Buying a Nissan Leaf 30 kw

discostu1

I'm about to buy a Nissan Leaf 30kw. I've done the maths and it makes sense for what we do. We have to do a lot of driving around Cork City everyday. The Home charger is in train and 6.6kw also ordered. I am somewhat amazed at the occupancy of the public charging stations I have been driving older Leafs for the past few weekends and assumed there would be lots of "vacancies" obviously there are more EVs than I thought and also as I have read some folk just abuse it.
Car is ordered so please no "Why are you buying that pile of crap" :D but any thoughts or comments like when stopped at traffic lights do you guys go into neutral and use the foot brake or just keep your foot on the "normal" brake. I got two different answers from two EV drivers. Wish me luck

KCross

Good luck!

Just keep your foot on the brake. Putting it in neutral doesn't benefit you in any way.

On the home charger point, I presume you are getting the free 16A one? Make sure the installer puts in cable that is capable of drawing 32A to future proof it for you.

FYI: The free 16A charge point will only charge your car at 3.3kW.

Water John

OH usually drives it. But just press, what is the central pedal, the left pedal is a parking brake.
It requires a double move of the 'gear' lever to go into ECO mode, so don't go into neutral while driving.
BTW OH uses the foot brake when parking, some people don't.

Basically, you have a stop pedal and a go pedal and just use those.
Best wishes on joining the club.

isnottheword

discostu1 wrote: »

I'm about to buy a Nissan Leaf 30kw.

Welcome to the EV World.

Are you buying brand new? Which model? PCP or outright purchase? What sort of a deal are you getting?

Water John

Not being too smart, but read the full of OP's post. It will answer some of your questions, not all.

isnottheword

Water John wrote: »

Not being too smart, but read the full of OP's post. It will answer some of your questions, not all.

Was that directed at me? If so, it doesn't answer any of my questions ;-)

discostu1

isnottheword wrote: »

Welcome to the EV World.

Are you buying brand new? Which model? PCP or outright purchase? What sort of a deal are you getting?

Thank you all for the comments advise I didnt expect such a fast response I'm not really a car person but the maths work out for us and it looks a decent car especially around the city anyway
Buying new for cash
Nissan Leaf 30kw SV metallic paint, Cold pack 6kw charger 3 years "Free" servicing with my own 07 Tiida and taking all grants etc into account € 24700 or there abouts

stesaurus

Usually I just hold the break but if going to be longer than 30 seconds I'd flick the handbrake on. It auto releases when starting off on the i3 so the handbrake is usually the best bet. Never neutral. Quite often I wouldn't even use the brake, just let the car come to a stop itself.

Water John

The i3 seems to drive diff than the Leaf, in that case.

Soarer

Any reason why you chose the Leaf over the Ioniq?

peposhi

I think you've made an excellent choice based on what is available in Ireland currently. Price/range/specs balance is best in the Leaf in my opinion. A 30kw Leaf would have covered 99.9% of our journeys compared our current 24kw. A really good move to get the 6.6kw charger. You may need it twice in a year but it pays off with the hassle it saves you..
Get some mudflaps if you want to keep your car cleaner. Also the boot liner is a very good option to have.

discostu1

Soarer wrote: »

Any reason why you chose the Leaf over the Ioniq?

Good question I suppose being a non technical car person I was swayed by a few things

• I know one person who has a Leaf and he is very happy with it
• I have driven a Nissan for most of my motoring life and thankfully have never had an issue I love my 07 Tiida a car a lot of folk dont like
• The Garage/Show Room is about 3/4 of a mile from where I live it also has a fast charger
• Nothing against Hyundai I suppose I fell back on what I was used to

Water John

All good reasons. Enjoy.

Soarer

discostu1 wrote: »

Good question I suppose being a non technical car person I was swayed by a few things

• I know one person who has a Leaf and he is very happy with it
• I have driven a Nissan for most of my motoring life and thankfully have never had an issue I love my 07 Tiida a car a lot of folk dont like
• The Garage/Show Room is about 3/4 of a mile from where I live it also has a fast charger
• Nothing against Hyundai I suppose I fell back on what I was used to

I wasn't trying to second guess you or anything. Was genuinely interested.

Well wear.

discostu1

Soarer wrote: »

I wasn't trying to second guess you or anything. Was genuinely interested.

Well wear.

Gosh no problem I think I'll be talking to you lads a lot over the next few weeks Everydays a school day as they say.

n97 mini

Water John wrote: »

It requires a double move of the 'gear' lever to go into ECO mode,

2014+ models have an ECO button on the steering wheel. Once on it stays on. The double move will put that model into B mode.

n97 mini

Soarer wrote: »

Any reason why you chose the Leaf over the Ioniq?

