This All-Electric Nissan LEAF Tells White Lies!

by Keith Morgan on Thursday, March 12th, 2015

 

 

The Nissan LEAF miraculously cut a journey in half this week.

I’ll explain. I took the plug-in sedan on a 43-kilometre trip from Vancouver to Driveway HQ, on 152nd Street, in Surrey. When I set out, the screen display showed that I could drive emission-free for 146 kilometres.

Now, I could have taken off like an F1 racecar and street raced all the way, because electric power offers instant tire squealing torque if you press the pedal to the metal. But that’s not me. Spurred by my ecofriendly driving the previous day, the clever car had decided earlier in the day that I could do 156 kilometres on a full charge. Not boasting but that’s easily more than 20 kilometres better than the average driver can expect to achieve. Okay, maybe my head is swelling.

The big 1-4-6 winked at me. I threw the stick into ECO mode and with two flicks of the wrist pushed it into the enhanced B-mode, which puts the braking power regeneration into overdrive, so to speak.

I glided silently down the road, picking up pace ever so gradually in the busy city traffic. Rolling down the hills to Marpole, I could feel the juice from the brakes topping up that battery.

On the freeway, I hit the posted speed limit and 40 minutes later pulled into HQ. The display flashed 126. I had covered 43 klicks with the power required to move the car just 20! Such fun.

Next week: more on the joy of driving electric.

Contact: keith [dot] morgan [at] drivewaybc [dot] ca