Test Drive: Nissan Leaf

crunchgear.com

6 points·aaronbrethorst··3 comments

and newly re-sculpted for aerodynamics

Really? If we were discussing the aerodynamical properties of a Veyron or even a Tesla I could understand the relevance of this statement but a car of this nature is never going to be affected by the aerodynamic properties of it's headlights.

Fine, it's an electric car, fine you have to take every measure to conserve power, I can conceed that you do need to make the car as aerodynamically fluid as possible in order to increase it's range but the design of the headlights can't possibly have any significant impact on this car. If it added two metres to the cars range I would be blown away.

It's this kind of irrelevant, paragraph padding reporting that winds me up about car reviews.

/rant

Though I'll freely admit I don't have an authoritative source, I have heard in the past that 50mph was the approximate cross-over point between rolling resistance and aerodynamic resistance for a typical car. Of course this car isn't going to be doing that speed very often (well, unless you happen to commute a short distance along a fast road).

What? My commute is approximately 18 miles each way, almost all of which is highway with a 65mph speed limit. Is the Leaf not going to be able to get me to work and back on a single charge? If not, the 100 mile range they're claiming is pretty disingenuous.

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