The Original Nissan Leaf Is a Glorious Bridge Between the Analogue and Digital Ages

In this brave new age of smartphone addiction, we have probably all been caught sinking several weeks of our lives into a game that sucks up your attention and gives you nothing in return, like the recent Obsession. In this strategy game, you have to send trucks back and forth between different locations to transport stuff. It was not particularly challenging or exciting, but it was addictive.

Until it was updated, presumably by someone who had never even opened the app, let alone played it. An eight-second download and suddenly the game was unplayable and unusable. Sure, it had a spiffy new look, some snazzy graphics and some new music in the game, but the essential functions had been changed in the blink of an eye, and it was impossible to figure out how to run them. So… deleted.

But what happens when you do that to your car? Manufacturers are going wild about over-the-air updates and the limitless possibilities they offer. Polestar recently did an update that allowed their cars to run longer; Volkswagen did an update that allowed them to charge longer and more.

That’s all very nice, but there will come a time when they get it completely wrong and forget to put the heated seat button back in or decide you now have to pay extra to move your wing mirrors. Maybe you get three free radio station changes a month and then have to watch an advert.

Some design chief might announce that Comic Sans is now officially cool and change all the fonts in your infotainment system to that hated font. And we will long for the days when a car was finished before it was sold to us.

But there’s an electric car out there that has snuck under the wire, bridging the gap between the smelly, petrol-soaked analogue days and the tech-laden, emotionless digital age of the vehicle – vehicle – it is the Nissan Leaf. We are not saying it’s a classic, but you will not jump up one morning and find it’s an entirely different car with all the settings tucked away in another place.

The Nissan Leaf was the car that established electric vehicles as a mass-market alternative to internal combustion engines. Sure, it looks like a frog that just got some bad news, and it’s as cheap and plasticky inside as any modern buyer would tolerate. But on the other hand, you’d have to replace the air freshener on the rear-view mirror if you were to revise it.

There are plenty of very well-used examples out there. If you were to get one, you’d be at the forefront of finding out how long electric vehicles last before they spontaneously explode or inexplicably grind to a halt. But you can take advantage of all this by getting an unloved 24-kWh specimen with its great features and paying someone who specialises in such things of late to fit a new battery.

Maybe even a bigger one that benefits from the advances in battery technology that have been made since the Nissan Leaf’s launch. It’s not a seamless, stealth update, but it would at least keep your Leaf fresh and green.

Best Electric Car if You Want To Keep It Simple Is – Nissan Leaf

Price: £4,000-10,000
Range: 124 miles (lol)
Engine: 107bhp electric motor
Battery: 24kWh
Top speed: 89mph 0-62mph: 11.5sec
Boot capacity: 371 litres
Updates since launch: 0

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