BESIDES MORE RANGE, what would you like to see in LEAF gen 2

[palmermd]

Here's my wish list:
1. AWD
2. Tesla Supercharger access
3. Faster L2 charger (10+ kW)
4. Wagon version with kiddie jumpseats in the rear would be nice, but maybe it would no longer be a LEAF
5. Sunroof
6. Frunk

Yes, assuming it has 200+ real world range, I'd like it to have Tesla Supercharger access. 10kW onboard charger that is adjustable via a phone application. Seat material options. Carpeted floor. 4g connectivity for navigation updates and streaming music.

 

[abasile]

Yes, assuming it has 200+ real world range, I'd like it to have Tesla Supercharger access.

Even with an EPA range of 150 miles, Supercharger access would be nice. Tesla has been increasing the SC density along some Interstates, and they intend to continue doing so.

I'd be content with CHAdeMO if the coverage, redundancy, and availability were better, particularly along non-urban Interstates and major highways. Japan's CHAdeMO coverage is pretty amazing (try taking a quick glance in PlugShare).

Nissan North America made an effort to establish a decent CHAdeMO network via their dealers. But they don't seem to have planned for demand charges, so many dealers got shocked by their electric bills and aren't bothering to keep them on. Even when they are functioning flawlessly, 24/7 availability is lacking, and there's no redundancy at any dealership.

I wonder how much SC access would add to the price of a LEAF, assuming Nissan could negotiate something with Tesla. My guess would be more than $2K.

 

[jlv]

I wonder how much SC access would add to the price of a LEAF, assuming Nissan could negotiate something with Tesla. My guess would be more than $2K.

Why more than $2K? Tesla only charges $2K for the option on a 60kWh Model S (it's included on the 85kWh). I though part of their opening of the patent portfolio, Tesla was supposedly making it easier for other mfgs to include SC access.

 

[abasile]

I wonder how much SC access would add to the price of a LEAF, assuming Nissan could negotiate something with Tesla. My guess would be more than $2K.

Why more than $2K? Tesla only charges $2K for the option on a 60kWh Model S (it's included on the 85kWh). I though part of their opening of the patent portfolio, Tesla was supposedly making it easier for other mfgs to include SC access.

I guess I was thinking Tesla might charge a bit of a premium to other OEMs. After all, they pioneered the network. On the other hand, if other OEMs help to grow the SC network, that could benefit everyone.

The opening of Tesla's patent portfolio should make it relatively easy for Nissan to add a Supercharger connector to the LEAF and to deploy their own "Superchargers" usable only by the LEAF. But it would be smarter to partner with Tesla.

And forget that silly "Combo" aka. Frankenplug connector - just standardize on the Tesla connector. What I'd really like in our next, longer range EV would be three inlets up front - Tesla, CHAdeMO, and J-1772.

 

[TomT]

If I was Tesla, I might be a little worried about Leafs, with their "small" battery, hogging the chargers, and thus I'd want to price it accordingly to minimize this and to help pay for additional Superchargers...

I guess I was thinking Tesla might charge a bit of a premium to other OEMs. After all, they pioneered the network.

 

[Deleted member 770]

Honestly, I can't picture any other manufacturer taking Tesla up on their "share the Superchargers" offer, even though it's really the ONLY viable option for full-time EV use with full mobility - no other standard can charge fast enough. And with their recent emphasis on "Destination charging", I'm even more convinced that Telsa is the only manufacturer that "gets it" when it comes to EVSE placement for longer-distance travel.

I'd love to see Nissan dump CHAdeMO AND J1772 and go with Tesla's connector and J1772 adapter, at least for the US market (smaller charge port), but I doubt it'll ever happen.

That said, and back on-topic, my wish list would include:

• Much longer range (200+ mi. after 10 years)
• Telsa Supercharger access at a minimum of 100 kW (personally, I'd be willing to pay $3,000-$4,000 extra for lifetime "free" access)
• Faster Level 2 charging (10 kW or so)
• [Much] more rear seat legroom
• Wagon variant (for me, a Subaru Outback sized vehicle would be perfect)
• Optional AWD (dual-motor, through-the-road - like the Outlander PHEV - is fine)
• Better looks (nobody else has needed the bugeye headlamps, Nissan should be able to design them away as well)
• Most of the other "small stuff" that others have requested (creep switch, variable regen, more color choices, better telematics, GOM, horn, etc.)

