Complete In-Depth Review!


Hey everybody, it's Peter and this is the 2023 Nissan Leaf. And in this video we're gonna do a complete in-depth review of this car. And before we get going too far, I should mention that I'm at Jim Gilbert's Wheels and Deals here in Fredericton NewBrunswick, where they sell a whole lot of EVs. So like I said, this is a 2023 Nissan Leaf. This is the top spec model. We also have a lower trim line with a little bit less range, a little bit less expensive that's in stock also at 2023. We just did a video last week on the Hyundai Kona, I believe that is a 2022 EV. We have a number of Teslas in stock. We have a Prius Prime, actually a couple Prius primes in stock. There are always electric vehicles plug-in hybrid electric vehicles here. And if you're interested in those, feel free to subscribe to this channel because I'll be reviewing them and going through them more and more. 
And if you have questions that you wanna know more about this car or other cars in its class, feel free to let me know in the comments below. Because here at Jim Gilbert's Wheels and Deals, they give me complete access to their entire vehicle line and I can come back to these cars to make sure that you get all the answers you need. Now, before I go too, too far, I wanna say one more thing about Jim Gilbert's Wheels and Deals, especially when it comes to electric vehicles. There is almost nowhere in the world where you can go and walk in and check out a new 2023 Nissan Leaf next to a Prius Prime, next to a Hyundai Kona EV or electric next to other vehicles, next to Teslas. And you can compare them all in the lot on the same area with the same salesperson.

And in addition to that, you can take them home. They don't have to have a huge long wait for those. So the big shout out to Jim Gilbert's Wheels and Deals for committing to EVs. Now let's get going with this review. So the 2023, this leaf is actually a very impressive car. And I say actually because it doesn't get the press that it used to, this sort of introduced, uh, electric vehicles to North America. It was really one of the first other than Tesla. And it's gone through some iterations, gone through some changes, gone through some new generations, and I feel like it's a little overshadowed by some of the bigger and heavier EVs that are out there. But this is a nice, relatively compact car that makes a lot of sense for a lot of people. I have a cheat sheet here. Let's talk about, uh, overall horsepower and other things like that.


From here you can watch Peters Video or Read What he says the choice is your enjoy... this is a great review ether way...

There are two models and each model has more range and less range. We'll talk about range in a second, but power matters as well. The higher trim, which is this one, has 214 horsepower and 250 foot pounds of torque. So of course torque is common. This one balances out its power a little bit more than something like the Kia and Hyundai, uh, competitors to this car where they have a little bit more torque and a little bit less horsepower. And then you also have the lower range model, which has 147 horsepower and 236 uh, foot pounds of torque. So you've got, with the differing ranges, you also have differing, uh, power numbers. So again, this would be the more powerful one with a few more options. Couple things I like about this. It has the 360 camera. We'll show you that as we get inside. 


Let's got those nice l e d lights, lights out front. The lower trim level's gonna have the halogen lights and there's really kind of options to go up spec or low spec depending on what you want. So let's take a look at some of the details on this car. Starting at the front of the car, you've got this nice kind of gray out logo, that camera out there on the front. And this has to be popped from the inside, which I've already done and opens up like that. Now one thing that's interesting to me, you have your typical level one, level two charge port right there. And then you have a different style charge port than the competitors are using. This is the Chad Moe, I think I'm saying that right. Uh, charge port this has used this for a while. Most other uh, manufacturers have moved onto a different style charge port.


But you do have a fast charging capability here on this car, which just a little bit different style port than some of the other vehicles in the class. Closing this down, click it in place, it seals right up. Another interesting thing I wanna show you is these wheels here, this wheel design, it's an alloy wheel and they are fully blacked out except for the very edge trims here. So kinda like a five spoke wheel or five spokes sort of design. But they are very unique and really make it stand out from a distance. Wheel size is 2 15, 50 R 17. So you have 17 inch rims here. Uh, you know, nice sized tires. These are Michelin tires as well. I wanna point out the rear design of this before we take a look at the trunk because there's some nice styling cues here that give you sort of that kind of a cool shoulder kind of look.


They make it look sort of muscular from the rear end, so the wheels are out to the sides. But this design also does compromise this one thing on the trunk. It's the one thing that I kind of question in the redesign about, uh, this leaf here. It's probably not gonna matter to most people, but I'll show you what I mean with this kind of styling. These sharp cutoffs are great for aerodynamics, which is what you want, but this styling does create one compromise in the trunk. Let me show you that right now. So taking a look inside the trunk here, you can see nice clear, open pull there. One thing I talk about this styling is it doesn't seem to kind of open up here. It has a little bit of a smaller entrance than I feel like it could have, although there is a thicker wall here.


