Sure, the Leaf is cool, but can it haul all my stuff?

 

We are dedicated frugal car owners — all we really demand is economy and reliability. Oh, and enough head room for my 6-foot-3 husband. Ever since giving up the 7-seat 1993 Camry wagon our kids dubbed the Blue Moose, we’ve also been looking for small cars that can still haul lots of stuff — like our 2007 Honda Fit, with its unique flip-up backseat that lets us pack a couple of adult bikes inside. So in test-driving a Leaf, my first concern wasn’t range, but space. Could the Leaf be the family workhorse we’re looking for?

Fortunately, the SmartCar image in my head was wrong. My spouse was delighted to find he could sit up comfortably, and the two adults and a teen we drove home from a birthday party Friday night thought there was decent leg room in the backseat (made, oh-so-greenly, of recycled pop bottles). For economy buyers like us, all the bells and whistles (backup camera, satellite radio, heated steering wheel, built-in navigation, etc.) and glorious gliding silence were a treat for a couple of trips from Oakville to east-end Toronto and back. We got over “range anxiety” quickly when we figured out that, except for the occasional out-of-town run, our usual journeys are within the 140-km or so range that a full charge promises ­— even my husband’s 90-km daily round-trip commute from Oakville to Vaughan. (We averaged 5.1 km/kWh, which at off-peak hydro rates means that commute would cost about $1.15 a day.)

But the real test came Saturday, with a typical suburban big-box run. Our mission: supplies for a garden trellis and other items at Home Depot, a mirror for the powder room (home décor store), bagged dirt from a nursery, and a week’s worth of groceries. We flipped down the back seats and loaded ’er up. Nissan may cringe looking at the picture, but yup, we got a bunch of 8-foot boards into the Leaf, with Jeff riding shotgun to make sure they didn’t shoot through the navigation screen on a sudden stop, along with a couple of big bins of groceries, the mirror and the dirt, with tons of room to spare. (And yes, we brought along an old blanket to keep the Leaf as pristine as her zero emissions!) 

As other testers have noted, Leaf math can take a little getting used to. On our runs down the QEW and Gardiner, we found the kilometres ticking down faster than the car’s computer predicts, but on this sort of urban stop-and-start driving, the recaptured energy from braking really boosts that prediction. When we left, the car said we had enough charge to drive 134 km. On our return, the odometer said we’d travelled 18 km. But the car’s prediction was still 134 km! Though it was nevertheless telling us we were now four hours away from a full charge (on our wimpy 120V plug), that did take the sting out of having to drive back to Home Depot when we realized we’d left a bag of screws behind at the checkout.

Little epiphanies:

Husband: “It’s kinda dirty. Maybe we should run it through the car wash. Oh wait, I’d have to pay full price because I’m not buying gas!”

Doreen (driving on the QEW): “Whoops. I forgot to latch the plug-in door properly and now it’s flipped up. I’ll pull over at the Shell station and fix it. … Hey, if I owned this car, I’d never have to stop here again!”

Doreen Martens, City Team Editor

It was just like a 'regular' car

I TOOK THE VOLT THROUGH A CAR WASH AND I SURVIVED

When I first got into the Chevrolet Volt, I didn't know what to expect.

I pressed the start button and waited. I heard nothing. I mean nothing.

Silence. Only when I put the car in drive did I realize that the thing was on.

I started to laugh. I’m not sure if it was a funny laugh or a
nervous laugh.

To my surprise, the car had good response. It drove like a “regular”
car.

Now my thoughts were, “I'm driving an electrical car. What if it
rains? Will I be electrocuted? Can this thing go through a car wash?”

We all know that electricity and water are a bad mix. So I decided to
test it out and go through a car wash. It passed. Then on Saturday it
rained. No problem, just like a “regular” car.

Driving this car made me feel like I was doing my part in helping the
environment. No emissions. It also gave me front-door parking at a busy mall
because of the designated-hybrid-parking-only space.

Bonus.

— Nello Merante

What kind of trunk space are we talking about?

I was given the opportunity to examine the trunk space of the Nissan Leaf this weekend.

