Nissan Leaf long-term test review: meeting fellow EV owners
Meeting other EV owners is great, until someone goes against the charging station etiquette
As our Leaf rolls on, impressing everyone who drives it with its comfort and refinement, I feel I’m becoming integrated into polite Leaf society.
In the course of our time with the car, I’ve spoken to more than a dozen owners (interestingly, the ones I’ve met have almost always been travelling at least two-up), all of them at charging points in the south of England, and started to learn the habits of the common or garden electric Nissan buyer.
The first I met was at Membury services on the M4; he was on a journey with his wife from Malvern to Reading. While we each waited for our 80% charge (this guy knew very well, and I’ve since learned, that pursuing the final 15% isn’t worth the extra time it takes), he explained to me that his other car was a Westfield V8, but this was the one in which he did most of his miles.
The one place you’re most likely to meet other members of Leaf society is at those free charging stations on motorways, at around 6pm. Owners in adjacent towns or suburbs tend to drive a few miles on the motorway to pick up free ‘tickle’, courtesy of Ecotricity, to get them to work every couple of days.
This is where you witness the closest thing to EV road rage, although it never comes to that, because these people tend to be supporters of an orderly society, not the sort who want to tear it down.
But what gets the Leaf owner’s goat (I’ve felt the annoyance myself) is arriving at a charging station and finding it occupied by a plug-in hybrid, already charged to the hilt, with its owner away having a languorous coffee. Here is a car that can proceed anyway, hogging the facilities. We pure battery car owners feel they’re breaching the rules of charging point etiquette.
As the EV constituency grows, which it is starting to do at a decent rate, it’ll be interesting to see how things evolve. Especially when Ecotricity starts charging for its facilities, as it surely must, and soon.
Nissan Leaf Tekna
Price £27,230 (after £4500 gov’t grant) Price as tested £28,380 Economy 3.6 miles/kWh Faults None Expenses None Last seen 18.5.16
Read our previous reports:
110-mile range isn’t such a set-back