So, owners what range are you getting ?

[DaveinOlyWA]

So u can do 80 miles on a charge in winter, nice!
What is your avearge speed? Guessing afternoon is probably a bit low

 

[mwalsh]

So u can do 80 miles on a charge in winter, nice!
What is your avearge speed? Guessing afternoon is probably a bit low

No, he does his 80 miles with a trickle charge while at work.

 

[Redsparky]

New Owner with 1000 miles on it, I use the trip mileage and look at the bars for my gauge for distance. That was the way I did in my other car since the fuel gauge did not have a continuous drop.

The GOM reminds me of my scooter which is Italian and the speedometer has a variance of 5 to 15% when reading it.

I never have been able to reach 80+ miles on any charging level with around town driving. I find the regenerative braking miles are ghost miles, they go more quickly than they were created. GOM always drops 10 miles as soon as i pull the car out of the garage with no A/C or Heater on.

I was told to use the heated seats instead of the heater for more range.

 

[MrIanB]

70-80 mile range currently.
Mostly in flat roads,
rarely use a/c or heater,
temps 40-80 degrees,
speeds 35-50mph.
Averaging 4.5-5.0 m/kw,
2011 SL,
9500 miles.
Charge to 100% every 2-3 days since I work from home.
$1,800 in gas savings currently in my savings account.

Can't believe I have gone over a year w out buying has, don't miss my 370z and no issues with it being my only car.

Ian B

 

[GRA]

I recently purchased a 2013 Nissan LEAF SL on Feb 23rd 2013. I drive 80 miles per day - San Jose to Livermore.

Morning commute to work:
Distance traveled: 40.9 miles
Status at start: 95mi range, 12 bars
Status at end: 37mi, 5 bars
Used 58mi range (average temp 38F, total elevation gain 1900ft)

Afternoon commute to home:
Distance traveled: 40.6 miles
Status at start: 67mi, 10 bars (trickle charging from 9am-3pm)
Status at end: 41mi, 5 bars
Used 26mi range (average temp 68F)

Pre-heat? Are you using the heater going or returning? If so, temp setting? Speeds, route (680 to 84)?

 

[planet4ever]

Nice! I'm looking to trickle charge at work as well. It seems you're getting 5 miles per hour during your charge.

I assume your post was in response to this:

Morning commute to work:
Distance traveled: 40.9 miles
Status at start: 95mi range, 12 bars
Status at end: 37mi, 5 bars
Used 58mi range (average temp 38F, total elevation gain 1900ft)

Afternoon commute to home:
Distance traveled: 40.6 miles
Status at start: 67mi, 10 bars (trickle charging from 9am-3pm)
Status at end: 41mi, 5 bars
Used 26mi range (average temp 68F)

That report does NOT lead to a conclusion that RCEV13 is getting 5 miles of range for every hour of trickle charging, and I am almost positive he got less than that.

1. DO NOT BELIEVE the GuessOMeter. It lies. It absolutely cannot be used to tell you how much energy you have used.
2. If he gained 1900 feet going to work, he went downhill going home, and any conclusions drawn from that one-way trip are meaningless.
3. Trickle charging will give you at most just a hair over a 1kW charge rate to the battery. The only way to get 5 miles per hour of charging is to get 5 miles/kWh while driving. Some people doubt the accuracy of the m/kWh gauge on the dashboard, but even if you choose to believe that, RCEV13 didn't tell us what it was. I doubt seriously if it was 5.0 for the day. Sure, it could have been 5.0 for the trip home, but see point 2.

Ray

 

[RCEV13]

To GRA: No pre-heat. I drive in the morning as is with only the heated steering wheel and seat. No Heater. Speeds range from 60-70mph. 55-60mph on climbs (Sunol Grade). General route is 280/680 to 84, followed by 8miles of surface streets.

On trickle charge..I get something like this:

9am (Start Charge) - range 37mi (the reason I started at 9am instead of 6am is because a van parked in the only EV spot. Naturally.)
9:30 - range 38mi
10:30 - range 43mi
11:00 - range 47mi
1:30 - range 69mi
2:00 - range 62mi (Going backwards?)
3:00 ( End Charge ) - range 67mi
While driving the first 5 miles on surface streets (35-45mph) the range meter usually jumps to around 75mi and then decreases as I climb out of Livermore on 84.

I've confirmed that I use 58mi of range to travel 40.6 miles at 47-34 degrees. Spot on three days in a row.

On the return I use between 26-28mi of range to travel the reverse 40 miles to home at 65-67 degrees. FWY speed averages is around 63-67mph, and I really milk the regen on the downhills.

Regarding m/kwh...it is steadily increasing. I bought the car with 23miles on it (test drives) with a m/kwh of 2.2. Is there a way to see the m/kwh for just the trip A or B? It seems to be averaged over the life of the car. When I drive to work I usually have about 3-5 power dots. When I drive home it is easier to maintain 1-3 power dots...plus there seems to be more opportunity for regen going home.