Yes, it probably wouldn't be what we'd consider a "LEAF", but I'd gladly pay something between a LEAF and a Model X for it - say $45-$50k USD before incentives.

 

[GoingGreener]

^ Agree re above for a variant. Tesla S & X plus Toyota RAV4EV would be a tad big, thus not as energy efficient. If something in-between, not necessarily as high up as a SUV but high enough not to have to worry about ground clearance like on the LEAF (a wagon/crossover?), it would be great. Subaru does have some nice ICE choices/designs. The LEAF could be the commuter, the new variant can take care of all the weekend & vacation activities, especially with a longer range, great suspension and most everything else the majority of us are hoping for on this thread! And if there's an Infinity EV, it can be the luxurious one.

 

[adric22]

I'd like to see the following:

• Optional 2-cylinder range extender like the BMW i3.
• The instrument panel should be a full dot-matrix style LCD like the Tesla or Volt.
• There should be a readout on the instrument panel showing exactly how many amps are going out or coming in. (I'd settle for kilowatts also)
• The included portable EVSE should support 120 or 240 volts from the factory.
• Charge timer should allow you to configure an exact percentage of SOC to charge to. So I could set it to automatically charge to, say 50% no matter what when first plugged in. Then I could have it check again during off-peak rates and charge the rest of the way to 100%.
• A more attractive rear-end to the car.
• get rid of the "zero emissions" logo since most people don't know what that means, and even then don't care.. replace it with something that makes sense.

 

[Nubo]

If I was Tesla, I might be a little worried about Leafs, with their "small" battery, hogging the chargers, and thus I'd want to price it accordingly to minimize this and to help pay for additional Superchargers...

Agreed. Existing Tesla owners are NOT going to want to rub shoulders with the hoi polloi if it means lower availability. While I think a tesla port for LEAF is a good idea going forward, it might be a separate network for some time until Nissan or other 3rd parties could bring enough charging infrastructure to the party to justify a shared approach that would benefit everyone. I think this will happen but no idea of the timeline.

 

[Zythryn]

If I was Tesla, I might be a little worried about Leafs, with their "small" battery, hogging the chargers, and thus I'd want to price it accordingly to minimize this and to help pay for additional Superchargers...

Agreed. Existing Tesla owners are NOT going to want to rub shoulders with the hoi polloi if it means lower availability. While I think a tesla port for LEAF is a good idea going forward, it might be a separate network for some time until Nissan or other 3rd parties could bring enough charging infrastructure to the party to justify a shared approach that would benefit everyone. I think this will happen but no idea of the timeline.

Completely disagree!
Tesla would love to have Nissan on board.

The current Leafs don't have the hardware, so this would be for the next gen Leaf.

Tesla has stated they would expect any company that wants in on the SC system to contribute towards building it out. So crowding should not be an issue.
Sure, temporarily at some locations, but short term only.

 

[DanCar]

Some people have asked for variable and stronger regen. My 2013 has variable regen and I suspect stronger regen than earlier year models.
There is also a request to program the accelerator so that it doesn't brake when lifted up. I agree this would be a good option.

 

[cgaydos]

Adding my 2 cents. I'm going to concentrate on LEAF/EV-specific features - general car features are nice, too, but I would hope Nissan knows best about generic car features.

1. Synthetic Leather Seats. The early LEAFs had seats based on recycled materials, then in 2013 they add real leather and make it standard on the SL. WTF? Synthetic leather has been around for decades - why kill cows for the seats on a car meant to be environmentally friendly?

2. Agree on all comments about the info from LeafSpy. I like that they added SOC in 2013 - now would like similar for battery state.

3. Electric foot area heater (both front passengers). The only problem with driving with heat off but with the seat and steering wheel heater on is that your feet freeze. This was asked about in a recent Nissan LEAF survey so I suspect they already know about this.

