Car appreciation... the aesthetics, the engineering, etc

I've only made one long trip in the leaf when i bought it 4 years ago. Chorley to Glasgow. We stopped 4 times to charge (2 miles left on the range indicator at one point). Public chargers were deserted on the M6 and M74 and 30 minutes of quick charge gets you up to over 80%. At that time there were very few electric vehicles about but even then there were rows of Tesla chargers and two public chargers at the motorway services.

The public charger infrastructure is a complete mess with all sorts of different providers who all require a different shitty app.

If you want an electric car to travel long distance the Tesla M3 is the only option because of Tesla's charging infrastructure.

I bought the leaf for financial reasons as that time they were unwanted on the second hand market. The business development manager at Chorley Nissan bought about 50 three year old gen 1 leafs that had been returned on lease and managed to get Nissan to provide warranty and competitive finance. I took out a 3 yr PCP at a stupidly cheap monthly with the view that if the car was shit I'd hand it back. Financially it has barely depreciated and the running costs are tiny. The battery degradation has been reasonable with a reduction in indicated range of about 10 miles. I haven't bothered to analyse the batteries using one of the 3rd party apps and I have always charged to 100% I didn't bother getting a home charge point as the cables are different across manufacturers with the leaf having a type one socket (and a Chademo) so I've just charged with the granny cable to a 3 point plug.

The gen 1 leaf has a conventional heater so range in the winter is an issue. My wife often uses our petrol car if she has more stuff to do.

The leaf is vastly superior to a petrol car for town driving essentially because its quiet, has no gears and instant torque. Ours has been completely reliable but the ICE is typically Nissan shit.

I was tempted to replace our petrol car with a Tesla but there is something really dreary about the M3 and I just couldn't spend £500 a month when there are more interesting options at that price (also I couldn't spend that much on a car despite the tax advantages).

Electric cars make perfect white goods a to b runabouts but for something more interesting I'd still go petrol.