Abdullah Sheikh XtorQ-I.T Editor will test out the 
Nissan delivered a long-term test Leaf to One AutoWeek Tower (West Coast Bureau) on Monday, and the world will never be the same.
We could have said that with the previous long-term EV we tested, the perky and cute Mitsubishi i-MiEV, but the i-MiEV was not something you could walk down to your dealership and buy. You will be able to buy an i-MiEV by the end of this year, but not now.
The Nissan Leaf, on the other hand, is the first mass-produced, fully finished, comfortable car that a real person can not only live with every day, but one that a real person can go down to his or her Nissan dealer and buy. Or at least pay for. The wait for actual Leaf delivery is about a year out here in Los Angeles.
You could argue that the General Motors EV1 and the Toyota RAV4 of two decades ago were fully finished, comfortable electric cars from major manufacturers and that they changed the world. But the EV1 and the RAV4 EV were produced in very limited numbers and sort of faded away.
Suffice to say, with the arrival of the Nissan Leaf on the market, the era of mass-produced electric cars is here and it’s not going away. More are coming, and after that, more still. From now on, consumers will have the choice to buy (or not buy) a real electric
And the Leaf is a real electric car. It drives like a regular compact car. It seats five, it has room for luggage, groceries or the stereotypical golf bag under its glass-and-metal hatch, and you can drive on the freeway without fear of being clobbered. It is quiet and refined, more so perhaps than some regular gasoline-powered cars of the same size--especially with that electric motor--and its styling is just bland enough to be anonymous. So, yes, you can drive it and use it like any other car out there.
But what about the mileage, you ask? What about range? What about range anxiety? What if I’m attacked by giant squids?
Nissan lists range at 100 miles using the LA4 cycle. We looked up the U.S. EPA LA4 City cycle, also known as the Urban Dynamometer Driving Cycle. It consists of stop-and-go traffic that you and I might call city driving. You accelerate up to as much as 58 mph and then stop 241 times in those 100 miles. The 100-mile figure is extrapolated from the actual LA4 cycle, which is only 7.45 miles, during which you stop and go 18 times. To be able to go 100 miles on a charge in the city is pretty good for an electric car with this many amenities. We will see how close it comes to 100 miles in regular, real-world use. Other published figures have said it’s more like 73 miles in real-world use. Still, that’s a pretty impressive figure.
Credit both the highly efficient 24-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack as well as the Leaf’s sophisticated regenerative braking system. The car’s curb weight is 3,375 pounds, which is pretty low considering the number of batteries inside. Those batteries power an 80-kilowatt AC synchronous motor driving the front wheels. We haven’t tried a 0-to-60-mph time yet, but on the road, the car accelerates more than quickly enough to stay out of the way of traffic. This isn’t a neighborhood electric-vehicle golf cart.
The vehicle-speed-sensitive, power-assisted steering works really well in parking lots, wheeling the Leaf through an extremely tight 17.1-foot curb-to-curb turning circle. On the road, it does its job unobtrusively and with aplomb.
That’s just a brief first impression. We’ve only had it a few days, and we will update you over the next three months on life with an EV. But so far, you could say we’re electrified.
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