The main reason is there are a lot more Chademo charge points in Ireland than there are CCS. Aka "fast chargers". The northern half of the country is almost completely devoid of CCS.

peposhi

Do you know that Tilda was used as base to build the early Leaf prototypes

cros13

KCross wrote: »

FYI: The free 16A charge point will only charge your car at 3.3kW.

*cough* actually the 6.6kW equipped leafs will draw an extra amp or so. So a few % faster even on the ESB provided chargepoint. I'd second on getting the cabling suitable for 32A. If at any time in the future you feel faster home charging would be of benefit, you can reconfigure the ESB chargepoint to supply 32A, or at worst you'll only have to spend €300 replacing the chargepoint with a 32A or even adding a second 16A point beside it.

Water John wrote: »

The i3 seems to drive diff than the Leaf, in that case.

Yup, Leaf has creep, the hill hold in the leaf only operates for a few seconds and doesn't work in reverse. In the i3, I could count the number of times I use the brake pedal in a typical day on one hand, in the Leaf it's much more like an automatic ICE.

n97 mini wrote: »

The main reason is there are a lot more Chademo charge points in Ireland than there are CCS. Aka "fast chargers". The northern half of the country is almost completely devoid of CCS.

As an owner of both CCS and Chademo vehicles I'd have to agree. It's a pity because CCS is far superior both technically and in terms of user friendliness. The Ioniq is nice car to drive, and better value than the Leaf as well.
It won't be the case forever, I'd foresee most rapids from 2018/2019 forwards being installed CCS only. It's quite possible that a current gen Leaf will be the last Chademo vehicle sold in Europe. There are 100 EV/PHEVs slated for release between now and 2020 according to manufacturer roadmaps. 94+ are definately Type 2 or Type 2 CCS.

I suspect Tesla will go CCS with the Model 3 as well.

KCross

cros13 wrote: »

As an owner of both CCS and Chademo vehicles I'd have to agree. It's a pity because CCS is far superior both technically and in terms of user friendliness.

Why? You plug it in, you pull it out. Doesnt sound that more user friendly than ChaDeMo?

cros13 wrote: »

It won't be the case forever, I'd foresee most rapids from 2018/2019 forwards being installed CCS only.

Are you referring to Ireland or Europe generally? I'd agree if its Europe you refer to but not sure if you are referring to Ireland.

Do you foresee eCars getting the money in 2018/2019 to address the issue?

Also, why would they install CCS only chargers? Surely for any new chargers in Ireland they would be triple heads so as not to alienate the current majority. It will be quite a few years yet before CCS users on the ground pass out Chademo users.

cros13

KCross wrote: »

Why? You plug it in, you pull it out. Doesnt sound that more user friendly than ChaDeMo?

Connector is more robust, lighter and smaller. You plug in the connector to the same socket as your AC, charger communicates automatically with no further intervention required (It's possible to use CCS with the car identifying itself to the chargepoint, no cards, no apps, no pressing start, just plug and charge) and CCS provides a full IP-based communications channel between the car and the charger that could be used to provide other services. It's way easier.... and I'm as close to unbiased as you'll get... being an owner of vehicles using both systems. When you use both on a daily basis Chademo seems very clunky indeed.

Gen 1 CCS supports 170kW, the fully compatible Gen2 supports up to 350kW, Chademo is 50kW with changes to signalling for next gen 100kW.

KCross wrote: »

Are you referring to Ireland or Europe generally? I'd agree if its Europe you refer to but not sure if you are referring to Ireland.

I'd see CCS-only installs pre-empting any further expansion of the chademo network beyond it's current number of sites. Any further triple head installs we'll see will (funding-willing) be additional rapids at existing sites.

KCross wrote: »

Do you foresee eCars getting the money in 2018/2019 to address the issue?

Everything is up in the air until CER rules or the government grows a pair.

KCross wrote: »

Also, why would they install CCS only chargers? Surely for any new chargers in Ireland they would be triple heads so as not to alienate the current majority. It will be quite a few years yet before CCS users on the ground pass out Chademo users.

~1300 Chademo users isn't a lot in the grand scheme of things, it will be possible to make adapters or conversion kits (it's not easy the other way around). AC43 is basically abandoned, Renault has already publicly announced they will go CCS from 2019 at the latest. The only car manufacturer standing behind Chademo is Nissan...and one third of that alliance is saying they'll go CCS. I have it on good authority that Nissan is considering CCS for future vehicles as well, maybe the Gen 2 Leaf.

BoatMad

I agree in general with Cros , but I know for a fact ecars are committed to CCS chademo for the DC charge side for the immediate future.