So there may be reasonings, there may be stuffing behind here that they don't, uh, give you a full trunk space. So to me, I feel like they could have just kind of opened this up here. You got a lot of space in here where there's no opening to, and this entrance does come a little smaller. It's only gonna matter if you try to fit the largest things in here, uh, but some of the other competitors have a little bit more of a square opening, which will allow you to put it in. The other thing that's interesting is the floor really dips down here it's very, very low. So the trunk space is very, very good, but you will be lifting things out instead of just sliding things out. So again, good space, full down seats. You've got a removable cargo cover. It is a hatchback design, but a little different again to have that lower floor here. Got our charge, uh, charger that comes with the car in here. Of course, that won't be there when you're, uh, traveling normally. I mean it could be, but you don't have to have it there. But it does have a very good trunk space. Little difference with the smaller opening and the deeper floor. Moving on from the cargo compartment, I wanna show you the rear seats as well. Rear seat space, this driver's seat is set for me as a six footer. Now one thing you'll find with all of these cards with the battery in the

Floor, which is what this has, that's where you want it. Even with something like Tesla, the rear seats tend to be raised and the rear floor is a little bit raised. So not as much tow space under the seats as you would expect on a gasoline car. But still here for me a six footer, no problem. Now it looks like it kind of comes close to my head here, but inside the car I have plenty of space for, again, me as a six footer sitting behind a six footer. But you are perched up a little bit more on these seats than the front seats. The front seats can actually sit quite low in this car. Overall, you do have heated seats here, heated rear seat, two USB ports as well. So the heated rear seat is an on or off thing. What I don't like it is the switch.


If it is turned on by someone in the rear, it stays on. So it is a not a uh, typical on and off switch. Now it is visible from the driver if they just turn to the right there. So interesting placement. But again, just something to keep in mind before we jump in the driver's seat. I wanna show you the key for this car. And this Nissan does keys very well. They are small. I don't think anybody wants a huge massive key in their pocket, but this is everything you need. Nothing you don't, right there on the key. So we're gonna throw those in our pocket. They are of course keyless entry touch of the button on the door here. These are chrome, uh, door handles here on the higher trim level. A touch of that button there would unlock it. It's already unlocked. So we're gonna jump in. 
You can see here big wide comfortable seats. You have powered seats and you have a lumbar adjustment there. And like I said, you'll see a ton of room in here. We'll show you my headroom as we jump in. But let's just first take a look at some of the things in the dash. So overall, because this is an ev, we can turn it on. We'll do that in a second here. Let's just zoom in for a second. Left side, higher trim level. It has some self-steering capabilities. We'll talk about that. These are to pop your charge port, schedule your CL or actually turn off the schedule for your uh, um, if you schedule your charge, which is an option to do. You have a heated steering wheel down there. This is a push button that kind of comes in and out, but it will, it is sort of what I call a sticky button.


It will stay on if you had it on in the past, which is kind of nice to have. Take a look at the dash here. Let's go back out to the regular view here. Let's start the car. And you can see the animations that come on. This is a very good screen. There is a lot of information. It is very clear. Uh, I quite like it. So we'll show you that in a second here. But let's just continue to show you some extra controls there. Uh, your trip reset down there and uh, brightness. This is what you're gonna use to control that left side screen. Very intuitive there. And you have your audio controls there as well. Moving across over here. Some of your safety systems here. This car is absolutely loaded with safety systems. So we'll talk about that versus lower trim level. Just the basics anyways, have to go through there. 
And uh, over here is your touchscreen. Very good. Touchscreen mounted flat, not tilted to the driver or anything like that. Uh, simple climate controls that are easy to use. There's your start button right down there. Power button. One thing I like about the U USB ports here, they have a U S B C and a U US b A in here, which is good. And again, the uh, heated seat buttons, they do stay on because they are um, sort of in place there. So you have to keep that in mind with the rear seat there as well. Similar button there. And you have the, oops, I just turned it off there. You have the 12 volt port there as well. One thing I would've liked to see here is this could have been a wireless charge pad, but it is not to my knowledge. So I'm pretty sure it's not down here.


