Engineering That Truly Makes Nissan LEAF Awesome

Almost like eyes that are starring and trying to focus, Nissan LEAF headlights are positioned in such a way as to immediately become noticeable upon first encounter.

Since I have had my 2013 Nissan LEAF, I have traveled to and from many events to promote all types of Electric Vehicles. It is strange how people start off a little unsure about the lights and the front of the car since it really isn’t something that other cars are noted for.

The average person I come in contact with at these events is always so much more accepting of this car once I explain exactly what these lights are designed to do. They have two purposes.

The most obvious is for light at night for the road. As a pure electric car that is a quiet car, sounds you normally don’t hear in a gas car are heard in the electric cars. As a result, during testing of this car, the Nissan Engineers noticed that the side mirrors ended up causing a whistling noise which they found annoying while test driving. As a result, they redesigned the lights so that the wind is redirected away from the mirrors so as to help minimize unwanted noise.

Now, Nissan has installed a noise maker for low speeds that sits under the driver's side fender behind the bumper. I didn’t like it so one day I disconnected it. Even without that noise maker, these LEAF lights perform extremely well.

I eventually reconnected the noise maker because as a result of my disconnecting it I lost the back up noise for reverse operation. Since I have kids, I felt this was more important to keep at this point so I suffer the noise maker even thought I initially didn’t like it.

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