2015 & 2017 Nissan LEAFs
Just over three weeks ago, I was walking to the lawn of local Senn High School on a Sunday afternoon to attend one of the weekly, free concerts put on by jazz guitarist Steve Knight and his combo when I saw something I was completely unprepared for. Just one block away from the school, there was a tree that appeared to be fully immersed in the act of shedding its leaves. This was on just the first day of September, and also before Labor Day. This seemed akin to some friends and connections on social media who have been posting for weeks now about how they’re minutes away from wearing flannel and sipping pumpkin spice-flavored things.
I looked at this tree, pictured above and below, and thought of these friends, thinking to myself how ludicrous it seemed to be rushing things. Granted, this is now the first Tuesday of autumn in the northern hemisphere, but at the time and amid high temperatures that were still yet regularly reaching past 80°F, it seemed really premature for this tree to basically be throwing the rest of summer into the trash. I do remember from my youth when I would wear my new fall clothes to class when the school year had started and it was still hot outside, just to be able to show them off. I’d sometimes be sweating by third period. I feel like that was this tree. (Slow your roll, tree.)
These were not the only leaves to be found during that walk to and from Senn High School… or I should say LEAFs. It had been a long time since I had remembered seeing any of these cars around, and within the span of maybe five minutes, I had walked past three first-generation examples, with two of them parked nose-to-tail. I should point out that I’m not yelling, but that the LEAF model name is actually an acronym for “Leading Environmentally-friendly Affordable Family vehicle”. (I also think “LEAF” sounds better than trying to pronounce “LEFAFV”.) While it’s entirely possible that I might have seen some of these around in traffic or in the neighborhood, I for sure do not remember them being especially common, even in a big city like Chicago.
According to Motor Trend, the black 2015 example would have a range of about 84 miles from its 107-horsepower, 80 kilowatt motor, with its power supplied exclusively by lithium-ion batteries. That doesn’t really seem like a lot of distance, but I suppose it would make one of these acceptable for use as a commuter car for driving downtown or into the suburbs and back. Forty miles one-way seems acceptable, but I wouldn’t want to risk having it run out of juice. The LEAF was the first, mass-market, all-electric vehicle available for sale in the U.S. It was also the best-selling, fully electric car in the world from between 2011 and 2014, and again for 2016. It has since been surpassed in popularity among plug-in electric vehicles by the Tesla Model S.
For its first thirteen years of production between 2010 and 2022, almost half of all LEAFs (about 177,700 out of 367,800) were sold in the United States. The black ’15 model was one of just under 17,300 sold in the U.S. that year, and the silver ’17 was one of about 11,200. These first-generation cars could haul a reasonable payload of stuff, with about thirty cubic feet of cargo space behind the front seats with the rear ones folded down. There’s a Whole Foods supermarket a couple of blocks away that has charging stations, so I could see how a LEAF might be a reasonable choice for someone in this neighborhood who prioritizes driving a zero-emissions vehicle and also relies on street parking.
It still seems completely bonkers to me that all of these fall leaves and Nissan LEAFs had decided to all show up at the same time and on the same short walk, seemingly just because it was technically September by then. Colorful leaves on the ground are only going to increase in number as autumn advances. Let’s see if more LEAFs will appear in what I will consider one of the more bizarre manifestations of the CC Effect that I have ever witnessed.
Edgewater Glen, Chicago, Illinois.
Sunday, September 1, 2024.
It would seem that a LOT of trees had started dropping their leaves earlier during this unusually hot summer. The first leaf falls always invoke a tinge of sadness within me, as it’s a reminder of the (ever swifter) passing of time, and a reminder of all the things that I didn’t get done! But, just as the LEAF can recharge, there’s always next year!! 🙂
I am also a summer person, and the passage of time as marked by seasons is something I think about both wistfully and with thankfulness for having been granted the ability to have experienced one more. Really appreciate the ideas in your last sentence.
Perhaps I had never stopped to think about it, but I didn’t know these LEAFs had been around for so many summers.
