Nissan Leaf was a very pleasant surprise

My only experience with electric vehicles up to this point has been
golf carts and streetcars. Not exactly smooth rides as they both start and stop
with a jolt; two speeds, really; stop and go.
So it was with some trepidation that I took at the Nissan Leaf electric
vehicle for a test drive up to York
Mills Rd. and Leslie St. to meet with the folks at the
Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD).
I was more than pleasantly surprised. I’d say it drove just like
a regular car, which is mostly true, but there was one big difference —
the Leaf doesn’t have a transmission, which means no gear changes, just
smooth acceleration. And boy, did it accelerate! Step on the gas and off you
go! Fast! It certainly made my heavy foot happy and it was a breeze to pass
slower moving traffic up the Don
Valley Parkway.
I had a great meeting at BILD and was happy to see my new toy sitting
in the parking lot when I left. BILD, afterall, is on the leading edge of
energy conservation, with solar panels from Pure Energies on their roof and
green energy supplier Bullfrog powering their electrical needs.
Gale Beeby, Real Estate Editor
gbeeby@thestar.ca

Blog www.thestar.blogs.com/galebeeby

Follow on Twitter @galebeeby

 
 

Our only fear was having too much fun

We are city gals. We love to hit the town and make the most of everything great Toronto has to offer. But once in awhile, you just gotta get outta town for a change of scenery. So that’s what we did. We took the Nissan Leaf on an, albeit, short roadtrip for a girls daytrip o’ fun. And we even took a visiting New Yorker along with us to punch the fun up another notch. We quickly got over the quiet engine and the strangeness of driving a car that wasn’t our own (no fear here) and hit the road with careless abandon.

This scenery is not impressive. At all.

The Leaf offered plenty of room for the three of us, with lots of head space for us to bob up and down to the blaring tunes (adequate sound system and good air condition for summer road tripping).  It also nicely fit all our camera equipment, sweaters and road snacks. We decided to head to the Pickering waterfront and have brunch on a co-workers recommendation. We decided to take the more scenic route, skipping the DVP route and potential traffic jam, driving the 34.7 kilometres each way from the Star newsroom at 1 Yonge St. to the Wharf of Pickering and back. It was a comfy trip. No sore bums here.

We discovered a lot of motel rooms and some sketchy scenery along the way. Our guest wasn’t all that impressed by the Kingston Rd. motel strip or the city waterfront. Neither were we. But we would soon find more scenic routes once we got a little further out of the city. We brunched at a lovely restaurant (Port), took some pictures and then decided to make things interesting on our way back.

Ladies who lunch

Serena, the candy fiend, was determined to make a stop a Bulk Barn to see how many pounds of basmati rice, quinoa and hot lips one could fit both inside the Leaf’s trunk

Lots of room for goodies from the bulk barn. We stocked up on candy and sensible grains.

We love quinoa!

And inside the car

Candy. Lots of candy.

It turns out, a lot.

Determined to make our day of fun even … um … funner. We used the navigation to steer us in the direction of the Scarborough Bluffs for scenic picture taking. The system frustrated us a little bit. As did the GPS woman’s voice who, it turns out, is a bit of a nag. We were also a bit concerned when she didn’t speak for prolonged periods of time. (Was it something we said? Would it kill her to check in with us to see if we were okay?)

But we finally made it and the Bluffs seemed to impress the visiting NYC’er. Score one for Toronto.

Serena tried her hand at some nature photography, but this squirrel was not co-operative.

 

Re-enacting a scene from the roadtrip movie Crossroads starring Britney Spears. Life lessons learned.

 

Finally, we made our way back to town.

 

Trying to get somewhere

 

We love to day trip. But there’s no place like home.

-Serena Willoughby and Sabrina Melchiori, Toronto Star digital desk