4. Spare tire.

5. Full disclosure on the battery. C'mon Nissan, you're really cagey about what changes you made in 2013 and again - if you did - in 2015. Why dropping the recommendation on not QCing twice a day? Why dropping the 80% charge option? Please tell us everything so we know how best to manage the battery life.

6. Upgrade Carwings and the app - but keep the 3rd party interface open. I can't believe the functionality is unchanged from 2011 on these. Others have listed here the improvements possible.

7. 240V option for the standard EVSE. I don't want to put EVSEupgrade out of business, but I know the founder of that company has also suggested this to Nissan. Nissan should give up trying to push LEAFers into buying their partner Aerovironment's home wall EVSE and just make this feature standard.

8. Concur on the need for a better charging timer and the ability to stop at different levels of charge.

9. VW now has a 7.2kW charger - probably better to anticipate the market and beat, not meet, that improvement with an even faster on-board charger.

10. Something to help with the protocol at public EVSEs. It would be nice if there was a build in placard available that told other prospective users of the public EVSE how to know: a) whether the LEAF has stopped charging, b) how much longer it has to charge, and c) whether the LEAF owner is okay with the car being unplugged. Some people already put hand-written notes out with this info, but if Nissan included this with the car it would prompt most LEAFers to do the same (and hopefully be copied by other EV manufacturers).

11. Replace "zero emission" with "100% electric" on the outside.

12. Feature packaging - no homelink for non SLs? WTF? And you force us to get leather seats to have homelink? Hmm, maybe I was wrong about Nissan knowing best about generic car features.

 

[TomT]

It's still anemic by many EV standards... FWIW, all of the Leafs from day one forward have had variable regen to some extent...

My 2013 has variable regen and I suspect stronger regen than earlier year models.

 

[Moof]

Things I would want (beyond a 20 mile range):

1) A nav system that doesn't suck, and doesn't cost $180 a shot to keep current (WTF?!). It was not a big deal when I bought it, but it will give me a lot of pause about buying another Nissan if it is not at least 5 years of free updates, and as well as being a decent system in the first place.

2) Better visibility. The columns in front are really obnoxious, and the headrests in back further impair vision, make it easy for those to flip down.

3) Cut deals so that there is one unified charge system for Nissan owners. Having a stack of cards, or having to call (stupid AV!) really makes the thought of using my leaf for a real trip unappealing. I don't need it to be free, just a unified way to driver up to all the major networks and charge easily and for a fair per use or per kWh fee.

4) Spare tire. I have more flat tire anxiety than range anxiety.

5) Driver only climate control option.

6) Fewer buttons, more knobs. The smooth faced buttons makes it really hard to blindly reach and adjust the AC, or do anything else in the telematics unit.

7) Let me override the GOM by putting in my own preferred miles/kWh, and set my own desired reserve. I'd likely just set mine to 4 miles/kWh and 10 miles reserve and be done with it. The GOM vastly and needlessly amplifies range anxiety. I'd rather have a slightly pessimistic reading all the time than a wildly varying readout.

8) Quick release back seats would be nice so I could remove them most of the time to shed weight and more easily haul crap. My ideal scenario would be to run with just the 40% of the 60/40 back seat so I could strap in my kids car seat as needed whiel having cavernous space for Ikea runs and similar.

9) Move the charging port to the side like Ford does. I have never like the aesthetic of the mini-hood being popped up while charging.

10) Let me turn on the radio without having to turn the car on, and let me have the doors open without chiming at me so I can use my car for tunes while working in the garage (I ripped the chime out of my Truck to let me do this, and my wife's Focus lets me just power the radio for an hour without the key).

11) The cabin air filter should be MUCH easier to replace. The current location is a real loser in my opinion.

12) Use accelerometers and GPS (for altitude rate of change) to better estimate the potential energy and kinetic energy stored in the car for calculating the miles/kWh readout. The display is only useful today if you have the cruise control on and are on flat level terrain. I'd rather have a fairly stable readout as to my current energy consumption (factoring out stored energy int he form of changing speed or altitude) rather than one that wings between 0 and 8 miles/kWh every time I slightly speed up or slow down. The readout between the telematics and the dash should really match if I reset them at the same time too...

13) Either you need to adjust the maintenance schedule, or fix whatever you under-engineered that calls for changing brake fluid as often as 15k miles. It seriously makes people wonder about the car's design.

 

[abasile]

7) Let me override the GOM by putting in my own preferred miles/kWh, and set my own desired reserve. I'd likely just set mine to 4 miles/kWh and 10 miles reserve and be done with it. The GOM vastly and needlessly amplifies range anxiety. I'd rather have a slightly pessimistic reading all the time than a wildly varying readout.

Great suggestion! Many of us scarcely pay attention to the current GOM. I'll add to your suggestion. It would be nice to make the GOM useful with the following options for generating estimates:
A. EPA "rated" miles (would be 84 minus reserve on a full charge with a new battery)
B. "Ideal" miles based on "eco" driving at 5 miles/kWh
C. Configurable miles/kWh
D. Recent driving (the current behavior)

9) Move the charging port to the side like Ford does. I have never like the aesthetic of the mini-hood being popped up while charging.

My own opinion is that the current, up-front charging port location is perfect, and I wish the other EV manufacturers would copy it for functional reasons. It's great to not have to back into charging spots or unwind cables further than necessary. This to me is far more important than aesthetics (and I kind of like the mini-hood).

 

[dgpcolorado]

...My own opinion is that the current, up-front charging port location is perfect, and I wish the other EV manufacturers would copy it for functional reasons. It's great to not have to back into charging spots or unwind cables further than necessary. This to me is far more important than aesthetics (and I kind of like the mini-hood).

Entirely agree. Nissan got the charge port location exactly right: front and center.

 

[TomT]

Until the GOM can do look ahead and take in to account elevation changes, wind speed, and current road speeds, it will continue to be of marginal value. Simply tweaking the values is flogging a dead horse.

7) Let me override the GOM by putting in my own preferred miles/kWh, and set my own desired reserve.

 

[Moof]

Until the GOM can do look ahead and take in to account elevation changes and current road speeds, it will continue to be of marginal value. Simply tweaking the values is flogging a dead horse.

7) Let me override the GOM by putting in my own preferred miles/kWh, and set my own desired reserve.

The GOM is of almost zero value, true. The car cannot predict future terrain or driving style, so it uses recent history and assumes it will continue, which is horrifying if you start a long trip up a modest hill.

But why even have a battery readout at all? People advise to ignore the GOM, and instead use the bars or SOC % (if you have 2013 or later) and convert that to miles based on your own estimate of driving efficiency (~6-9 miles per bar). I am suggesting that I want that automated. I'll take a dead simple and predictable range estimator over one that resembles a chimpanzee flinging feces at a dartboard. I will also take this dead simple prediction over having to read bars and multiply in my head. A lot of folks would likely prefer to have a reserve built into the readout, and the current one is obscured by ---.

My problem with most of the readouts on the Leaf is that they look like they should convey useful information, but instead the simple stats are obfuscated beyond the ability to be actionable. The temperature readout could display degrees, but instead it has ~20 degree steps and appears to move on a weekly basis. The capacity gauge one ups this odd system with non-constant steps, when a simple kWh or % readout would be vastly more useful.

The GOM could readout a simple range estimation, but was clearly designed by a committee that included a marketer that wants it to display a wildly optimistic range when you sit down, a manager that wants it to display less range that it has at the bottom to avoid stranding someone and getting bad press, and an engineer that thought he was clever in using recent history to give more accurate number in the middle that resulted in a god awful monstrosity as these three ideas collided. It seems that the first step everyone takes is to try and de-obsfucate the readouts, which should have been the readout in the first place.

 

[TomT]

I definitely vote NO on this one. Front center is a perfect charging location! I hate the EVs that have a charging port on the rear side! It's incredibly inconvenient.

9) Move the charging port to the side like Ford does. I have never like the aesthetic of the mini-hood being popped up while charging.

 

[evnow]

Until the GOM can do look ahead and take in to account elevation changes and current road speeds, it will continue to be of marginal value. Simply tweaking the values is flogging a dead horse.

Yes - and if we enter destination and select a route - the car has all the information needed to make an intelligent guess.

But here is where I think a software company may do much better than an auto company like Nissan.