But the fact remains that there are a lot more chademo points today then CCS. And with the DTTAS paper on alternative fuels suggesting we have enough chargers as is to support 20000 EVs , i can't see a lot more getting installed.

BoatMad

Ps the 30kwh certainly has the 2 second hill hold in reverse. I've never had to resort to any fancy footwork

Ps I use neutral mode to allow the car to drift forward and stop in traffic. Coming out of neutral doesn't require any foot on the brake. However most of the time at lights , I just hit "p"

n97 mini

I think the so-called advantages of CCS over Chademo are overplayed, and largely not relevant. The cable on a DC charger at 50kw is already the size of a petrol pump hose. 100kw cables might happen, 350kw won't. If they did, there are still massive issues for the electricity company supply that sort of power to a site.

Having two sockets is also not really an issue as economies of scale mean they cost feck all extra. There is the benefit of redundancy: if one were to get damaged the other might still work.

I think the creation of CCS was to control standards. Chademo is up to the job as is. But instead the CCS crowd have just turned charging into another VHS vs Betamax.

Water John

Down the road, a diff make up of battery, looks like being capable of being charged in a few minutes. That will require a major power transfer.
Won't happen in the next few years.

BoatMad

Water John wrote: »

Down the road, a diff make up of battery, looks like being capable of being charged in a few minutes. That will require a major power transfer.
Won't happen in the next few years.

I see , would you like to hazard a guess at the power requirements needed to say fill 100kwh battery in a few minutes. Would you like to speculate on a connector/cable , usable by ordinary mortals that handles 1Mw or more. At this level the DART supply infrastructure looks tiny.

Water John

If that type of refuelling, was to be possible, then the battery size would not be anywhere near that size.

cros13

n97 mini wrote: »

The cable on a DC charger at 50kw is already the size of a petrol pump hose. 100kw cables might happen, 350kw won't.

Uh... the 350kW chargers are already being installed. There are 8 of them in Bavaria in use for over a year. The cables are thinner... because they are actively cooled by glycol.

n97 mini wrote: »

If they did, there are still massive issues for the electricity company supply that sort of power to a site.

Not that different from other major consumers. Charging sites just need to be located beside the 110kV network at a minimum or ideally the 220kV. Tesla's supercharger at Nebennes has a 2MW supply, and at high demand they balance the load among the charging vehicles.

There are a few load balancing DC rapid chargers already deployed like this 150kW example:
http://www.evtec.ch/en/products/espressoandcharge/

One is installed at the rest stop before the gotthard tunnel:
http://www.gofastcharge.com/en/

BoatMad wrote: »

Would you like to speculate on a connector/cable , usable by ordinary mortals that handles 1Mw or more. At this level the DART supply infrastructure looks tiny.

I think 350kW may be the point we top out at, with the 350kW headline rate mainly only used by HGVs or buses.

Water John

Agree, future charge points should be located alongside Electrical substations.
Most major towns have a 110kv feed in.

Some people always see difficulties. There is generally a solution.

BoatMad

Water John wrote: »

If that type of refuelling, was to be possible, then the battery size would not be anywhere near that size.

You contradict yourself. If we can refuel fast and according to your predictions this results in smaller batteries and hence more frequent faster refuelling then there is no need for particularly high powered chargers , merely a requirement for a lot of them.

Mind you as to why you assert that EV drivers should not have the range of a diesel is rather perplexing . I sure t we will see battery capacities climb well above 100 kWh as we see move varied car models including EVs , sports EVs ( a Ferrari EV anyone ) and larger saloons. Consumption efficiency is unlikely to show much improvement as this is largely a function of physics

BoatMad

n97 mini wrote: »

2014+ models have an ECO button on the steering wheel. Once on it stays on. The double move will put that model into B mode.

Water John wrote: »

Down the road, a diff make up of battery, looks like being capable of being charged in a few minutes. That will require a major power transfer.
Won't happen in the next few years.

Actually today's lithiums are quite capable of being charged at 1C to 5C , but need careful thermal management which translates into cost.

In the past n the lab , we've done 10C charging !

n97 mini

cros13 wrote: »

Uh... the 350kW chargers are already being installed. There are 8 of them in Bavaria in use for over a year. The cables are thinner... because they are actively cooled by glycol.

Have you got a link? I can only find info about future installations.

FWIW Tesla's 120kw cables are also liquid cooled.

cros13

It's not a public network. They are installed at several facilities owned by a certain carmaker. Two companies are supplying the test rapids, one is German and one a three letter Swedish/Swiss company.

The implementation is pretty much the same as Tesla's liquid cooled supercharger cable.

Another german carmaker has a few 350kW rapids at sites near Nuremberg.

Water John

That's the type of juice, McFly was looking for.