The Nissan Leaf Electric Car - This Is What Marty Must've Felt like in the Last Back to the Future Movie

Is The Electric Car The Future ?

How do you tell that a product is really futuristic? You can tell it is advanced, if the infrastructure needed to use it is still not in place. Seen this way, the Nissan Leaf kind of finds itself in the same position that Doc. Brown's DeLorean did in the third installment of the Back to the Future series - a car that finds itself stranded in a time when the fuel to run it just doesn't exist. Yet.

The Nissan Leaf plug-in electric car comes with the claim of a range of 100 miles on a full charge. If you wish to take it anywhere past 50 miles away from home, it just won't be possible. Until the nation takes it upon itself to string out charging ports on every street corner throughout America, an electric car such as this one is just way ahead of its time. Let's delve a little deeper into the kind of experience you are likely to have on the Nissan Leaf.

Let's start with what an electric car like the Leaf does well. Getting into the driver's seat, you notice that there is no ignition, no motor to start. Push a button, watch the dashboard instrument cluster light up, move the shifter button into the Drive position, and set off. The car of course, is stunningly silent; all that you hear driving on a main street are the sounds of other people's cars. The Leaf, with it's hefty 600-pound battery pack, weighs in excess of 3000 pounds. To accelerate it to 60 mph in under 10 seconds, the car uses a powerful 107 hp electric motor. You'll find when you drive an electric car that you're constantly thinking of driving efficiently. You try never to accelerate too hard or stop too suddenly. You'll find yourself trying to time yourself to the way traffic lights change so that you will never have to completely come to a standstill. You might find, that driving an electric car is anxiety-provoking experience. There is pretty much nothing on your mind most of the time other than how the battery's doing.

Don't be surprised if you find yourself not even turning on the radio (to say nothing of the air conditioner or the heater) for fear of depleting the battery. Which should be kind of a difficult experience since the Leaf comes with a very generous amount of standard equipment. You'll find that there are all kinds of of futuristic-looking tools on the instrument cluster to try to help you to drive more efficiently too. Once you do run out of charge (and you likely will run out of charge a couple of times before you get the hang of it all), how long does it take to charge it back up again?

Using the quick charge port, you can replenish the batteries to 80% of their full capacity inside of half an hour. A slow charge will take you almost a full day and you'll be able to make an 80 mile round-trip on it. If that seems somehow excessive to you, consider what things are like on the Tesla roadster supercar - a full charge takes nearly 40 hours. So should anyone actually put down $35,000 for a lease? It's the cheapest production electric car in the country that offers decent levels of comfort and equipment.

To anyone whose commute is within 40 miles a day, the car could really be a good deal. It is really significantly cheaper than a gas driven car. But you do have to remember - using any of the creature comforts you're used to on a car will reduce the cars effective range quite dramatically.

Is the electric car the future for our need? Well..time will tell.