Turn over a new Leaf

I did promise a post about the trip we did to Coffs Harbour before Easter, but there is very little to report. The car performed well and charging did not take as long as expected. From Newcastle we stopped at Nabiac and then at Port Macquarie. I was expecting the second charge to take longer…

Yes, it has been a while since the last post and not a lot has happened. In December, I had booked the car in for it’s 10,000 km service. When I went to drop it off the guy at the service centre said that the service interval for the Leaf is 12 months or 20,000…

Actually it was.   My niece misjudged the entry into our driveway and gave the Leaf a bit of a scrape. Fortunately, she was fully insured and for the week the car was at the smash repairers, the insurers covered the cost of a hire car. The car rental place gave me a Skoda Octavia…

A more typical month, distance-wise. A total of 1811km which included a trip to my sister’s place in the Southern Highlands and a trip to Sydney. Actually managed to have a stress free 600km round trip charge-wise. Figured out how to charge at my mother’s place without tripping the RCDs. For the return trip we…

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…

Time for a summary of my ownership for the end of financial year 2019-2020. In the 3.5 months I’ve had the Leaf I’ve driven 3894 km at an average, if the trip computer is to be believed, of 15.6 kWh/100km (2420 mi @ 4 mi/kWh). This has been around a 70/30 mix of city and…

After 1 month and a little over 1000km it’s a good time to go over my impressions of the Leaf while I wait for the service to be completed. The good e-Pedal – I love the e-Pedal and I am surprised how quickly I became accustomed to it to the point that I am a…

The first road trip with the Leaf was a bit of a mess. The primary objective was completed but all the side quests were abandoned. The main take-away from the trip is that on the highway you are effectively working with a 150km range, which is far short of the 270km advertised. In light of…

The car’s first charge was at an NRMA fast charger. It took about 17 minutes, according to the charging station, to charge the car from 48% to 80%. There doesn’t appear to be a way to monitor the charging progress remotely.