130 mile mountain trip turned into 180 mile success!

[dhanson865]

The weight helps for starting and stopping but not steady speed.

But moving to 15" tires also changes the contact patch (tread width) and profile of the tire (aero, narrower overall shape) and depending on your choice of rims/tires won't stick out from the wheel well as far (aero, less exposed leading edge).

It also gets you into tires that are designed differently even though they have the same name or opens up options to buy different tires (not all 15" tires are available in 16 or 17" at the right RPM for the leaf). Generally speaking the lower profile tire (higher diameter tire) will have a stiffer sidewall and higher rolling resistance. Moving to the 15" gets you away from that.

 

[IssacZachary]

The weight helps for starting and stopping but not steady speed.

But moving to 15" tires also changes the contact patch (tread width) and profile of the tire (aero, narrower overall shape) and depending on your choice of rims/tires won't stick out from the wheel well as far (aero, less exposed leading edge).

It also gets you into tires that are designed differently even though they have the same name or opens up options to buy different tires (not all 15" tires are available in 16 or 17" at the right RPM for the leaf). Generally speaking the lower profile tire (higher diameter tire) will have a stiffer sidewall and higher rolling resistance. Moving to the 15" gets you away from that.

Gotcha! I've always wondered what putting four spare "donuts" off of a similar Nissan would do for range. Of course traction and handling would really suffer, but it would be interesting.

 

[dhanson865]

The weight helps for starting and stopping but not steady speed.

But moving to 15" tires also changes the contact patch (tread width) and profile of the tire (aero, narrower overall shape) and depending on your choice of rims/tires won't stick out from the wheel well as far (aero, less exposed leading edge).

It also gets you into tires that are designed differently even though they have the same name or opens up options to buy different tires (not all 15" tires are available in 16 or 17" at the right RPM for the leaf). Generally speaking the lower profile tire (higher diameter tire) will have a stiffer sidewall and higher rolling resistance. Moving to the 15" gets you away from that.

Gotcha! I've always wondered what putting four spare "donuts" off of a similar Nissan would do for range. Of course traction and handling would really suffer, but it would be interesting.

Donuts are smaller diameter and width, There is a nice video of doing that on a very expensive car to make it drift on a track https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPh90yNX-mY. It won't increase fuel efficiency/range though, just not a real world tire scenario (assuming you literally mean those silly mini spare tires).

Someone on ecomodder.com did the tests and it got worse distances in their testing (heavier rims and crappy high rolling resistance tires.) Check out this one for example http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthread.php/testing-rolling-resistance-various-tires-suzukiclone-fleet-re92-19126.html

As to switching to 15" tires of a normal type it will improve handling in some ways if you reduce the weight. It will change the handling in some ways based shape/size. It isn't all a reduction of handling, it's just a trade off. It favors some situations and is worse in others.

 

[achewt]

I made my own trip planner spreadsheet based from Tony's range chart for flat driving, then applying some other factors, including elevation gain/descent. If you go to the 'Elevation Energy' tab you'll get more detail on how the sheet figures out energy used to climb (you can modify your weight etc); it takes into account what others have posted in the thread earlier, but also the efficiency of the motor at the speed you are travelling uphill.

I've used it to plan out several trips through BC in areas where charging is basically non-existent (or was at the time anyways). Also own an Open EVSE unit for utilizing various types of campground power situations Definitely requires a bit of fiddling, but hasn't let me down yet and I don't have to guess!

http://kootenayevfamily.ca/ev-basics/trip-planner-spreadsheet/