How much can a nissan leaf tow? Feats of towing might!

hill said:

GetOffYourGas said:

Brenthasty said:

Yea it would pull your boat beautifully, excellent low speed precision and control in the electric drivetrain for precise positioning. ..

It was over 2500# counting trailer frame ..

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Very interesting. Of course, the torque doesn't hurt either; the Leaf would have no trouble getting the load moving (at least to say 40mph). I'd be concerned about the ability of the frame to support the tongue weight as well as the brakes to stop that much mass.

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maybe . . . . but just think of the re-genj

.

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The Leaf maxes out at 30kW of regen. I can easily max it out just slowing the car down. With a 2500 lb boat/trailer pushing it, you're not going to do any better. My friend's truck, which I borrow to tow, is pushed around pretty strongly by the boat. That truck is heavy-duty, and has brakes strong enough to slow it and a heavy load. The "A" in Leaf is supposed to stand for "affordable". If that was Nissan's goal, I'm going to assume that they sized the brakes for a car + 5 passengers, and that's about it.

Also, with just front wheel drive, you are going to have one hell of a time pulling a boat out on an inclined, slippery launch ramp!
As the saying goes, Just Say No!

TomT said:

Also, with just front wheel drive, you are going to have one hell of a time pulling a boat out on an inclined, slippery launch ramp!
As the saying goes, Just Say No!

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I have to agree, towing with the Leaf is great, but one should be realistic about it's limits. I won't tow anymore than the max Class 1 allows for safety reasons. Even then, I only tow heavy stuff when the road and path allow it. The only time I've pushed the limits and was concerned is when I had to tow my +3000 lb truck home because of engine problems. The irony of towing a truck behind of Leaf is photo worthy (should have taken one for giggles) but I was very surprised that the Leaf towed the truck home (slowly) and up a very steep hill to my driveway with ease. I had my wife driving the Leaf and I was in the truck in case something went wrong (brakes in truck still worked fine).

I am amazed and impressed that a Leaf can tow like that! What I mainly find fascinating though, is that someone out there looked at a Leaf and thought to themselves "I'm gonna put a hitch on that thing..."

Well done, thinking outside the box!

EVDRIVER said:

A LEAF can tow exactly what it is rated to tow as stated in the manual of course you can tow more than that but I hope one has a very good liability policy that won't cancel them and deny coverage. You can also likely load 10 people in the car, there is a reason hitches have ratings when properly attached not to mention tire ratings and vehicle overall load braking, etc.

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+1, tow at your own risk. You're likely assuming all responsibility for property damage, injuries, or loss of life.

Well I used the leaf to pull 2 tones of wood pellets home for winter heating, over a 30 mile route averaged about 3 miles per kwh.

sure wish i could just directly attach photos in the forum to my posts, with a 1 yr old crawling all over me it is too troublesome to create links and files all over the net just to share an image here....!

TomT said:

Also, with just front wheel drive, you are going to have one hell of a time pulling a boat out on an inclined, slippery launch ramp!
As the saying goes, Just Say No!

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I think it would be better than RWD only, and I see plenty of RWD boat launches/recoveries where the drive wheels are in the mucky slippery part and the fronts are in the dry part.

I had heard towing was fine in terms of torque, but that the extra trailer weight could cause problems for the regenerative breaking system. Does anyone know if this is true? I’d be wanting to tow a small boat (1200 lbs).

Years later and thousands of miles of towing, it has no negative effect on regen. Stopping distance increases, sure. Regen makes towing a very pleasant experience when traveling downhill, no riding the brakes all the way down. You won't break regen due to towing within sane limits of course. I've down the max 2000 lbs many, many times, barely noticeable handling wise, acceleration and stopping, of course be responsible .

@ knightmb
Any pictures of your new leaf towing ?

B

pirpy said:

@ knightmb
Any pictures of your new leaf towing ?

B

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I just used the trailer recently to haul a pile of trash to the landfill, but didn't think to take any pictures, will do next time.