You've got some nice things. We're gonna talk about these kind of things. This is how your gear shift works. For whatever reason. EVs, they just feel like they should be strange gear shift levers and stuff. And the leaf has always done this. Same with like the Prius. They have a different style, uh, uh, gear shift as well. E pedal here is basically your one pedal driving. Now manufacturers don't like to call it one pedal driving, but that's effectively what it is. It uh, allows you to release the accelerator pedal and the vehicle will slow down in this vehicle. It will come to a complete stop. There's an eco mode here as well. And here's your gear shift lever. So again, there's your sort of map of what you're doing. So to put it in drive, we go like this and that and it's in drive and it pops back
Actually that's reverse. Excuse me. And then we'll go and drive. We go like that. I'm used to doing it with my right hand, so doing it with my left hand kind of throws me off. Anyways, why don't we show you the reverse for a second. It is beeping. We have backup sensors on, uh, and you have the 360 camera. So very, very simple to park this car. You can set the camera settings to one other setting here. I would've liked to see a few more options. This is to parallel park on the right side only. So again, some of its competitors with these 360 cameras do allow you to see the left side or right side or both sides. Uh, but totally fine for what it is. We're gonna get that beeping to stop by putting it back in park and you can sort of see the camera still stay on there. 
Gonna go back to that menu. We'll show you this in a second. But before we go to show you the technology, let me just show you the space in here that I have. So where the backseat has a little bit tighter headroom, you know, about an inch or so, you know, not a lot. You feel like you're perched very up high in this seat. You feel like you're very low. Now of course I can solve that problem by using the power seat to come up and up and up and up and up. I should go back down and just sort of show you just cuz it is hard to see on camera. But you can see there is a lot of space here. So I'm about six feet tall, you can see you can be 6 2, 6 3, 6 4. You're not gonna have an issue here. Uh, but let's go up and up and up and up and up.
You can move this seat quite a bit. Front and back can go up. So even at its highest position, at least the highest hip position, I could still move the front of the seat higher. Uh, still very good headroom. So again, you're sitting a little more deeper in this car from the front, which is really the opposite from the back seats. So good space overall, doesn't matter who you're, you're gonna be able to fit in this car quite comfortably. We're gonna take a little bit more of a brief look at this screen cause I actually wanna show you the screen and the dash and some of the features in there as well. But you have everything you kind of need here. There's your audio system here. You've got am fm I believe you also have satellite radio. Let's just check here. Yeah, satellite radio, Bluetooth audio, of course, all of that stuff there. 
Uh, this does have Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. My assumption is that it is still a wired system, not a wireless system, but that's probably fine. Wireless systems can be sketchy at this point. So yeah, there's your Sirius, your Bluetooth, all that kind of thing. Now what's interesting is these buttons down here, they do change based on what you have. So you can see there, if we go to for instance the map, uh, now you've got your all your destination buttons. So depending on what you have, a lot of cars will sort of have the sticky buttons down here. They'll stay, uh, as all the same no matter what screen you're on. This sand doesn't do that with this. So it is something to keep in mind that depending on the screen, even these buttons change, which I think does create a cleaner look, uh, works quite well for most people.


