Catherine drives a Nissan LEAF 2018 electric car.
This is Catherine’s first electric car, she’s owned the LEAF from new and drives 5,000-10,000 miles annually. The current mileage of the car is between 10,000-20,000 miles and she achieves 120 miles range from a full charge.
Why did you choose the Nissan LEAF?
Environmental concerns
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Positives – List 3 or more reasons why you love this electric car
- So easy to drive
- less CO2 output and when the sun shines its free power from the solar panels
- running costs are cheaper all-round.
Negatives – List 3 or more things that you really don’t like about this electric car
Range is not as good as newer cars and can lead to problems and ‘range anxiety’ on long journeys, but these are very few and far between, and more charge points are coming on stream every day.
Have you experienced any faults with the car? If so, what have they been?
No
What are the standout technological features of the car?
Powerful acceleration and the auto breaking is a delight.
Surprise us! Tell us something people wouldn’t readily know about this electric car
Completely randomly as we are older, the seat is higher than most cars as the battery is underneath, so easy to get in and out of.
What electric car(s) are you interested in next and why?
Volvo or Honda as I’m told they have longer ranges but realistically by the time we will need a new car who knows? We don’t expect to change for quite a few years.
Outline both positive & negative elements of your home charging unit
Easy to use on the driveway, installed at a reduced cost when the car was bought new. It’s a plug that goes into the car with electricity, what’s not to like about it? Car is plugged in most of the time it’s on the drive so ready to go anytime. Solar panels and the battery in the garage take power before the grid, so about as cheap as it can get. Its a grey, round Pod Point and looks OK on the garage wall.
Outline both positive & negative elements of your electricity supplier & tariff
In order to get a feed in option we had to move away from the cheaper overnight rate, so now no benefit to charge at night but given we rarely used that feature there was not much extra cost. We are with Octopus and have solar panels.
What public charging networks would you recommend to others and why?
Oh, where to start?! We now have given up signing up to suppliers with apps and refuse to use them. We’ve never managed to sort them out or used them so infrequently that the app didn’t work or there was no wi-fi or there was some other problem. I now use the touch and pay Ecotricity chargers found on the motorways or friend’s houses if that’s where we are going to.
However, we recently plugged the car in when another car was on charge, it stopped both cables and you cannot release your car, no sign on the machine to say this would happen. I can buy a ticket to Australia easier than I can get £10 worth of power. It’s getting better but can still be a nightmare. Possibly easier if you use a regular power point but we don’t.
Nothing worse than trying to sign up to a phone app when all you want is a bit of power to get you the last 30 miles home. I don’t care who supplies it, it’s just electricity, same as I don’t care who used to give me petrol in the old car, it just makes the car go. Touch and go is the best way to buy the power.
Itemise how much money you’re saving each month owning & running an electric car
£0
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