Nissan Leaf is considered to be the first usable and mass-accessible electric-driven car. Many therefore had a hard time expecting his second generation and thus it is no surprise that Leaf had become the best-selling electric car in Europe last year. However, as the Nissan plans to keep its is status in the future, they have now prepared an upgraded version called Leaf e+, which should allow up to 350 kilometers of range thanks to a battery pack of 62 kilowatt hours. But apparently the engineers didn't do the best job.

Leaf e+ is also intended to be suitable for day-to-day use on longer distances and with multiple consecutive filling and emptying without rest. However, this is where the problems continue to arise. The German company Nextmove, which is the largest provider of electric rent-a-cars in the country, made a 1,000 km long test run carried out in a single day, which, however, proved to be anything but a success.

Two hours of 'rapid' filling for 200 kilometers of autonomy

The vehicle's problems quickly became apparent at highway speeds, where battery pack temperature exceeded 50 degrees Celsius, and the heating problems were repeated when the battery pack was charged. During the rapid charging, power of charging fell from 40 kilowatt to only 20 kilowatts, which meant that for 200 kilometers of autonomy the car had to be filled for two hours. What's more, car actually went into some kind of limp mode, protecting battery pack whilst only allowing speeds of up to 110 kilometers per hour.

Interestingly, this is a problem reported by users more than a year ago, even in the version with a weaker battery pack. This was finally to be resolved at the beginning of this year, but it appears that it has reappeared in the upgraded version of Leaf. The Nissan is expected to address the problem by software upgrading and installing fans for better cooling, but no significant progress has yet been made. On Nextmove are, therefore, perfectly clear, because they believe that it is the Leaf of e+ be useful for short-term day-to-day way, but it is not the only car in the house, which would make much more more than 100 kilometers of distance.