Tag Archives: JFE

A Nissan LEAF Goes Surfing

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Our apologies for the delay in publishing this article, but at this juncture it appears as though British Telecom have pushed out a firmware upgrade which has broken some (or all?) of their “business hubs” in the UK:

Whilst we wait for them to sort out the problem, which hit us 2 days ago, we’ve reverted to an ancient “2Wire” WiFi router that was gathering dust on one of our shelves. Having intended to head for North Cornwall at 9:30 on Saturday at the latest we eventually hit the road shortly after 11:00. Here’s our set of charging cables:

The blue one is a 10 meter 13 amp extension cable, just in case none of our planned rapid charging stations en route proved to be fully functional! When packing our bodyboarding gear Kasia’s 36″ board fitted in the boot easily:

whereas my 42″ bat tail was just too long and had to sit on the back seat:

The LEAF also has a split rear seat so if there had been three of us on the trip we could have used that to fit everyone and everything in. Finally we were ready to leave!

The Nissan sat nav planned a route past Whitehouse Services near Okehampton which suited us perfectly, and the open road beckoned:

This is the sight that greeted us when we arrived at Whitehouse Services:

Just in case you’re wondering, the vehicle on the left does not incorporate an electric drive train!

To be continued….

30 kWh Nissan LEAF Extended Test Drive

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We have mentioned the new “go further” Nissan LEAF previously on the V2G blog, and now thanks to JFE Nissan in Exeter we have the chance to test the new 30 kWh battery pack equipped 2016 LEAF for ourselves. According to the Nissan UK web site:

Every full charge will give you a range of up to 155 miles.

I don’t know about you, but we’d like to check that claim for ourselves! At the very start of our test the odometer on the bright white LEAF we were borrowing read 6 miles as we collected it earlier today, and had advanced to 11 miles by the time we got back to base:

We had intended returning from Exeter to the wilds of the Haldon Hills via a main road. However before we left the Marsh Barton trading estate we consulted the LEAF’s handy traffic news feed, which revealed this:

According to Radio Devon “a caravan’s been abandoned in the inside lane on Telegraph Hill”! Hence we took the scenic route through some narrow Devon country lanes, and ended up with 20 miles worth of range left in the traction battery pack, according to the LEAF’s dashboard at least:

Having previously had some trouble using the rapid charger at Exeter Services, and having to avoid the motorway for other reasons on this occasion, we were in the perfect position to test the LEAF’s 13 amp “Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment” charging lead. We plugged it in at 18:30, and by 22:30 tonight the dashboard told us this:

More from us tomorrow on our Spring 2016 LEAF test, but for now we leave you with the inimitable Robert Llewellyn’s take on the new LEAF:

À bientôt, as I believe they say in France.