2018 Nissan Leaf long-term test wrapup: Goodbye to our long-term electric test car















After 12,731 miles of faithful service, the Leaf left, gone back to Nissan from whence it was borrowed, and I miss it already.

The all-electric 2018-model long-term Leaf was a reliable wheeled servant in all those miles, taking me and several Autoweek colleagues pretty much anywhere we needed to go in Southern California, from Los Angeles to: San Diego, Santa Barbara, Barstow or Palm Springs and back. There were no mechanical issues at all in that time, the Leaf never lurched. And no maintenance, either. It performed everything from carpool duty with its seating for five, to Ikea runs where it accommodated big shelf projects with its fold-down seats, to regular runs in the HOV lane with its three bright red carpool lane stickers that are more precious in Los Angeles than the gold from which they cast the Oscars.  


















Since our test car was a 2018 model, it had the 40-kWh battery good for 151 miles of range. (The newer Leaf PLUS gets a 62-kWh battery good for 236 miles.) In the last months of Leaf stewardship I found myself getting more used to using SoCal’s handful of fast-charging DC outlets that are oh-so-slowly springing up around the state. Plug in there and you’re back up to 80 percent charge in as little as 30 minutes, depending how much charge you’ve depleted. Granted, there are still painfully few of those and once you do find one – often unmarked in huge mall parking lots — there’s no guarantee they won’t be servicing another EV. So we are all still lab rats in this grand experimental transition from gasoline to electricity.

But the charging infrastructure is much better now than it was when we first borrowed an early Leaf back in 2011. Back then there were less than a handful of J1772 Level 2 chargers available to the public, even in “EV-friendly” Southern California, and those were often in use, out of service, or restricted to private users. Back in 2011, the Los Angeles International Airport, for instance, had three, the LA Convention Center had two and there was one outside the Toyota Museum in Torrance. I had a 240-volt outlet at my house, though, and that is what most users should have. My house also has solar panels on the roof, as new homes will soon be required to have, so my operation of an EV was a lot “cleaner” than users in other states.

I still have the Level 2 charger at my house, a regular three-pronged 240-volt plug into which I plugged my Nissan Leaf charge cable. The new Leaf cable that came with my 2018 Leaf accommodates both 120- and 240-volt power, which is a huge step forward from the 120-volt-only cables of early Leafs and something which I hope all other EV makers will offer. It’s a lot cheaper to the end-user than having to install a wall-mounted charger with its blinking lights and various readouts. All you need is electricity, man, not expensive blinking lights. I should say that the price of those wall-mounted chargers has also dropped significantly since 2011 – ChargePoint has one for $599, JuiceBox has one for $549 and EVoCharge lists one for $479. They used to be over two grand.
























Those are for Level 2 chargers, that can recharge most EVs most of the time overnight, like your mobile phone. If you’re out on the highway and can’t make it on a single charge, you’ll want to plug into a commercial Level 3 charger. These offer 440-volt, DC, CHAdeMO charging, like a firehose of electricity, if I may mix a metaphor. As I’ve said, these are still rare birds, hard to find, and are owned and operated by many different companies, none of which seem to take the other’s account information. Many’s the time I’ve called an 800 number out in the middle of some shady spot in Newport Beach trying to get CHAdeMO electricity to flow into my long-gone Leaf. Sometimes I just gave up and risked not making it home. Leaf owners can take advantage of the EZ-Charge card that gives owners access to multiple charging networks using a single access card. This a handy feature for Leaf owners.

Another cool feature is the e-Pedal, which allows you to crank up the amount of regenerative braking so that you can go all day driving with just the accelerator. Once you get used to it, it’s an efficient breeze to operate. It was by far my favorite feature on the Leaf.   

Last you heard from the long-term Leaf was at the 10,000-mile mark, or, specifically, the 9581-mile mark. At that point it had averaged 151.4 miles per charge from its 40-kWh battery. Since then we added another 3129 miles to it and in those last 3129 miles range barely dropped – to 149.0 miles per charge. So in all 12,731 miles it averaged just over 150 miles per full charge, almost exactly what it was when new.

How is the Leaf doing out in the marketplace? Leaf sales peaked in 2014 at 30,200 in the U.S. In all, almost 300,000 Leafs have been sold worldwide, the number-one-selling EV in the world until either the Tesla Model S or Model 3 surpasses it, which is inevitable. Leaf sales have been slowing in recent years as more and more competitors enter the market. But for a long time the Leaf was the best and the best-selling EV out there.

The newest Leaf, called the Leaf PLUS, was introduced early this year. It comes with a 62-kWh battery good for a range of 236 miles, keeping it competitive with other 200+-mile EV competitors. It’s hatchback design and seating for five make it a highly competitive entry. I’d like to keep it for 100,000 miles and report back to you then, but alas, Nissan wanted it back. So goodbye Leaf, I hardly knew ye. But what I did get to know, I liked. Maybe you, potential EV buyer, will like it, too.

Next up in the Autoweek long-term fleet is a Toyota Mirai. That’s right, a hydrogen fuel cell. Start composing your comments now!

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