What’s it cost to run?

Nissan Leaf running costs are low; that’s the whole point of a car like this. When new, Nissan claimed you’ll spend just £257 per year filling the Leaf up with electricity. These days, an estimated eight-hour home charge should cost around less than £10. That’s cheap.

Nissan Leaf emissions are, as you’d expect because of its electric powertrain, non-existent. This is the Leaf’s greatest selling point. With zero CO2 emissions, there is no road tax to pay (for now, anyway) and you will be safe in the knowledge that little harm is being done to the environment –though it’s worth bearing in mind production of the car will bring its own levels of energy consumption so it’s not entirely carbon neutral.

Range and charging

When new, it had a maximum claimed driving range on a single charge of 124 miles, however, that figure will drop significantly with age, and further in bad weather. Charging from empty takes eight hours with a household socket, but you can opt for a quick public charge via its now-outmoded ChaDemo plug and socket, which will see the battery regenerated to 80% in only 30 minutes.

The public infrastructure is much better now than when the Leaf was young, so you shouldn’t find yourself too far away from a public chargepoint. Range anxiety should be a thing of the past, as the sat-nav system will now tell you how much energy you will have left at the end of your journey so you can plan your next move accordingly. The accuracy of this wanes with fading battery storage capacity.

Reliability

You could be forgiven for thinking Nissan Leaf reliability would be something of a grey area given its complexity, but you’d be wrong as our buying guide makes clear. Mechanical parts are few and far between which should make it cheap and relatively easy to service. Of course the latter needs to be carried out by those with EV specific training.

The firm has sold almost 600,000 Leafs globally since its launch, and so far no-one has had any problems with the batteries failing completely, unless the car’s been more signiciantly damaged.