solutions and execute them. If you’ve spent money trying to fix a problem and it didn’t work, it’s time to call us.
Before you reach out, we highly recommend that you spend some time reading on the website to be sure we are a good fit for you. Then fill out the questionnaire by pushing the button below.
Further Reading
Oil Is Dead, and It’s No Big Deal – How and why the world is going electric – soon.
The Science – It’s behind what we do. We aim for comfort first and efficiency follows.
Summary of Problems We Can Help With – Ice dams, hot or cold rooms, asthma, allergies, dry skin, and more. Crazy, yes. But also possible.
Image Credit: Wikipedia
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