Nissan Leaf 2020 review

The odds are stacked against the Leaf in this department, as it arrives in Australia in just one spec level, priced at $49,990 (plus on-road costs).

You’re probably thinking: "Are you serious? Fifty grand for a hatchback?" And you’d be right. Without any EV rebates like the Leaf receives in Europe, the pricing is a tall order. You’d have to really be going out of your way to choose an EV lifestyle, it’s not simply a $2k to $5k spec switch like from petrol to diesel.

That having been said, Nissan has helped soften the blow a bit by giving the Leaf a plush set of specs. This is a nice hatchback, with all the tech and connectivity items you could realistically want. In fact, it’s by far the best-specified Nissan you can buy right now.

First of all, the Leaf that’s finally arrived in Australia has received some sort of minor update over the one we drove just a few months ago.

Included is a new centre stack with a new 8.0-inch multimedia touchscreen, the first for Nissan in Australia to host Apple CarPlay and Android Auto (better late than never…), as well as built-in navigation, Bluetooth connectivity, backed by a seven-speaker Bose-branded audio system.

Apple CarPlay and Android Auto arrive at long last in the Nissan Leaf.

There’s also plush leather seats which you seem to sink into, with Alcantara highlight trim, a leather steering wheel, a power adjustable driver’s seat and heated seats across the front and back rows, and a heated steering wheel.

Nissan says heated seats are the most power efficient way to heat occupants up, rather than just blasting the single-zone climate control.

Other spec items you get include keyless entry, push-start ignition, 17-inch alloy wheels, a 7.0-inch partially-digital dash, as well as full LED lighting front and rear.

The 17-inch alloys are not overtly sci-fi like the ones on some of the competition.

There’s also Nissan’s full suite of active safety technology, which is impressive stuff, explored more in the safety section of this review.

The Leaf is the only EV in Australia which is capable of two-way charging via its Japanese-standard CHAdeMO charging port. The brand says you’ll be able to use this feature to use the Leaf as a “portable energy asset” – this means the car will be capable of storing energy in off-peak power-grid times, then using it to power your home cheaply in on-peak times.

This will require a piece of hardware which is not yet available in Australia, but will be “in around 12 months” after Nissan and its energy tech partner, JetCharge, get it approved by Australian regulators.

The hardware will appear like a "wall box" device, and will cost "less than $2000".

You could argue a similarly-specified hatchback this size with a petrol engine would only cost in the mid-to-late $30k price bracket. So, you’re paying about $15,000 for the EV drivetrain and everything that involves.

You can slide into the less-powerful and slightly more limited-on-range Hyundai Ioniq EV, which is this car’s closest competitor, for about $5000 less. You’ll miss out on the two-way charging tech though.

The Leaf is on the larger side for a hatchback, and with its electric drivetrain layout comes some inherent benefits.

No fuel tank, for example, brings a deep and wide boot space, rated at 405 litres, which isn’t the biggest space in the hatch segment, but definitely on the larger side, and rear seat space is decent, too.

The Leaf has a deep and wide boot, impeded only a little by the Bose audio system.

Sadly the rear seats don’t get air vents, a common faux-pas in cars this size, but they do get heated seats which is pretty special. The rear seats are also clad in the same thick padding and leather trim which makes the front ones so comfortable.

The rear seats are plush and are heated, but there's no rear air vents.

Up front there are decently-sized trenches and bottle holders in the doors, decent cupholders in the centre stack as well as a half-way decent console box. Under the centre stack, there is also a spot well suited to a phone, as that’s also where the USB port is for screen mirroring.

The seats are wide and comfortable, but the driver’s position is a little high, giving an SUV-like feel. Annoyingly, the steering column doesn’t have telescopic reach adjust, making the wheel feel too far away, perhaps too close to the dash, for many people.

The Leaf is driven by a 350V electric motor on the front axle, providing a max output of 110kW/320Nm. Being an electric motor, the torque is available almost instantaneously.

The Leaf's electric motor sits in the engine's traditional spot.

Despite its almost-1600kg kerb weight (batteries are heavy!) Nissan claims those motor specs will have the Leaf doing 0-100km/h in just 7.9 seconds.

It’s not the most powerful electric motor, even among a limited pool of competitors, but it still outshoots its main competitor, the Hyundai Ioniq EV (88kW/295Nm).

The Leaf consumes no petrol for obvious reasons, and how much it will cost you to charge for a year will depend where you get your electricity from.

Charging is always a sticky topic for EVs, especially in Australia.

If you have solar panels or you can steal your electricity from a wall socket at work, for example, it can cost you next to nothing. If you exclusively charge up at home, Nissan reckons it will cost you just north of $700 a year to charge the Leaf at peak times, or just over $300 at non-peak times.

The other thing you’ll need to know are the types of connectors available to you. The Leaf has two. It has a Type-2 ‘Mennekes’ connector - one of the most popular types of connector globally - and a two-prong CHAdeMO port, a Japanese standard, which is capable of higher kW inputs.

The Leaf offers two types of connector for charging.

How fast you’ll charge will depend on the kW output of the station you connect to. A 50kW output via the CHAdeMO connector will see a charge time from zero to 80 per cent in about an hour, while a Type 2 home wall connector has a charge time Nissan estimates at 7.5 hours, and connecting to a good old-fashioned three-pin wall outlet will see a charge time of “about 24 hours.”

How efficient the Leaf is once the energy is actually in the battery is another question. Electric cars are measured in efficiency by kWh/100km. I can’t comment on what the Leaf got at the launch as the short distance would be an unfair reflection, but on my earlier range-test I scored around 15.3kWh/100km. For context, I found the Kona Electric to be slightly more efficient at 14.1kWh/100km (hence the less than 10 score for the Leaf).

To be fair, the Kona’s extra weight probably helps regain more energy around town.

The Nissan Leaf recently received a maximum five-star ANCAP safety rating, tested to 2019’s more stringent standards.

It more than earns it on the active safety front. The Leaf is packed with about every active safety technology which Nissan offers.

Included is auto emergency braking (AEB) with forward collision warning (FCW), lane departure warning (LDW) with lane keep assist (LKAS), rear cross-traffic alert (RCTA), driver attention alert (DAA), active cruise control, blind-spot monitoring (BSM) and auto high-beam headlights.

An added bonus, there’s also Nissan’s ‘Around-View Monitor’ 360-degree parking suite, which makes manoeuvring into a parking spot a cinch.

According to Nissan, the problem of the virtually silent drivetrain is ambient noise beamed at nearby pedestrians, which is targeted thanks to a forward-facing camera suite. Weird.

In terms of the expected refinements, there are six airbags, a more advanced traction control system (likely to deal with the electric motor’s extra torque), tyre pressure monitoring and dual ISOFIX child-seat mounting points on the outer two rear seats.