I actually felt quite sad handing over the keys our leaf for its first working stint with on-street parking team in north London last week. The journey had been undertaken without charging the car from the day before. So no air con on the way down the M40.
Handover was fairly straightforward - not sure we need to replicate the estimated 3 hour handover prescribed by Nissan to their dealers each time.
I returned by train to Wycombe and wondered how the Leaf would perform in a real operating environment - which is of course why we invested in the car in the first place.
Come collection and the feedback is pretty much as forecast - the managers commute form Luton to Wembley resulted in a fairly close run on range a couple of days - I think the final warning lights came on !
For the on street operation the car was comfortably used by 5 staff to be ferried about and rang e was not an issue - however charging time on the standard supply was felt to be a little unnerving @ 7 hours. The performance and drive quality was thought to be great.
I have subsequently gleaned from one of the London Boroughs that a lot of EV drivers "Top up" on their charge points - all the data is fed back on charge times etc. so 3-4 hours which get c 80 % charge.
More to come - the leaf has been dispatch to Northern Ireland on Tuesday for a renewable Energy company we supply vehicles to via Fleetdrive. Apparently the MD has taken the car hostage!! More when it returns.
