600 km in an EV with only one day

Me and Nissan Leaf in Tõrva, estonia. 2nd October 2013

Some call me genius, some call me bonkers, only thing sure is that I like electric cars, a lot. That is why I rented a Nissan Leaf and took it on a little journey. To be hounest, this was not my first long-distance test drive with an electric car. On 2nd of August i took a 500 km test drive in Mitsubishi i-MiEV.

Why?
Some may ask why I made this little test. I will answer that question. The test with Nissan Leaf was inspired from the first test with i-MiEV. I made an article about it and the comments were not that supportive. Main critics were that how can you test an electric car in warm weather and only two persons on board. This is not enogh test for an EV. So I decided to take a new test, in colder weather and bigger load while covering greater distance so I could prove critics wrong. I have and I still believe in electric cars and I want to show other people through facts and good argumets that they can trust EVs also.

How?
I made the testdrive on 2nd of October. I had a friend with me, who helped me with driving, we switched places after about every 100 km. We started from the parking lot of Tallinn University of Technology at 7:30 AM and we finished at the same place 11:45 PM, so the duration of the test was 16 hours and 15 minutes.
The route was Tallinn-Pärnu-Tõrva-Valka-Võru-Tartu-Tallinn. Total distance was exactly 600 km. Valka, by the way, is a small town in Latvia, so I can say we had an international trip. Not bad for an EV.
This day was unusually cold, even for Estonian autumn, during first hoursof the test the temperatures were below zero. This, though, did not bother me, on the contrary, this weather helped me to prove the fact that electric car can do well in cold weather.

Leaf did better than I expected. Greatest distance covered was 112 km (Pärnu-Tõrva), which is not bad considering that the weather was cold and the heating system was on. We used only fast charging during the trip. We made 7 fast charging sessions with total time of 4:43:05. I would like to add that if we had been more patient we could have managed only with 6, we did not charge the battery to full capacity every time.
The fact that you have to charge your EV after every 100-120 km on the highway in autumn does not bother me, but the time needed to charge should drop in the future.

Helpful gadgets
The thing I liked most about Leaf was its equipment. My favourite was the steering wheel heating. When you come inside and you have just used fast charger (wcich is most comfortably used without gloves) then it is so good to put your cold hands against the warm steering wheel. The steering wheel warms up suprisingly fast, within ten to twenty seconds if I remember correctly.

Second good thing was Leafs GPS and infoscreen. The GPS has coordinates to all the fast charging stations and from the infoscreen you can see your cars energy consuption, how much the engine is using energy and how much energy goes to heating and other equipment (lights, radio etc).

Third good thing was parking aid with four cameras that gave 360 degree view. This option was so good that I trusted it without looking out of the window (ofcourse one should do that just in case) I managed to park between the lines and in narrow places every time. So buy this extra if you have the chance.

Interesting facts

• On average, Leaf uses 179,6 Wh/km of energy.
• It takes as much time to charge from 80% to 100% as it takes to charge from 10% to 80%
• Using ECO mode (more powerful regenerative breaking) gives you better distance, even on highway.

I hope you enjoy this review. If you have any questions, please let me know under the comments.