The car

It's a 2014 Nissan Leaf Tekna 24kWh in Glacier White with the optional 6.6kW charger and solar panel (these were the only options on the Tekna trim). It was bought used in September 2018 with 38,000km on it and 90 per cent battery state of health. Damien purposely sought out a car with the upgraded charger so he could charge up quicker on the public AC network.

The owner

Damien is in his early 40s and works in the security sector. He lives in North Kildare, "practically on Dublin's doorstep" and his work commute is 25km into Kildare.

"I am a car enthusiast and have been around Europe to track days in my cars. The car I miss the most is my 1993 Toyota Soarer twin-turbo that I had for almost 10 years. I started driving young and have had mostly Japanese cars with the odd VAG and one French car. I sometimes had two to three cars at a time."

"As I aged, my driving calmed down a good bit as I moved away from performance cars. I'm now a fairly relaxed driver and happy to just relax and set the cruise control. Pre-pandemic I would have been doing much more driving around, but in last two years I have only done just shy of 12,000km in the Leaf as I had to keep taking the other car in the house out as it was not being used. I was known to just go on random drives and find driving to be relaxing when there's little traffic. I would have driven to Wexford every few weeks to visit relations there, sometimes just to get breakfast and drive home again."

The ownership experience

Damien covered over 40,000 kilometres in the Leaf, passing 77,777km on his last drive in the car. On selling it, its battery was showing 87 per cent in terms of health.

"I never had any issues with the car but did do some maintenance work myself, mostly out of boredom. I did clean, lube and inspect the brakes every six months or so as they are used so little they can cause issues."

"The best range I got out of a full charge was 158km and the worst was 95km, though I did manage to only get 55km after a few laps on a track! In winter or on the motorway at 100km/h I'd normally expect 100km max and I only used heating to clear windows as I like the cold..."
Problems experienced: "My biggest issue was with the Nissan Connect service."
Average efficiency: "According to the dash, in my ownership, I managed 13.7kWh/100km."

Advice to prospective buyers

"The best advice to anyone thinking about a EV is to take note of the distance you do on normal trips and see if you could do it all with just using home/work charging. I was lucky to get a loan of a 30kWh Leaf for a weekend to see what it was like and by the Saturday afternoon I was sold on one (it took a year before I went and bought one). I would also warn that fast driving and high use of heating will drastically change your range and to never trust the range estimate; after a while you get to know your car and go off the battery percentage."

What next?

"I sold the car to a friend who was sold on one after I let him have a drive back in Nov. I'm back in a petrol car until my new 62kWh Leaf SVE arrives in July."