So you've kind of got everything you need in there. But like I said, oh actually we should just show you the climate system for a second here as well. Uh, this, this trim does have a heat pump involved. So a lot of EVs, lower trims don't always have that heat pump. Higher trims do. Uh, the heat pump will give you a little bit more range. I'm not sure if it makes a difference to a ton of people. Um, obviously it does take some range, but a lot of these people who are driving these relatively lower range cars aren't doing a whole lot of massive trips in them. So although it does affect your range, it may not affect your, um, usability of the car, uh, whether it has a heat pump or not. Uh, for the range that you have anyways, you can decide that for yourself. (12:30)
Coming over here again, uh, rated range number, oh boy, I think it was 3 48 and 2 48 or 2 3 40 and two 40 or something like that. When it's full, you can see we have 96%. This car currently is sitting inside, but you can see outside it's still reading the colder temperatures. It was minus something outside. It's minus two in here. So, um, this car was just recently fast charged out front here in Jim Gilberts Wheels and Deals. They have a brand new fast charger. You've got a lot of screens here to go through and I know I'm not gonna show you everything, but you can see sort of various things here. Uh, battery temperature, all kinds of stuff EV related stuff. If you're just a regular um, driver here, you're probably gonna look at this screen. It gives you a little bit of an idea. If you keep that sort of tack type lever or tack type uh, gauge in that eco section you're gonna do really well. (13:11)
Obviously you've go into power and then it will drop down into the blue as it charges. So that's kind of a typical menu, but you can cycle through, you can have your radio here, you can have navigation information because we don't have any destination right now. It's just gonna show us a compass in this screen, which is fine. Uh, there's some of your efficiency information. Now ignore efficiency information. This car has a total of 182 kilometers on it and I have been idling in this car running heat. So, uh, this just doesn't have, you know, read the spec sheet more than any car in a dealership. Any car sitting in a dealership is gonna have a higher, um, efficiency rating than what you'll get. Or worse efficiency rating than what you'll probably get. So you can ignore some of those. But again, there's lots of different ways to look at different things here. (13:49)
Uh, coming over here, we've got our speedometer. There's a lot of other controls in here as well. Some of the screens that I like here, there's your blind spot, your lane warning, your forward assist, like forward warnings. There's lots of warnings. This is sort of a smart cruise control type thing. So when you put this thing on a smart cruise control, it will keep its distance from the vehicles in front of you, including coming down right to a stop. So I love using that in stop and go traffic. You can use it on the highway, that kind of thing. Uh, and it sort of slows down to the vehicles in front of you, but stop and go traffic. It works very well because it will continue to bring you to a stop and accelerate out for you again. And this is one of those display screen that's, that can work with that. (14:22)
So you also have this ability of this car. Let's just go wide angle, show you everything here to have a bit of a, they call it hands-on sort of self-steering. So it's like many cars in this class actually have something similar, uh, where the vehicle can see the lane markers can steer for itself to keep it centered in the lane. Obviously you have to keep your hands on the wheel, but uh, if you think the Teslas are the only ones that sort of steer themselves, that is not true. Many cars, uh, Kias and Hyundais N Nissan here has some version of that. There's lots of versions. So we're gonna put that back to speedometer for a second here and we'll go across one more. And then you have all of your settings here. So via vehicle dynamic control, there is your, uh, you know, advanced traction control.
Essentially many cars have that driver assistance settings. Let's just tap into some of these for a second. Steering assist, you can turn that on. You've got lane things, blind spot things, emergency brake parking, aids, driver retention alert. So if you're looking for safety features, um, you've got so many in here. So we'll come back here and look at that. Uh, same with the custom display vehicle settings. You can do all kinds of things. EV settings is good too. Uh, very clear and easy to find. So charge connector, you can have it locked, locked while it's um, just charging or various things. And then you can set the timer to charge. So for instance, if you wanna set it to charge in a, uh, setting where, uh, I'm just gonna make sure I'm in park. Oh, I am in park. There we go. Take my foot off the break now.
Uh, but you can set the charge timer for if you have, uh, time of use charging at your house. You can set various, uh, um, charge timers in this and climate control timers well. So this is really helpful if, uh, you're not necessarily charging every night, which, you know, I own an electric vehicle, we don't charge it every single day. We don't need to the same ways you wouldn't get gas every single day. Uh, but climate control timer is nice to have because if you leave for work the same time every day, even if you're inside a garage, you can set this up to turn on your heat or your air conditioning, whatever you want. You just, let's say you want it at 21 degrees, you can set this to 21 degrees and whether it needs heat or air conditioning, it can turn on at a certain time and every time you, uh, go, it can uh, it can set that up for you. 
So again, this is pretty typical stuff in the class, but what's nice about the N Nissan here is it's just very easy to find all this stuff. So you can see tons and tons of settings here. Uh, maintenance clock units, factory resets, everything here. So there's usually nothing you can change here that can't be easily, uh, fixed again. So if you ever get this car, feel free to set it up and play with it. If you buy it from Jim Gilbert's Wheels and Deals, of course I will work with you. If you ever change something here that you just forgot how it, uh, was set, then you can just connect with our team here or even myself and we'll make sure that we get things set back to the way they want, the way you want them. So we'll leave it there, but a very, very, very good screen in there for an ev. 
A couple other things I'll show you here. Uh, you do have the ability to connect this vehicle to an app from the Nissan. Again, that's pretty standard for the class right now, but that is a telematic system, which also gives you advantage of things like an sos uh, button here. So you can call for help because it has sort of a data connection within the car. You do have sunglasses holder up here. Not many cars have those as much anymore. This is auto rearview, auto dimming, rear view mirror. Uh, overall very nice space in here with good technology.

So is the NI Nissan Leaf right for you? Well, it's a very good electric car. It's very class competitive in what it offers. It has a hair less range than the most similar cars to this, which are the Kia and Hyundai options. The both the Niro, the, uh, Kona Electric, uh, the Kia Soul EV as well. So a little bit rest less range than the maximum amount of those. But again, very class competitive. Uh, nice features like that 360 camera, uh, good overall space in inside. And the nice thing about this class of EV is they're much more similar to your typical gasoline vehicle. When you get in, you know where the controls are, it's different than a Tesla. If you wanna compare this to something like a Tesla, something like to a Prius Prime, something like to the other Kia and Hyundai vehicles, you can do that here at Jim Gilbert's Wheels and Deals. 
And you can also do that on this channel. I've done a number of videos just within the past week of all these EVs that are in stock and I want to help you find the answers you need. So is it right for you? Is it not? Well, the easiest way to tell us to do a little research, and if you wanna see these cars next to each other on the same lot, you can come to Jim Gilbert's Wheels and Deals here in Fredericton, New Brunswick to see them up close, deal with the same salesperson, get the same number so you know, you're comparing apples to apples and there aren't many vehicles or aren't many dealers where you can drive them back to back. So if that's helpful, swing by here. And again, let me know in the comments what you want to know about these EVs. Should I do another video on the lower trim Nissan Leaf? Do you wanna see that one compared as well? Let me know in the comments and we'll make sure we get that for you. Thanks everybody for watching.

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