The executive summary: I’ll never go back to driving an ICE vehicle. But the Leaf is definitely a transition car (for me) - I need the range to be a round trip to Sydney (about 300km) without having to recharge and having enough to spare so things like the weather don’t make you worry about getting home. So the next EV I buy will need about 400km range and be a price I can afford.

Planning

The main issue is having to plan every trip out of town. So you’re often asking yourself questions like, “how much charge do I have”, “how much charge do I need to get there”, “is there somewhere to charge there?”

LeafSpy has helped with some of that but it has some quirks and the worst UI of any app. PlugShare covers the rest.

Cutting it fine!

Even with a fair amount of planning, the weather can still wreak havoc on your estimates. One trip back from Sydney we started with about 75% charge and LeafSpy said we had about 175km to 5% at 180 Wh/km which I thought was very conservative. I did not count on very heavy rain for the entire trip home. It is the first time have never travelled 110km/h at any time on the M1 and most of the trip was below 90km/h due to the rain. Unfortunately, even the slow speed did not help with the range and the gauge was showing 0% before we reached the Newcastle off-ramp. Fortunately, once we get off the motorway it is mostly down hill and we travelled the last 10km down the link road with the gauge flashing “–%” at me.

Community

I’ve had a few people ask about the car and had a few chats with other EV owners while charging or waiting to charge. The general consensus is that we’re not going back to ICE cars.

I was a little surprised to see another Leaf charging at my regular spot in Wallsend. When I returned from dinner, I found a note on the window asking for my thoughts. Apparently it was a 62kWh version (It looks like https://twitter.com/EV4ME2 is not the first) and I would have responded except the mobile number was missing a digit. (Ewan, if you happen to read this, feel free to get in contact again.)

Final thoughts

It’s a transition vehicle that I’ll probably trade in when there are more EV choices. But, due to the lack of any carbon reduction policy, Australia is the last place to get any of the new EVs being released so I’ll be holding on to the Leaf for a few years.

The main issue is not being able to do a round trip from Newcastle to Sydney (roughly 300km) without having to charge. The 62 kWh version might just do it but now that Nissan is going to officially bring it to Australia, it will be out of my price range. The grey import cost for the 62 kWh Leaf, according to @EV4ME, was actually less than what I paid for my 40 kWh Leaf. Timing, it seems, is everything.