Afinal é tão fácil entregar o Nissan Leaf aos seus clientes
"Well, I didn't think I would sleep at all last night. I know that our wait has been shorter than many but nevertheless, it has been long enough for the excitement to build and yet finally the day arrived... we picked up our Nissan Leaf today.
We decided that we both wanted to be in the car for the drive home so rather than drive our 2nd (smelly diesel) car to JFE Nissan, Exeter, we would get there by train. So we left our house by taxi at 9.10am headed for Saltash train station. We then took the 9.35 London bound train arriving at Exeter St Davids at 10.55 where we were met by Markus Jones, our EVRM from JFE Nissan. Needless to say, he picked us up in their Leaf demonstrator - cool!
Once at the dealer we went and sat at Markus' desk and sitting beside it, inside the showroom, was our Nissan Leaf and boy did it look good. All shiny and new from its Supaguard application - I love the look of new cars. I also love the new car smell usually but the Leaf didn't have that smell at all. It was certainly fresh and pleasant but not the same as other cars I have bought.
With coffee in hand, we started to go through the paperwork but to be honest there wasn't a great deal to do. There was the grant form, the warranty stuff, tax disc with "NIL" under amount paid (YES!), a customer information form (more of a disclaimer but more on this later), GAP insurance and final payment (no PCP as we paid cash). That was it really. If we weren't doing so much chatting it could have all been over in 15 minutes.
Paperwork done and dusted we turned our attention to the star of the day - the car. First thing was to activate the CARWINGS. We had already registered for CARWINGS online a few days before when Markus gave us our VIN but we had to enter the CARWINGS user and password in to the car. The first attempt failed but a second attempt was successful and as I had taken my iPad I logged in to the iPad app to see if I could see the charge state etc of the car. I COULD! It said 101 miles. Great. Then Markus took us through the car controls and systems but apart from a few buttons that I didn't know about it was all fair familiar so we didn't spend a great deal of time. However, if I were a customer that wasn't already familiar with the systems, I would say that this handover would take no longer than any other car with all the normal bells and whistles. Yes, the charging is new but there isn't much to it to explain. All in all, the handover was pretty unremarkable.
All the formalities over it was time for the photos. As we were the first delivery for JFE Nissan they had a photographer to take a few picks so I let Markus drive it our of the showroom (not wanting to risk a bump so early on!) and we then spend about half an hour posing with the car in a kind of handover ceremony. The sales manager and service managers came and congratulated us to. It was all very nice and easy going.
So the moment had come... the last handshakes goodbye and good luck and we were on our own, sitting in the car, ready for the drive home. To be honest, I was extremely excited and a little apprehensive as I drove out of the dealer - I had no idea how this first drive would go. I knew I had the range to easily get to Saltash... that was not on my mind... but I was finally getting behind the wheel of my very own Nissan Leaf and so the excitement was tinged with uncertainty.
The drive home was actually very interesting. It was dark and raining and with the lights and wipers on auto they were cutting in and out most of the way home. Range started at 101 miles so you can imagine my complete horror when just 4 miles down the road it read 65 miles! I kid you not. We just had to trust that we knew it was fully charged when we left so we just trusted that it would all sort itself out. Well it did but the range went up and down in a rather strange fashion all the way home. This actually sounds worse than it was. Clearly our concern was born out of our lack of familiarity with how the estimated range works. After driving for a while it starts to become more clear. The range on the gauge is based on how you have been driving and what has been happening to the car for the immediate few minutes. Within a couple of miles of the dealer we had to climb Holden Hill. It is a massively long and steepish hill on the A38 heading west out of Exeter. By the time we got to the top the car had been climbing this hill long enough for it to use the climb for its estimate and so range was down and sure enough... had we continued climbing that hill then I am sure the range would have been well down. Of course, most of the time when you go up a hill you eventually come down and all the way down the range steadily climbed back up as the regenerative braking kept our speed down to the 55mph we set on the cruise. It is weird having a car where the more you drive the further you can go! Of course, this happens with all cars but it is just more noticeable in an EV.
All the way home the range on the gauge wander up and down as I climbed and descended hills but always coming back to roughly the value it started at. We came off the main road at Plymouth as I wanted to do a bit of town driving and that is when the range settled down. Entering Plymouth we had about 42 miles remaining after about 50 miles and this was remarkably accurate in my opinion especially as we had lights, wipers and heater on for most of the way. The drive through town turned a couple of heads but no more.
Arriving back to our house saw 34 miles remaining on the gauge... again remarkably accurate. I think that 80 miles is probably achievable most of the time. I am going to assume no more than 70 miles max until I get more of a feel for how it all works but I am encouraged by this first experience.
It is on charge now of course on our driveway. I don't have a pod yet so I am using the supplied cable through my new, dedicated 16A circuit and socket on the garage wall. It has been charging over an hour now and CARWINGS says it has added about 8 miles. Less than I thought a hour should add so I am watching this carefully. I will report again when I have charged a few more times.
All in all the car was a absolute dream to drive and I love it. I will post more on the individual systems and sub-systems over the coming few days so watch this space."
Em: http://www.leaftalk.co.uk/entry.php/13- ... mpressions