As you can tell, I don't use the trailer often, but I remembered I take a picture today after I already unloaded a bunch at the local dump. It was more impressive before I took the picture anyway, LOL. I didn't think to take a picture until I was almost done.

It's a shame that the dumpster isn't on the same level as the car. A little Photoshop, and you'd have a Fun photo.

This was a fun day! That 4in pump took a fork-lift to load, that thing had some serious weight!
I had the presence of mind to actually record the trip efficiency (from the Rental place, not the two way distance, had the heat on too). The trip to the rental place was only 20 minutes, but the return trip took way too long near the end due to construction traffic for a couple of miles. Thank goodness for adaptive cruise control, the traffic was going literally 2 mph with some burst of 10 mph :lol: Top speed was 55 mph for most of the way.
Towing wise, it was great and easy to do. It's hard to tell from the pictures, but that entire way is uphill and quite steep actually. I backed it all the way in without any issues. I turned off the parking aids and other safety features to back up the hill so I wasn't being hounded by the Sonar and any wheel spin, it was that steep. Being about to feather it so slow uphill in reverse with what felt like infinite torque with no sound was awesome.

this thread has got me thinking I might want to add a hitch to my leaf. I have two trailers, one is a 1-7/8" ball that is a converted jet ski trailer that is setup to carry kayaks and is setup for around 500lbs max weight. I was going to scrap this and only keep the big one, its a 6'x12' enclosed heavy duty trailer that can carry 3,000 lbs.

I have a hatchback bike rack but rather than getting a roof rack I supposed I could use the small trailer with the leaf and big trailer with my truck.

I might need to look into that, does anyone know if the frame is any different for the 2022 leaf plus vs the 2021? Uhaul lists it as no hitches available at this point.

skateguy50 said:

this thread has got me thinking I might want to add a hitch to my leaf. I have two trailers, one is a 1-7/8" ball that is a converted jet ski trailer that is setup to carry kayaks and is setup for around 500lbs max weight. I was going to scrap this and only keep the big one, its a 6'x12' enclosed heavy duty trailer that can carry 3,000 lbs.

I have a hatchback bike rack but rather than getting a roof rack I supposed I could use the small trailer with the leaf and big trailer with my truck.

I might need to look into that, does anyone know if the frame is any different for the 2022 leaf plus vs the 2021? Uhaul lists it as no hitches available at this point.

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I'm not sure what structural changes are underneath, but as far as I know, you'll have to order a custom hitch to install, none of the install places (like Uhual for example) even carry the right template to install on any Leaf as far as I know. I bought both of mine from here (for my 2013 and my 2020 Leaf) and installed both myself.
https://torkliftcentral.com/nissan-leaf-ecohitch

Thanks for link, no issues doing it myself if I can get something that will bolt up. Looks like I can get one with a 2" hitch opening and that would be ideal as my hitch mounted bike rack is on a 2" tube and has the trailer extension.

I might need to look into that, does anyone know if the frame is any different for the 2022 leaf plus vs the 2021? Uhaul lists it as no hitches available at this point.

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I would be VERY surprised if they had changed the unibody right before retiring the model, but I don't know for a fact that they haven't. Much more likely, though, is that it's just a case of these companies not having verified that for themselves, yet.

More feats of towing, this time with 27 bags of concrete! :lol:
Since I was backing it uphill and through the yard, I had to go slow to avoid tearing up the grass. Going in reverse with this much weight is the first time I've ever heard the radiator fans kick on for the motor! :twisted:
Also the first time I've heard the motor "whine" from all the power I was pushing in! :mrgreen:

How about an 18 foot SX Hobie cat? I did not tow it far (just to the launch) however the 2018 LEAF SL had zero issues with the sand boat launch and towed the trailer with no effort at all. I installed a hitch and wiring (etrailer version for 2018 LEAF) more for use with a Thule bike rack, however the hitch comes in handy for stuff like this too.