The leaves here are starting to fall, but slowly. Summer was wet enough to keep things nicely green then it was suddenly quite dry. Rain the last two days has certainly knocked more leaves down, meaning I will need to get out the PVC pipe I attach to the shop vacuum so I can clean out my gutters. My house is in a semi-wooded area so leaves are a thing. LEAFs are not nearly as much of a thing in these parts, although I do see them periodically.
I love the imagery of the Jason Shafer-brand gutter cleaning device! Significant rainfall always seems to speed up the transition process from summer to fall, especially as the trees are ready to let go of those leaves. It’s funny how I haven’t seen that many more LEAFs since this one day on Labor Day weekend.
Yup, getting on to Fall here too, although with daytime temperatures in the 70s to low 80s and virtually no rain for weeks we’re forestalling the total tip into what traditionally would look and feel like fall. Usually, we need a couple solid days of rain this month to wake up the following morning and say, “Geeze, it’s Fall.” And all of the trees at that point would turn. It’s funny how that works.
It’s also funny how I don’t see more LEAFs than I think that I should. My corner of the country and the greater Boston region in particular is lousy with EVs, but overall folks seem to prefer something other than LEAFs. I know of one couple that has one and they love it. Although they got it at peak EV subsidy (I’m not sure when that exactly was, but they did…and took full advantage), got a company payroll subsidy as well, and came to it from a household that had long driven Honda FITs and before that several rounds of older-generation Honda Civics. Back in the 1990s when Civics were actually small vehicles (when they went to replace their last Civics, they moved to the FIT because the newer Civic had gotten too big). Point is, these are folks who are not your typical car-buyer around here.
They’re also engineers and simply and naturally calculate things. So, they don’t have range anxiety. They know exactly how far they can drive and always plan their travels so that they can return to a known charging station (usually at home or at work). Planning things out works just fine for them. Again, not your typical car-driver around here.
Personally, I think the LEAF is great and should be perfect for people who want a small, economical car (again, not typical) for the kind of driving and use that “most” people actually have. I kind of even like the look, and wish that I saw more of them around.
The Honda Civics did definitely grow, and I think that’s one reason my one late uncle also moved to a Fit as a second car for him and my aunt. I like that your friends that you mention like their LEAFs and also did all of that math, which I also would have done. The only other thing I can think of is how I got lost in Boston traffic as a teenager and it took me something like an hour to get out of the city. I would have had to recharge that LEAF immediately after leaving city limits!
The first gen LEAF seems quite common as an urban runabout where I live. And I see more of them parked on the street and connected with a long extension cord than I do Teslas or other BEV’s. Sometimes draped or perhaps taped to the sidewalk (the cord, not the car), at least one that runs up a utility pole and overhead to a front yard tree and back to the ground. The LEAF isn’t the only EV with a name that evokes autumn; since you mentioned flannel, there’s also Tesla’s Plaid versions.
When I was in Alaska last summer, I saw two LEAFs in two small towns that were only a few blocks long. With cheap hydro or fossil electric power, not to mention long hours of daylight for solar in summer, and short distances, it may be a good choice for that unique use case.
The long extension cord! I have yet to see this, but now that you mention it, I’m surprised I haven’t seen this already!
One of my daughters commented at some point that the back end of these Leafs “looks like butt cheeks.” She’s right – and once she commented about that, it was impossible to unsee. It quickly became a game for us to spot these on the road.
That’s becoming pretty rare – in the past few these first-generation Leafs suddenly became pretty uncommon. A friend of ours happens to have one (and is amused by the butt-cheek comment… she said she didn’t particularly like the car’s looks when new either). She uses the Leaf just for commuting – any longer trips are taken in her husband’s car. But still she likes it.
The newer Leafs don’t look too unusual though.
And I never realized that Leaf was an acronym before reading this today. But sorry, I just can’t bring myself to writing it in All Caps.
ALL CAPS. LOL It still doesn’t feel right. And Eric, your daughter is correct. Totally looks like butt cheeks. I had never thought of that before!
Wikipedia considers LEAF to be a “backronym” – a fake acronym that was worked out after Nissan decided to name the car “Leaf” and then decided LEAF should stand for something.
I’m not seeing the butt cheeks. Is it the shape of the taillights, the swoopy curve on the rear door and fender? Neither of those looks like cheeks to me.