Stop #1:

I decided to take the Nissan Leaf grocery shopping at Fiesta Farms. While the trunk space seemed rather small at first, it definitely fit all my groceries. I generally like to buy a lot of groceries to last the week and my initial concern was I would have to use the back seat of the car. However, the trunk space could have fit double the amount I had in there.

Stop #2:
With the weather warming up, a friend and I decided to take the Leaf to the driving range to practice our swing. While it definitely met my grocery needs, it was a struggle to fit two golf bags in the back.

Other stops on the weekend journey included:

- A Taco Bell drive thru to celebrate Cinco de Mayo

- University of Toronto Campus to educate students about Star Project Green

Chris Salvatore
Marketing Coordinator, SMG Star Media Group

Leaf battery and plug

I had 2 questions come up repeatedly:

1. How big is the battery? I hadn't really thought about it, so we popped the hood and looked. I guess everyone was thinking that to power a whole car it would be the size of a cooler. It wasn't.
It looked regular-sized, but slightly narrower.

2. How do you plug it in. Easy. Just pop open the small door in the hood and you snap in the plug. The other end has the regular 120 volt 3-pronged plug you have in garages and home. The other plug in the hood is where you snap in the 240 volt plug when charging it at work in the specially designed charging stations (the plugs you have for your washer or oven).

Ed Cassavoy
Senior Editor, Special Sections

Nissan Leaf, Power Anxiety

After the initial fun of driving around in a car that hums, you start trying to figure how it will work into your real life.

* Power anxiety dominates every drive. Turn the car on, look at the gauge showing how many klicks before the car goes dead.

* Every trip, you check the gauge to see what you have left - it slips away very fast.

I drove the car around Scarborough for about 4 hours on Saturday, then plugged it in for the afternoon. It had about 50 km left, but I was getting more anxious. You start paying attention to all those little dashes around the city. They add up.

After 3 days of doing regular errands, mostly in the east end, I did find myself wondering how to cut back on the drives. Some were a waste or could have been grouped together to save gas, but I was in a hurry, so I burned the fuel to save time.

It gets you thinking about how to do things different or atleast the cost of your choices.

It also feels like you have have this giant, imaginary chord connecting your car to the house (or more accurately, the power plug) as you can't get too far from the source of power.

Ed Cassavoy
Senior Editor, Special Sections

Questions that popped up

Lorna Higgins, Vanessa Pukal and Emery Niles gave the Leaf a top to bottom inspection Sunday in Scarborough.

I had a bunch of people ask about the car. Here are some of the comments:

A lady at Bluffer's Park asks me if the Star can get delivered to the houseboats

A guy with a white curly haired dog is sympathetic when he sees me pulling a parking ticket off the car in the Beaches on Sunday. I had no change in the car (it's not mine) so I had to go buy batteries to get change and as I come back to the car I see the Green Hornet passing. All of 5 minutes.

I ask him if he's been ticketing the cars, but from the sour expression, I can see he's not giving me a break though I explain the situation, show him my ticket-stamped receipt for batteries from a store a dozen paces away, the batteries in the other hand with the precious change.

No luck. I grab the ticket off the windshield and the guy with the dog just laughs and asks how many dogs can fit in the trunk. I take a stab at it and guess three Labradors - and he nods and says "that's about right."

I'm assuming that's adequate for most dog-situations.

* One lady in Scarborough wonders how you could commute in it. She wonders if the string of new service centres built along Highway 401 should have electric plug-in stations installed. Sounds like a good question.

* A UofT student asks if they're installed in condo buildings. Nope, no laws requiring it, though this is clearly an urban centre car. Why not? They do in B.C. and Quebec, but not Ontario. Seems like a good idea even as Toronto's skyline is dominated by a dozen cranes that loom over new downtown condo projects.

* A little girl asks if the police have electric cars. They are so quiet, wouldn't they be good to sneak up on crooks? I start thinking about other uses for a car in places or situations when being quiet is an asset.

* Another gent sees the car at a Scarborough mall and asks why they don't have solar panels installed as well. Wouldn't it help?

* What's it made of - someone figures it's some sort of composite material.

