Looking for a different driving experience? Try renting an electric car.

I recently discovered that our local branch of Enterprise Rent-a-car has a fleet of three Nissan Leaf's available for rent.  So last weekend (Aug.31-Sept.1) I rented myself one to get a feel for this new technology -- and gave rides to family, friends, children of friends, friends of children...here is what I learned:

1. Get the freshest car on the lot: Before issuing the car to me, the agent checked which one was the most charged, to make sure I had as many miles of range as possible.  As I drove out of the lot, the range meter said 99 miles of range.
2. Fun with guess-your-range: The dashboard tries to guess your remaining range based on charge left in the battery.  If you turn on the A/C, it goes down by 2-3 miles.  If you turn on "Eco" mode (accelerator is damped so that the car is not as powerful), it goes back up by 2-3 miles.
3. Smooth, powerful, and quiet: the vaunted high torque at low speed lived up to expectation, the car accelerates very quickly from a standstill even on a grade -- especially if you take it out of "Eco" mode!  There is also something cool about going down the expressway at 65 mph and all you can hear is the road noise from the tires -- very quiet.
4. Regenerative braking: The car took 15 miles of range off to climb a 1,000 vertical foot hill out of Ithaca, which was an actual distance over the road of 2.5 miles.  But it used -7 miles (in other words the range increased by 7 miles) to go back down the same hill, thanks to regenerative braking.  The motor can power the wheels at a max rate of 80 kW, but the wheels can regenerate back into the battery through the motor at a max rate of 30 kW.
5. Open your own front yard refueling station: The rental car came with the 110V charging cable.  We parked it in our front yard over night with a Kill-a-watt kWh meter on the cable, and in 13 hours put 17 kWh of charge back into the battery system.  Which raised the charge level from 17% to 80%.  At $0.14 per kWh, that's...$2.38?  Pretty cheap.  There is also a new faster 240V charging station in Ithaca, which I tried to charge after hours, but could not because I did not have an RFID-enabled credit card.
6. Best part of all: you don't need to return it fully recharged to the rental agency: This makes sense, since it takes so long to charge.  But in any case, your last charge is replenished by them and not you.  This arrangement saves you time and doesn't cost them that much.