Scott3: 

 

Congratulations, I am sure you will enjoy it.

I am. So far, the car is magic. Very quiet. Very smooth. Acceleration is more than good enough in ECO mode...and even better when not. ("Do not drag people off at the lights. Do not drag people off at the lights Do not drag people off at the lights...") Also interesting was the car had 3,123kms on it when I picked it up. That's almost nothing..... 

The best thing about the Ex Japan Gen 2 Model S leaf is that it has a Double DIN standard head unit (dash bit of the stereo). I would fully recommend swapping the Japanese head unit for a New Zealand one. Firstly it means it will be in English, and won't need a band expander, Bluetooth is pretty much standard now days too. If you value features like GPS, Reversing camera etc, you can get one with these too. Many of the sellers of these cars swap the head unit before selling the cars.

Autolink on Great North Rd did install an English-language unit in my car. But even if they hadn't the Google Translate on my phone did a good job of translating Japanese to English in real-time via the camera. 

(note that the Screen in frount of the driver stay in Japanese).

Noted. So far I've managed to switch this to show the battery percentage. 

In regards to the noise, I am pretty sure the Japanese leaf's all have low speed noise generators mounted in the front. Switch to turn it off is near the drivers right knee. It will automatically turn back on every time you start the car.

Thanks for that. I'll have a look.  

With regards to the EVSE check your dealer hasn't simply chopped the Japanese plug off a 200V EVSE and replaced it with a blue campground plug. There is a tiny transformer inside that is only rated for 200V, not the 230V we get here. The car itself is fine with 230V

I think they have done the right thing. The electrician who did my home EV pplug install made a point of NOT using the blue caravan plug. He said he got a "proper one".  The one they gave me with the car isn't blue. 

Let us know how you like the car.

I love the car!!! More than I expected...and I had expectations. It's physically comfortable and looks good (to me). But the whole EV side is great. I've only done some short drives today: Grey Lynn to Greenlane via the Port and Parnell & Newmarket (SH1 was jammed - avoid - avoid), and later Greenlane to Syvlia Park via the motorway and back again via the Panmure highway and Lunn Ave. In the latter case (Sylvia Park), the return trip used about 10% of the battery.  It's a typical trip for me and I wouldn't make ten of them in a day. The ECO mode certainly does seem to conserve the battery life. Sometimes the estimated Kms remaining actually increased thanks to the regenerative braking.

Tomorrow I'm going to Browns Bay for brunch. I'll see how much juice it uses for each leg of that trip.  

I've installed the  Plugshare app and there are a good number of EV charging stations around Auckland (but I really shouldn't need them, normally)....and up and down SH1 for longer trips. With a bit of organisation a longer trip it looks like could be done without too much bother.