* A lady asks me what happens if it runs out of power - can the CAA boost it? Another good question.

As Wheels.ca digs deeper into the electric car debate we'll hopefully get you some of these answers...so please keep an eye out for Barney or Fred and tell us what you think.

Ed Cassavoy
Senior Editor, Special Sections

Nissan Leaf - Operation shove things in it

Nissan Leaf - Operation shove things in it

The Nissan Leaf is comfy, but can I fill it with stuff? My goal is to test its fillability.

- Kids vs dogs
- bulky stuff
- my neighbour Emery down the street has lots of odd gear to test
- maybe shove Emery in the car as well, just for fun

Can it pass muster with the weekend challenges faced by every family?

- My wife gives me the gears when I back the car in so the front end is facing out to the street so everyone can't help but notice this odd plug-in arrangement with the car.
- OK sure, a bit of electro-bragging but it's the eco-cool equivalent of revving the engine.
"Hey check out that guy's plug-in" ....hmmm, I guess it doesn't roll off the tongue with the same macho ring to it.

Ed Cassavoy
Senior Editor, News and Special Sections (Travel,Wheels,Real Estate)
The Toronto Star

Leaf roaming east end

Whizzed down to Bluffer's Park, decided to see how quiet this car really is and snuck up so close to snoozing seagulls in the parking lot we could smell the garbage on their breath.

As I attempted to nudge the car close to the Bluffer's Park sign, a nice lady pulled up in a clattering diesel - I was braced for car queries but she just wanted to know if she could get the Star delivered to the houseboats. Working on that.

Ed Cassavoy
Senior Editor, Special Sections

Nissan Leaf has plenty of surge for me

I'm not a car guy.

People ask me what kind of car have you got? And I answer a black one. That's about the extent of my
"Wheels" knowledge.
 
My first car was a 2nd-hand Morris 1000, which got me across town and back and that's all I ask even
today. That's good, because it's all the Leaf delivers. Back and forth across town.

3 good things:

- It's got a surge, nice for zipping in and out of traffic going up and down Mount Pleasant or even the
DVP.

 - Plenty of stretch-out space inside.
 
- When it's parked, people want to know what-on-earth is that? There's big curiousity and it's fun to answer questions.
  
3 not-so-good things:
 
 - The short range scares me. I'd have to carefully plan a Saturday morning outing, even to a GTA golf
course.
 
- The silence takes a while to get used to, although I suppose a Rolls-Royce drives just as quietly.
 
- The instrument panel is confusing and I got lost on the GPS.

Michael Cooke.
Editor, Toronto Star

 

Chevy Volt, an electric road trip to Parry Sound

The Chevrolet Volt's strongest point? It's a normal car when you need it to be. You can just get in and drive it pretty much like any other car.

It's obviously way more than that, though.

As a long-time Prius owner, the feel of the butter-smooth transmission felt quite normal to me. The
electric launch can feel strangely slow because it is silent and very progressively smooth. Punch a gas engine and it downshifts and roars. Punch the Volt and it just goes fast very quickly without the usual revving and shifting of gears.

I was a little disappointed by the range on my first drive up the Don Valley Parkway from the Star at One Yonge St. I only got up to the Bloomington Sideroad before the gas generator started making power.

The transition was so smooth that had I not been watching the range indicator as it ran down, I would not have even known it had happened. 41.9 km seems like a poor result. I was basically going uphill the entire way and let's just say I wasn't going slow.

On the way back from Parry Sound, I drove a little more sedately and got around 60-70km on that charge.

The exact distance was confusing because I ran a quick 10 km shopping trip in the morning on the full charge and plugged it back in for awhile. The computer added the distances together in the  range screen, treating it as the same charge (the second short charge never got it back to full).

Bottom line is, you can get more if you try to.

Basically I loved the car. I would have no problem driving it every day and I never really got into the
computer functions built into the screens. They were intuitive enough that I managed to do all the stuff I needed to — set the radio, find and turn off the electric seat heaters — without getting lost in endless menus.

Now, if they could only sell it for under 29k, I might buy one.
 
David Cooper, Chief
Photographer, Toronto Star