Hang tight for a random review of the Nissan Leaf, in this post I will be listing some pros and cons of owning an electric vehicle in Singapore. I own a Nissan Leaf and it is about time to do a review after a year of owning an electric car.
The Nissan Leaf has been a tough choice and for me, it has been an interesting challenge. I’ll summarize the pros and cons of owning an electric car in Singapore, if you like a quick read-through of the information head to the bottom of this post to get more information.
First, the greatest joy of owning the Leaf is that the power is that instant response when you push the “gas pedal”. You will definitely be in front after the traffic light turns green. Do look out for motorcycles that think that they are faster than you and did not check whether there are any vehicles in their blind spot. This leads to the 2nd point, the silent drive. With the car being very silent we hear road noise instead of the engine noise, with that comes a few dangers that pedestrians and motorists take for granted. They think they can hear a car approaching and do not use their eyes sometimes. If you are approaching from behind they sometimes do not realize a car is behind them. I’ve also figured that the acoustic dampening on the leaf is not the best as we compared with the Nissan Kicks and notice significant road noise reduction in the Kicks as compared to the Leaf.
Why does the Leaf have louder road noise than the Nissan Kicks you may ask? Another point to consider is that most electrical vehicles would like to reduce the weight of the car because in return it would increase the range of the car which looks desirable on paper. This would result in a lot of material choices and cost reduction in the vehicle in the above example, with that being said the Leaf takes pride in saying that it uses recycled materials to build the car. You can say the interior build quality is good but in my opinion it is not as good as other cars Nissan makes.
I’m sure most of you are interested in the cost involved in the purchase and running of this EV I bought, I have a post listing the cost to charge the car HERE. I’ll be adding a post about the purchase of the car soon and I’ll update this post.
With more chargers coming in 2023, I would avoid mentioning charging options and charger availability in this post.
When choosing the best electric car to purchase do spend time checking the car’s drive feel, battery range and charging options.
Look out for real-world mileage and not its paper-written range. Another thing that looks good on paper is the Tesla brand. There are many quirks that a Tesla has but users always says that a software update will be able to solve these with time.
I’ll say look at other options if you have time, there are cheaper electric car options. When thinking about electric vehicles, one always thinks of Tesla first. I guess they are the market leader in this field so they have a better grasp on the market.
Public Charger Compatibility
When making the decision to purchase an EV, I did not consider its compatibility to my country’s public charging network. I bought a car with CHAdeMO Plug connector while my entire country was building a CCS Plug at all public charging stations. This was a huge mistake as this limits my use of public chargers in an already competitive space during peak hours. More information about plug compatibility in the video below.
Motor Power and Costs
If you are considering a powerful option, watch out for additional cost for that vehicle. A Tesla’s road tax could go up to SGD$4K per year. The Nissan Leaf is a well balanced power to cost ratio in my opinion. My vehicle’s road tax cost about SGD$1.3K per year and has a powerful motor to give that EV experience to its passengers. Other EVs will reduce its motor power to increase the vehicle’s range and cost of road tax.
