Nissan Leaf review _ Consumer Reports

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enWhile most manufacturers are talking about electric cars Nissan's already got one in production this is the Nissan Leaf unlike a Toyota Prius or even the Chevrolet Volt there's no gasoline engine here at all we purchased one here to test our track with no gasoline engine here there's no oil to change no spark plugs to replace in fact there's not even a gear transmission here that helps the car makes it nice and simple also helps make it affordable too in fact you pay less than $30,000 for a leaf after the tax incentives as you might expect on a high-tech car like this there's lots of tech inside too there's lots of displays that tell you about how you're driving how much energy you're using but probably the most useful one is the nearby stations button this actually tells you you the nearby charging stations that you could drive to and works with the navigation system so you can program it to take you right there unfortunately you might find that many of those stations are outside of your driving range the controls and displays do take some getting used to all the displays are digital and there aren't any knobs anywhere to be found not even a volume knob for the radio and the weirdest part is the shifter this thing looks more like a hockey puck than a shifter and you have to move it in all directions in order to get into reverse driver Park the rest of the Interior is actually pretty normal it's pretty roomy and inside the seats they're pretty comfortable the fit and finish fairly nice but the one complaint that we did have is the steering wheel while it does have adjustment for tilt it doesn't telescope a high roof line makes getting out of the front really easy but in the rear it's another story the battery packs are actually underneath the floor that raises the floor up and makes getting in kind of rough because you have to duck down underneath the roof and once you're back here that high floor makes thigh support not very good cuz you're knees are up high but there is good news at least there's room for three back here now being a hatchback gives the leaf pretty decent cargo area but the battery pack does take up some of the room has a pretty high liftover now acceleration off the line it feels very quick really the car is not that fast it's not that fast to 60 but it feels super quick because of the electric motor in fact all the torque it's available right away and when you're going quick and you're pushing down on the gas p ped well electric paddle I guess when you're pushing down to that you don't hear any engine revving gives you that impression that you're actually in a powerful vehicle without a gasoline engine going it actually is pretty quiet no murmur from the engine at all but around 45 to 50 mph there's this high-pitch wind and to some of us we found it really really annoying the ride's pretty compliant and although this is a small car doesn't feel like one it's actually fairly heavy because of the battery p back and that actually makes it ride a little smoother the handling isn't very impressive the car steering feel really isn't very good it actually feels a little bit rubbery but the big problem with this car is range it's not about how it drives it's about how far you can drive it and while Nissan advertises 100 miles in reality we usually got about 75 mil until it was completely dead and if you drive on the highway or if you want to run your AC or you want to run the heater you're going to get closer to 65 mil on a charge that's severely limits the usefulness of this car now a short range wouldn't be such an issue if you could just go to a gas station and fill it up in a few minutes but that's not the case even on 220 volts it takes many hours to fully charge the leaf so the Nissan Leaf is a nice car to drive and it's by far the most developed electric car to date but before you go out buy one you have to realize the limitations it's got a short range and a very long recharge time so that basically ures that the car is not going to be your primary vehicleWhile most manufacturers are talking about electric cars Nissan's already got one in production this is the Nissan Leaf unlike a Toyota Prius or even the Chevrolet Volt there's no gasoline engine here at all we purchased one here to test our track with no gasoline engine here there's no oil to change no spark plugs to replace in fact there's not even a gear transmission here that helps the car makes it nice and simple also helps make it affordable too in fact you pay less than $30,000 for a leaf after the tax incentives as you might expect on a high-tech car like this there's lots of tech inside too there's lots of displays that tell you about how you're driving how much energy you're using but probably the most useful one is the nearby stations button this actually tells you you the nearby charging stations that you could drive to and works with the navigation system so you can program it to take you right there unfortunately you might find that many of those stations are outside of your driving range the controls and displays do take some getting used to all the displays are digital and there aren't any knobs anywhere to be found not even a volume knob for the radio and the weirdest part is the shifter this thing looks more like a hockey puck than a shifter and you have to move it in all directions in order to get into reverse driver Park the rest of the Interior is actually pretty normal it's pretty roomy and inside the seats they're pretty comfortable the fit and finish fairly nice but the one complaint that we did have is the steering wheel while it does have adjustment for tilt it doesn't telescope a high roof line makes getting out of the front really easy but in the rear it's another story the battery packs are actually underneath the floor that raises the floor up and makes getting in kind of rough because you have to duck down underneath the roof and once you're back here that high floor makes thigh support not very good cuz you're knees are up high but there is good news at least there's room for three back here now being a hatchback gives the leaf pretty decent cargo area but the battery pack does take up some of the room has a pretty high liftover now acceleration off the line it feels very quick really the car is not that fast it's not that fast to 60 but it feels super quick because of the electric motor in fact all the torque it's available right away and when you're going quick and you're pushing down on the gas p ped well electric paddle I guess when you're pushing down to that you don't hear any engine revving gives you that impression that you're actually in a powerful vehicle without a gasoline engine going it actually is pretty quiet no murmur from the engine at all but around 45 to 50 mph there's this high-pitch wind and to some of us we found it really really annoying the ride's pretty compliant and although this is a small car doesn't feel like one it's actually fairly heavy because of the battery p back and that actually makes it ride a little smoother the handling isn't very impressive the car steering feel really isn't very good it actually feels a little bit rubbery but the big problem with this car is range it's not about how it drives it's about how far you can drive it and while Nissan advertises 100 miles in reality we usually got about 75 mil until it was completely dead and if you drive on the highway or if you want to run your AC or you want to run the heater you're going to get closer to 65 mil on a charge that's severely limits the usefulness of this car now a short range wouldn't be such an issue if you could just go to a gas station and fill it up in a few minutes but that's not the case even on 220 volts it takes many hours to fully charge the leaf so the Nissan Leaf is a nice car to drive and it's by far the most developed electric car to date but before you go out buy one you have to realize the limitations it's got a short range and a very long recharge time so that basically ures that the car is not going to be your primary vehicle\n"