Driven 20,000 kms already!

I was on my way to work when I noticed I was at 20,000 kms. I pulled over and took a picture of the dash. Battery is still good and I have not lost any capacity bars.

I took my leaf to have a service and they lubricated my door locks etc, replaced my air filter and filled up my windscreen wiper bottle. I also got them to rotate and balance my tyres. So very happy to not be polluting the environment with used Oil and Oil Filters.

My electricity costs for 20,000 kms were $795 and servicing costs were $305, so that is about $5.50 for each 100km (plus purchase costs).

Leaf Roads

I have slowly been working out which roads are nice to my battery and which are not.
Below are a few I travel a lot.

Brisbane City to Capalaba (Redlands)

Good - Wynnum, Manly and New Cleveland Roads
60-70km/h speed limit, medium hills

Bad - Old Cleveland and Finucane Roads
60-80km/h speed limit, very steep hills.
Can loose 20km+ at camp hill and chandler.

Brisbane City to Bethania (Logan)

Good - Logan and Kingston Roads
60-80km/h speed limit, mainly medium hills with
 two steeper hills between eight mile plains and springwood.

Bad - Freeway and Logan Lea Road
60-100km/h speed limit, you have to climb three hills from
slacks creek to mt gravatt (inbound).  If I do use the freeway,
 I enter/exit at Logan road (mt gravatt) to avoid hills at 100km/h.

Bethania (Logan) to Southport Beach

Good - Side roads of M1
60-80km/h speed limit. There is a path parallel to the M1
 mainly on the ocean side. At the end of siganto drive (movie world) you have
to cross under the M1 to helensvale. From there it is a nice drive to southport.
I can do a return trip on 80% charge (air con off).

Bad - M1
110km/h speed limit. Will eat your battery up fast.
The only charging station near southport is not open on the weekend :(

Leaf 6 months later

It has been six months since I purchased my leaf. I have done about 16,000 kms and love driving it every day. I have used approximately $630 in electricity, plus an $88 service.

I have also moved house from the Redlands (East of Brisbane) to Logan (South of Brisbane). This made the daily commute from 52km return trip to 80km return trip (to work).

Luckily, due to Logan being closer to the Gold Coast, I can now travel to the beach and back without needing a charge, hurray!!

Also, When I moved, I had my charger installed with a separate meter, so I can record the power usage (previously I was using the boot charger and an inline meter). I attached a wireless monitor to the meter to make it easier to see the usage. 

Hill Starts with an electric brake

I went to dinner one night and a had to park on a really steep hill. When I walked back to my car, someone had parked really close to the back of my car (you could not walk between the two).

Every time I tried to release the hand brake (e-brake) and press on the accelerator, the car would refuse (and show this instruction).

I definitely did not want to press the brake, as I would roll backwards when I moved my foot to the accelerator.

Hill starts were not explained to me when I purchased the car (nor did I think to ask).

Many times I had stopped on steep hills and ramps and used the accelerator to stop and start again, but I had never performed a hill start.

By chance, I still had my foot on the accelerator when I pressed the park brake (e-brake) button again and away I went (so simple, maybe I should read the manual).

-- Update --

Turns out you don't need to press the button, the car will release it by itself :)

First Electricity Bill

I received my electricity bill today and the leaf used $248.65 to travel 5,862km (979kWh @ 25.4 cents/kWh), so I am very happy :)

My trusty corolla would have used about $654 of petrol (Average - $1.539/Litre @ 7.25L/100km).

I am hoping to be able to use off peak soon, and that should be about 13 cents/kWh, so will be even cheaper.

The only time I see other leaf(s) it at the service department. I am not sure how many they sold in  brisbane, but I don't see them. So I think I will need to checkout the local nissan clubs and see.

Warm weather has returned

Spring is back and the temperature has been about 15℃ in the morning and 24℃ in the afternoon.
I have noticed that I am getting about 10km more range now.

On the weekend I managed to do 133km on an 80% charge (putting around the suburbs visiting friends and family). I found the range meter was very close, on my last leg it predicted 11km left, and the distance home was 10km. When I got to my driveway, the car gave me the battery low warning and the range meter started flashing - - -

I entered all the data into an iPhone app called road trip and it spat out these graphs of my charging usage.

The big spike to 26kWh/100km looks like a mistake. The level 2 charger I bought reports how long the car is connected, not the time the car was charging, so multiplying it by 3.662kW made it massive).

Leaf - two months on

It has been two months with the leaf and I have done 4000km and used about $155 worth of electricity (including heating the car in the morning).

My current average is 16.94kWh / 100km (energy from the wall socket to recharge the car), which is about $4.30 / 100km (@ 25.4 cents / kWh). My 2001 corolla uses about $10.5 / 100km (7.5litre/100km @ $1.4/litre).

You get used to the leaf being very quiet! I still get startled by loud cars and motorbikes when I have the windows down.

Lucky for me, Brisbane (Queensland, Australia) is not that big a place . I can get most places and back on an 80% charge (except the gold and sunshine coasts, I can get there on 100% charge, but need to recharge to get back).

Gauges

I like the economy gauge (rainbow looking meter above the tree display, next to the speedo). It is very handy to show you when you are wasting power (usually means I am pressing the accelerator too much). Also, you don't need to take your eyes off the road to see it.

I don’t care for the tree display (now many eco trees you are saving). I would love to replace the tree display with cruise control or speed alert. (then you don’t need to look down at the bottom display).

Hills

The leaf glides up the hills effortlessly (without needing heaps of accelerator). I can maintain the speed limit easily (compared to my 2001 Corolla, which needs second gear and a lot of accelerator).

Stopping on steep hills is super easy. When I go to the shopping centre, there is a very steep ramp  (you get stuck on it waiting for cars in front to turn), I ease up on the accelerator and the leaf stops. The meter says it is not using any power (but it must use some?). When I need to go again, I just push the accelerator a bit more and away you go (I have never done that in other cars before for fear of over heating the engine and transmission).

Energy Usage

If you want to save energy, do the speed limit (I prefer not to go any slower as it upsets other drivers).

I travel a lot on dual lane roads, so I do the speed limit in the slow lane (60km/h) and it extends the driving range up to 20km. I usually charge every two days (average about 55 - 60km per day). 

Once I started driving around in eco mode, I have found that on an 80% charge, I can get up to 120km (it says 8km left when I get home).

I am not using air conditioning yet (Spring has just started). I use the preheat in the morning (set climate control to 18C), and in the afternoons it is about 18 to 20C, so I turn off climate control and open the windows a bit (which is what I do in the Corolla).