Well, we picked up our Leaf yesterday (15-Feb-2014). MY 2014 S trim in Silver with the charge package.
So far we love it! It's our first car with a backup camera (awesome as backing out of our garage is a bit tricky), USB port or integrated Bluetooth. I was glad of the heated wheel this morning when I forgot my gloves.
It replaces a 2007 Honda Fit totaled on an icy road in January. It will be my wife's commuter car. The commute is ~23 miles roundtrip, some days twice, plus I expect we will use it for local errands when we can, instead of the minivan. We live close enough to Baltimore that it will get us to the zoo (for instance) and back without needing to charge. So I expect we will put ~12K miles/year on it.
Dealer was Nissan of Bowie (Bowie, MD). We went there to test drive the car Friday last, then spent a week waiting to get a lease quote, trying to decide buy vs lease, talking briefly to other dealers, and waiting through a heavy snowfall that closed the schools and the dealership. Overall our communication with them was a little sketchy. I think our salesperson is new to the job, and from a technical standpoint she doesn't know much about EVs (then again, neither did I 3 weeks ago, but I did understand the concept of regenerative braking, and I don't think she did). The snow didn't help. On the plus side, we had initially asked for a car without the charger upgrade, but when we were ready to walk in the door with the money, they could only get their hands on one with the upgrade (their actual stock was limited to a couple of 2013s, I think, so we knew almost from the start that they would get our car from another dealer), and they gave it to us for the same price, so we're happy.
It's the second Leaf in my family as my cousin who lives in London got one a few weeks back (she loves it). She opted to lease her battery. That could be a whole other discussion right there, I know, but I won't go there now. Also the second EV in our neighborhood (that I know of), as a fellow around the corner has a Ford C-Max Energi (PHEV) - in his case a company car, he works for GE. I believe he has an L2 EVSE... I guess I might be asking to plug in there once in a while, as we're planning to do without L2 at home, at least initially. If we are able to charge the car at my wife's workplace (not as simple as it might sound since she works for the DoD, and the bureaucracy is, um, slow to process new ideas), we might never need more than L1 ("trickle") charging, unless and until a major battery upgrade becomes possible... not holding my breath.
Anyway, we're excited to be on the gas-free path, if only with one of our cars. My thanks to those who have provided so much informed discussion on this forum, I've been lurking here for a couple of weeks now as we approached the purchase decision, and it's provided some helpful perspective.
--TomR near Annapolis, MD