The Leaf (oops, LEAF) is a very common sight for me, as my neighbor in the house directly across the street from me has a first-generation LEAF as well as a Chrysler Pacifica plug-in hybrid. Like mine, the house has a single-wide driveway long enough for two or three cars but with the rear car blocking the front if you park more than one vehicle on it. Usually one or the other is out front on the street to prevent this. I’ve seen both cars plugged in with a charging cable, and yet looking now I don’t see a charging device anywhere. Perhaps they use only 240V AC charging from an outlet on the house without a DC fast charger, a setup that’s sufficient for many people. The more common setup around here is to mount a charging station on a 3-foot pole near the driveway outside the car’s charging port. Some such charging stations are mounted on the treelawn* so it can charge a car parked out front on the street, curbside, without a cable dangling across the sidewalk. (The larger houses in this neighborhood have a built-in one-car garage, notable as they were built in the early 1920s and were amongst the first houses in the area to include a garage integral to the design of the house rather than an outbuilding or attachment). The leaves have just started to turn here, and warm 70°F+ weather forecast for this week mean the leaves mostly won’t fall until October.
One issue I have with the LEAF is the unusual (in the US) CHAdeMO charging connector, the only car sold here aside from one Mitsubishi SUV that uses it. There’s no plans as of now for a NACS adaptor, and most public chargers are either NACS or CCS with the former looking like it will prevail. I like the Leaf, but if I were buying a used EV of this type I’d get a VW e-Golf; one of the later ones (2017-20) with a 125-mile range. These basically look and drive like a gas or diesel Golf minus the engine noise, and have the same passenger and luggage space as an ICE Golf which is to say it’s quite roomy. These are common and affordable on the used market – the high-trimmed models include faster DC charging and don’t seem to sell for much more.
* I recently learnt that “treelawn” or “tree lawn” is a colloquial or regional term used by only about 2% of the US population, although I’ve heard it called that as long as I can remember. It refers to the narrow strip of grass in a house’s front lawn between the sidewalk and road in many suburban settings, typically about 6 feet wide here, and property of the town rather than homeowner. Other common names I’ve heard for this area include “berm”, “strip” or the awful “besidewalk”, and apparently “road verge”, “curb lawn”, “park strip”, and even “devil’s strip” are common as well. Is there any consensus here as to what this small plot of grass adjacent to the Curbside is called?
Wow – I’ve never heard of treelawn – I wonder, if that term is regional, just what part of the country uses it. I have heard that strip called a verge before, but I assumed that was just an example of public works jargon. Most people I know just call it “that grass strip between the sidewalk and the street.” Treelawn sounds better.
The treelawn in Joseph’s pictures here is wonderfully wide – makes for a great walking environment, but that’s pretty rare.
From what I read online, “treelawn” is most common in Cleveland. That would make sense, as my family lived there from about 1954 to 1963 and my older brother was born there, although by the time I was born we’d moved to Maryland. Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_verge) calls it a road verge, although the article mentions “tree lawns” in California but only if they have actual trees or plants in them.
I learned that strip of grass or landscaping between the sidewalk and street as a ‘parking strip” (not park strip). A lot of people call it a median, which makes no sense, as it’s not in the “middle” of anything, like the median that runs down the center of a divided road. But even worse than median as an alternative to parking strip or treelawn, is the misuse of the term meridian to refer to a median. And I’ve heard that a lot. Sorry, vocabulary rant over. On a more positive note, I did briefly drive a friend’s 1st gen Leaf, and while I hated the jukebox/video game graphics on the EV info screens, I did love the strong and immediate low speed acceleration. I expect that in a Tesla or Rivian but it is especially thrilling in a small hatchback. I once witnessed a Leaf totally shut down a WRX STi in a stoplight grand prix. Almost silently.
That WRX STi vs. LEAF showdown sounds like something that should make it’s way into a car comedy movie some time. Sounds like it would have been painful to watch.
Your example with the single-wide driveway must be common to residential areas built within a certain timeframe. This illustrates why some neighborhoods and setups would be more conducive to having all electric / hybrid vehicles than others. I have a buddy who is considering knocking down his garage and rebuilding for this purpose.
I have always thought that strip of grass was called a “parkway”, but maybe that’s a Michigan thing. Or perhaps referring to something else?
