Happy customers for Nissan LEAF

A reference to company car drivers being, dare I say, less worried than private motorists about fuel bills brought a presumably true anecdote from this reader in Yorkshire: “A colleague caused outrage when he drove with his wife to visit a friend who had retired to a Scottish island. We can only guess that it was somewhere in the Outer Hebrides. Anyway ‘there wer nowt theer, so we went to Bournemouth’”.

Nissan’s electrically-powered LEAF has now been on sale for a year. It has sold just 696. The first owners were electronics engineer Richard Todd and Smooth Radio DJ Mark Goodier.

Silicon chip designer Richard commented: “We’ve clocked up around 8,000 miles in our LEAF with a mixture of commuting to work and taking the children to and from their various activities. I’ve found the instant (and silent) acceleration makes the car easy and relaxing to drive. For me, there’s been no downside to driving a LEAF – I don’t think we’ve ever come close to running the battery flat!” Mark Goodier was so impressed with his LEAF that he bought a second one just weeks later. He commented: “We love our LEAFs, they are working very well for us.” The LEAF’s fast charge mode gives an 80 per cent battery charge in 30 minutes. A new rival is the Fluence ZE from its partner Renault.