To be fair to the car dealer I bought it from, he made it clear that the car had very limited range and even added this to the sales receipt to drive the message home.

Driving the car home was a little tricky.  I had already taken the car for a reasonable test drive, to get a feel for it and  ensure there weren't any nasty knocking noises or other worrying signs.  I then did the deal and drove the car away the same day.  The car had a maximum range of 56 miles when fully charged and it was about that distance to get home from the dealer.  I started that journey with less than 40 miles range on the guess-o-meter (GoM) and I set off quite spritely; big mistake.  I actually ended up stopping twice on the way home to charge, the second time purely to ensure I had sufficient charge to pick my girlfriend up from work that evening, as I hadn't yet got anything other than a three pin socket from which to charge the new car.

On the Road

The 2012 Leaf felt pretty quick away from the lights and accelerated well whilst on the go too.  Traction was the issue, pulling out from my village onto the A road, I would get a hint of wheel-spin when pulling away from a standstill, but the again once I was straightened up on the road and needing to get up to speed on the main road.

The Leaf was definitely not a car that you would want to really want to drive aggressively on the windy roads of the English countryside.  It's more of a comfortable cruiser.  So, drive it like that and you should quite enjoy the ride, knowing that if you do need an extra spurt of speed it's available in a instant.

Drive sensibly, and you should enjoy a cosseting ride.

Range and Charging

I've already mentioned that the range on my car was limited.  At the outset, the 24kWh Leaf should have been capable of up to its stated range of 109 miles.  But, my car had battery health of 8 out of 12.  When fully charged, it would usually show a potential range of between 57 and 62 miles, although a couple of times this showed as high as 72.  The range is based upon the driving style and what systems you're using.  Turn off the heating and air conditioning and you would see a small boost in the suggested range.  But, push the quiet button a bit to fiercely and you'll see the range go down.

When you reach a public charging station, you'll need to be using the CHAdeMO connector, not the vastly more popular CCS.  Whilst many people shout that CHAdeMO is dead and that users will struggle to get a charge, the fact is that you can charge a Leaf or other CHAdeMO equipped carat almost every DC public charging point.  The obvious exception is the Tesla supercharging network, but they weren't available to non-Tesla CCS drivers until recently.  A lot of the new public charging locations are still having CHAdeMO connectors included, even though the Nissan Leaf is the only new car to still come with a CHAdeMO port.

Having a CHAdeMO port isn't really an issue, but it's puzzling that Nissan has continued to use it when the other manufacturers that used to use it initially, such as Kia with the original Soul EV, have switched to the faster and more popular CCS option.

The maximum speed the 2012 Leaf could charge was 46kW. but the average was said to be 36kW.  The suggested time to get from 10-80% is 27 minutes.  That should be enough to allow you to go and grab a coffee and use the toilet, ready to set off again on your journey.

The Interior

My 2012 car was, well I don't really know what it was.  It didn't have a model designation like Tekna or N-tec.  It didn't have the leather upholstery of the cars I had driven years earlier.  My Leaf had cloth upholstery, in fact I'm sure some would describe it as 'velour'.  The front seats were heated, but not the rears - the rear seats were heated in the cars I tested in 2013/14.

The seats were comfortable, but didn't provide the support to give you confidence in chasing around the windy roads... but then we've already established that this really isn't the car to be pushing hard.

The car had a reasonable Sat Nav and information screen, giving data on the performance of the car and other aspects.  It was possible to schedule things like pre-warming of the vehicle in advance and schedule charging.  This was also possible from an App you could download to smartphones.

The boot was a decent size and would cope not just with the weekly shopping, but your luggage on a holiday... if you dared go that far.