Major CC Effect today! I opened the front door of my house from inside this morning, and – hey what’s this hanging from the outside doorknob? Two days after discussing treelawns, it’s a notice that the local public works department is planting two trees. On my treelawn! So what does my township call this ambiguously-named plot of land? What else but the “right of way adjacent to your property”.
“Treelawn” is more memorable IMO…
That’s amazing!
I don’t see many of these, and really don’t remember a time when they were plentiful.
My thoughts, too. I must have seen ten to fifteen Prius hybrids for every one LEAF over the years.
My state (Maryland) had several EV incentives in place when the 1g Leaf was made, including solo use of HOV lanes and a $3,000 tax credit. The presence or absence of such incentives (as well as the area is practical for shorter-range EVs) likely results in LEAF popularity varying considerably from one region to the next. LEAFs are fairly common here, though nowhere near as common as Priuses. Lots of Chevy Bolts, Tesla 3/Y, and recently the various Hyundai/Kia EVs.
It’s weird down here. Not just because it’s Spring, either.
The streets of the city where I grew up were planned by people who still looked to England as Home, idealized that appearance, and planted plane trees. I always thought they were plain trees. So we had leaves to scuff through on the way to school and back. And the council workers had leaves to rake together and burn. Not very colourful, but there you are. Or were.
Nowadays Aussies have more appreciation for native plants. Streets in my town still have clumps of the towering flowering gums, but in the newer areas we have mostly some kind of Prunus species. I think. No droppage, anyway. Apart from the odd tree in somebody’s yard, or the fruit trees in my orchard (which do drop, but that’s about all you can say about them), you have to leave town to find a display of autumn leaves to rival yours, Joseph. Batesford valley is lovely in season.
The Leaf as car? No doubt there are some around, but a car with that range would be pretty useless out here. Drive to the city for work and back, like many folk do out here and you’d be charging every night. Forget to put the car on charge and you might be working from home next day. Or out of a job. We do have an EV charging station in town; I think I’ve seen it used twice in two years.
Great name, love the styling, but not for me.
I really like that you mention that there’s a newfound emphasis on native flora, Peter. I kind of get the other thing, though. After I had moved to Florida, the trees I lived best were the ones that reminded me of up North. I also totally get why a car like the LEAF wouldn’t work for a place with such wide expenses between populated areas, if what I think I know about your part of the world is correct.
I’ts good to see these still in service after ten years .
Sooner or later I fear I’ll be forced into an electric vehicle .
-Nate
I think electric is probably where things are headed, in general.
The autumn Leafs/Drift by my interest/The autumn Leafs/Are quite the bore
Glad to hear none of these autumn Leafs fell rendered our correspondent in Chicago a flatpack by falling on him, I must say.
Leafs are fairly numerous hereabouts. Friends have one, and TBH, it’s not a hugely useful device (nor much of interest inside). Tends to be a dead Leaf too often and easily, though I understand the later ones have more useful battery packs. (I think they’d sometimes prefer the tree fell on the Leaf instead of the usual autumnal order, but I’m digressing).
There’s a company in the island State of Tasmania who run a business importing RHD low-mileage ones, and even organizing mass-buys of them to interested consumers to save on shipping, etc. A nice recycling idea, but now that we have perfectly decent brand new Chinese electrics from as low as about $30KAUD, I wonder how long they’ll last.
Overwhelmingly Euro plantings where I am in Melbourne. In the changing climate, the poor old things had all barely lost their leaves when the first buds started up again. Well, at least there’s hardly time to mourn the passing of time, I guess.
When putting this one together, I did read about how there were bumps in power and range alomg the way compared to the first examples. I agree that newer technology does render things like this LEAF (and phones, computers, etc.) a tougher sell on the secondhand market, even at reasonable prices. I’d assume that the ones I photographed on this day had been purchased new or nearly-new, without knowing anything else.
Yes, the early Leafs had very modest range. And a big negative was that the battery pack did not have active liquid heat management like the Teslas and every other modern EV; it was just air cooled, which tended to degrade the batteries in hot climates.
They can be picked up very cheap nowadays, but there are some fantastic lease deals on new EVs.