Listen Now:

The Nissan Leaf will be assembled in Smyrna starting in 2012. (image courtesy of Nissan)

The guys who test drive cars for a living have finally spent some quality time with the Leaf. Nissan’s all-electric car should be on the road next month.

The automaker has staked its future on the electron-fueled hatchback, which will eventually be built in Smyrna. The experts have gotten their first taste and feel of the Leaf, a car they say jump starts a new era in automobiles.

“No vroom vroom,” says Lindsay Chappell, a reporter for Automotive News, as the leave “boots up” instead of revving up.

There’s plenty about the Leaf that is a completely new experience for Chappell, who shifts out of park with what resembles a computer mouse.

“It looks like something from the Jetsons. I moved it to the left and down half a notch and now it’s in drive,” he says. “I suppose a year from now we’ll be laughing at how simple this is.”

Chappell steps on what he’s tempted to call the “gas” – actually the “accelerator” – as he pulls out from the garage under Nissan’s Franklin headquarters.

The Leaf has some get-up-and-go. The unexpected torque is a built-in bonus with electric vehicles. They’re low on top-end horse power, but they’ve got plenty of zip from a standstill. There’s no combustion engine to wait on. That also makes them deadly quiet.

“It’s almost humorous because you can hear the tires rolling on the asphalt,” Chappell says.

Remarkably Unremarkable Drive

After a few minutes behind the wheel, the traits that make this car innovative blend into the background. The Leaf drives about like any other fossil-fueled four-door. But it’s not, says Dennis Simanaitis with the enthusiast magazine Road and Track.

Behind the façade of an average economy car, there’s lots of technology that goes unnoticed, like regenerative braking. Instead of brake pads, most of what slows down the car is the motor acting as a generator.

“A lot of the braking going on is purely electronic. It’s purely returning electrical energy to that battery, Simanaitis says. “An ordinary driver gets in the car and would drive and just think ordinary brakes. Wrong. But it’s so well done, the average driver won’t know the difference.”

Some of what makes the Leaf different is apparent, at least to nitpickers like Dutch Mandel, an editor at Autoweek.

“The interior fit and finish is ok,” he says. “They’re trying very hard to be a leading edge, green car.”

Nissan’s proud that materials for the cabin include parts of old appliances and reused fabric.

“But the touch points for the roof for example, which is made out of recycled bottles, it’s not the kind of feel that I would want in my car,” Mandel says. “You can tell when you’re driving that it doesn’t have the kind of insulative properties of other cars. They’re trying to lighten it up. They’re trying to make weight.”

Trading Traditional Options for Gadgets

Weight factors into almost every detail. Nissan cut some familiar frills, like a sunroof, to shed pounds and help the Leaf go further on each charge.

Designers tried to make up for what was left on the cutting room floor with super smart software, like an iPhone app that allows drivers to remotely pre-heat the car on a cold day.

While impressed with the gadgetry, Dutch Mandel sees too much compromise for a $27,000 car.

“I don’t know that we’re to the point where anyone other than the extreme people will care about it being a green car,” he says.

Mandel is one of the bigger Leaf skeptics. But car buffs agree there is an elephant in the showroom. Nissan calls it “range anxiety.” At 100 miles between charges, prospective Leaf owners will have their own calculations to do before leaving a V-6 for high-voltage.

Nissan’s Mark Perry shows off the features of the Leaf’s onboard computer at the automaker’s headquarters in Franklin, Tenn.

More: