Latest News on Real World Range???

[retrodog]

Any reports on this yet?

The reason I ask is because I have a Vectrix electric motorcycle that was rated at 60 miles/charge. But it really gets closer to 30 under normal "driving around town" conditions.

If the Leaf gets close to 100 in real world conditions, I'll be happy with that. But if it's closer to 50... maybe not so much.

 

[jwhitehouse]

The range reports coming out of Nissan say 64 miles under the worst conditions, and 168 miles under the best conditions.

 

[mwalsh]

I'll have a report of two 30 mile trips at freeway speeds for you on Thursday - the first day I drive my LEAF to the office and back home.

 

[omkar]

I keep forgetting to reset my trip odometer to check but it sure doesn't seem like I'm able to get 100 miles. If I had to guesstimate, it would be 80. I will try to track it better. I reset the Energy Usage meter via the Navi and I'm averaging about 3.1 miles per kWh. Not sure if my driving habits are average or not though.

UPDATE: Please see my Carwings in the post below which says I'm averaging 4.3 miles/kWh

 

[Gonewild]

I keep forgetting to reset my trip odometer to check but it sure doesn't seem like I'm able to get 100 miles. If I had to guesstimate, it would be 80. I will try to track it better. I reset the Energy Usage meter via the Navi and I'm averaging about 3.1 miles per kWh. Not sure if my driving habits are average or not though.

Do you have your charge point set at 80% or 100? If it is set I think at the default then that make sense 80 miles.

 

[evnow]

I keep forgetting to reset my trip odometer to check but it sure doesn't seem like I'm able to get 100 miles. If I had to guesstimate, it would be 80. I will try to track it better. I reset the Energy Usage meter via the Navi and I'm averaging about 3.1 miles per kWh. Not sure if my driving habits are average or not though.

What is your history on carwings showing ?

 

[Randy]

I'll write more about this in a dedicated post, but Malcolm and I just got back home in San Diego from picking up our Leafs in Fontana. It is a 110 mile trip home, and 95% freeway driving. They came to SD and picked us up and ferried us up there. We were there for a few hours taking care of business, and left about 2pm. We left with a full charge, ECO mode all the way, went 55mph on the freeway for the most part, stopped in Temecula at Quality Nissan and charged at L2 for 90 minutes (picking up about 18-19 miles range). We added about 2 miles getting to Quality, so the total was about 112 miles.

We got back on the freeway at 55mph with headlights on and made it home to San Diego with 19 miles left.

Words cannot describe the car! Phenomenal, mid-blowing, etc. Fantastic....More info and photos to come...Everyone at Fontana Nissan was great to work with, and Quality was gracious to let us charge up. We bough Leaf license plate frames from them to show our appreciation...

A great LEAF day....I'm over the moon with the Leaf. They told us that we were #9 and #10 in the US to get cars....

Randy

 

[evnow]

We got back on the freeway at 55mph with headlights on and made it home to San Diego with 19 miles left.

Congrats !

So, you could have made it home without recharging. Nice - 110 mile range driving @ 55mph in eco. Did you have any heating on ?

ps : Look at your carwings & post the picture. It is porobably going to be your best lifetime efficiency achievement ;-)

 

[MaryC]

Do you think you could have made it without the stop? I understand why you did just in case, but afterward making it home do you think you could have made it without the stop. Also did Quality have 2 charge docks or did you have to take turns?

 

[omkar]

We got back on the freeway at 55mph with headlights on and made it home to San Diego with 19 miles left.

Great news!! Looking forward to reading the full report and picking up some tips

 

[omkar]

I had my charge point set to 100%.

Thanks for asking for the Carwings data. That looks a lot more accurate than the 3.1 miles/kWh I thought I was getting.

 

[Frank]

Nice job Randy! It seems like you could have made it home without the stop in Temecula but that would have required the battery pack to be fully depleted. Does the Temecula Nissan dealer have the L2 charger available for anyone or is it in the service bays to be used mainly by service technicians? When I get my Leaf I would like to be able to stop in Temecula and use their L2 charger (L1 would take too long).

 

[evnow]

I had my charge point set to 100%.

Thanks for asking for the Carwings data. That looks a lot more accurate than the 3.1 miles/kWh I thought I was getting.

4.3 mpkwh translates to 103 miles (assuming 24 kwh). What is your travel like - highway/city ?

 

[omkar]

4.3 mpkwh translates to 103 miles (assuming 24 kwh). What is your travel like - highway/city ?

I'd guess 70% city for those 2 days. But we've got high speed limits (45-55mph) on many of the streets in Irvine.

 

[Randy]

Quality has several L2 chargers on the premises, 2 outside that we used. Mark Britland, their "Leaf guy", told us that they have 4 additional L2s inside the service department. They made it clear that they welcome anyone stopping by and several people from the dealership came out to look at the cars. Two Red Leafs in the wild!!!! That was fun.

We had L1 alternatives and extension cords with us just in case, but that would have taken a lot longer to charge.

Someone asked if we could have made it without the stop, and my answer is that it would have been pretty close to the edge. Maybe driving slower on the freeway? That's probably not the best idea.

The only time I was a little concerned was when we starting climbing the steep hills outside of Temecula to go south. The range number dropped like a rock pretty quickly. Malcolm and I were talking on cell phone most of the way home, and that was definitely a concern to us. But once you get up the hill and start to go down, the numbers recover somewhat...

It felt good not having to discharge all the way.

And, by the way, those numbers are with the climate control off. It was 60 degrees outside when we left, and a beautiful Leaf day...

We did it!!!!! We've got some great photos....

Randy

 

[kolmstead]

Omkar, is that screen shot from you PC? How do you navigate to Carwings? My best guess so far is to click on the LEAF image in your owner's portal, but that's just a guess. And I'm guessing I can't get there until I set username and password on my LEAF.

-Karl

 

[omkar]

Omkar, is that screen shot from you PC? How do you navigate to Carwings? My best guess so far is to click on the LEAF image in your owner's portal, but that's just a guess. And I'm guessing I can't get there until I set username and password on my LEAF.

-Karl

Yes, that is from my PC. When you go to the Owner's Portal and View LEAF Status, at the bottom of the page is a link to launch CARWINGS. The data is a couple days old and hopefully that is something they are able to improve upon in the future.

 

[kolmstead]

Thanks for the quick response, Omkar!! All I can do is view LEAF PIN and Pass or edit vehicle profile, so the view vehicle status button must not show up until I've entered user ID and password into my LEAF. That's what I wanted to know.

-Karl

 

[gudy]

What I believe I've been seeing on the range indicator is that it's fairly quick to take into account anything which would lower your range (higher speed, going uphill eg.), so it gives you a fairly conservative number all the time.
When you go back to driving conditions which are more favorable to range (slower, downhill), it will recover more slowly.

So, for example, after maybe 30 seconds or 1 minute on the highway, the range will have dropped to a fairly stable number, when you get out, and would get more range, it will take minutes for the range to go back, in effect, it will stay to the same number or go slightly up, while you're adding miles. I'm not sure I'm clear... but you could get off the highway with 50 miles remaining, and after 7 more miles be home with 53 miles remaining, with the number simply going up from 50 to 53 slowly as you drive these 7 miles (which really meant that you range went from 50 to 60 as you got off the highway, but it won't show it to you). I'm making up the numbers, so they may not be real ...

 

[LakeLeaf]

I think the situation you describe is why a number of current/past EV owners were advocating for a gauge that showed the actual % of charge left in the pack. That, and your observations, seem like they would give you enough real data to figure out almost exactly where your at in terms of remaining range.