 

[dgpcolorado]

... Regarding m/kwh...it is steadily increasing. I bought the car with 23miles on it (test drives) with a m/kwh of 2.2. Is there a way to see the m/kwh for just the trip A or B? It seems to be averaged over the life of the car. When I drive to work I usually have about 3-5 power dots. When I drive home it is easier to maintain 1-3 power dots...plus there seems to be more opportunity for regen going home.

You don't have to keep averaging your mileage with whatever it was when you got the car: While the mileage meter isn't linked to the trip meters you can reset it whenever you wish. Or you can reset the one on the console (energy screen, although on our older cars it reads slightly higher than the one on the dash; don't know about the 2013 model version*).

I reset the dash meter monthly to track seasonal variation and the console meter daily to get an idea of how I am doing on any given trip. Others keep one meter unchanged to get an idea of how the car is doing over its lifetime (but if you ever have to disconnect the 12 V battery the meters may get reset).


* This is an easy experiment to conduct: reset both meters then watch the results over the next few days.

 

[planet4ever]

Just in case you haven't gotten the point, RCEV13, that big number on your dash is not your range. Your range is the number of miles you drive according to the odometer. That big number is a guess made by a badly programmed computer as to how far it thinks you can still go. It's heavily weighted by your most recent driving. If you have just come down the Sunol grade it will assume that you will keep going downhill (presumably in a tunnel going deep under the bay :shock: ) until your battery is empty. If you've just accelerated rapidly from 0 to 70, it will assume you are going to keep accelerating (maybe to escape velocity :roll: ) until you can't pull anything more out of the battery. It is really, really, stupid. And mostly useless. That is why we call it the GuessOMeter or GOM, and try to ignore it most of the time. Some people even cover it up.

As dgpcolorado says, you have two miles/kWh meters and you can reset both of them. I use the opposite approach from his, resetting the one on the dash every time I charge the car, and the one on the console once every month or two. There is a rectangular cluster of four buttons to the left of the steering wheel. The top left one cycles the center of the dash through several displays. I leave mine at the "Energy Economy" display which shows an average m/kWh and a (sort of) instant bar graph of it. When it's time to charge the car I have a quick little pattern with my left hand:

1. Use two fingers to press and hold both the bottom left and top right button in the cluster until m/kWh and trip odometer are reset.
2. Reach down and pop the charging port cover.

Ray

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

So u can do 80 miles on a charge in winter, nice!
What is your avearge speed? Guessing afternoon is probably a bit low

No, he does his 80 miles with a trickle charge while at work.

was basing it on his miles used from GOM. it was like 58 going, 26 coming back. he started with 90 something which sounds like he could have made it without charging at work.

he arrived at work with estimated 37 miles of range but only used 26 miles of estimated range for trip home. granted estimated mileage is not the same at different SOC's... but either way, that was the basis of my comment.

 

[N1ghtrider]

Your rank for the past 12 months


Month and Year

Grade

Rank

Energy Economy



Mar/2012
Platinum 769 5.4 miles/kWh

Apr/2012
Platinum 1179 5.3 miles/kWh

May/2012
Gold 2716 4.8 miles/kWh

Jun/2012
Gold 3211 4.7 miles/kWh

Jul/2012
Gold 2591 4.9 miles/kWh

Aug/2012
Gold 4468 4.4 miles/kWh

Sep/2012
Gold 3662 4.6 miles/kWh

Oct/2012
Gold 3085 4.6 miles/kWh

Nov/2012
Platinum 1714 4.8 miles/kWh

Dec/2012
Platinum 1104 4.9 miles/kWh

Jan/2013
Platinum 1363 4.7 miles/kWh

Feb/2013
Platinum 1539 4.8 miles/kWh

 

[nickdwagner]

Any FL Leaf drivers have real-world ranges to share? I searched this particular thread for FL references and found an exchange that talked about air density and heat related effects on the Leaf battery but didn't see any FL drivers posting real usage stats.

I'm considering a two year lease of a 2013 SL as a daily commuter. My wife & I carpool to our respective offices (plus son's daycare) five days a week and the total round trip mileage is approximately 56. I thought we'd be well within the Leaf's comfortability range but some of the reading I've done here regarding battery degradation (especially in high ambient temp climates) is giving me pause.

We're only a few feet above sea level and the topography is very flat; so we have that working for us. However, figuring on worst case scenario of A/C on full blast for the entirety of the trip and likely charging to 100% each evening, would you be concerned about not having enough juice for such a trip 12 or 18 months down the road?

Thx.

 

[TonyWilliams]

... topography is very flat; so we have that working for us. However, figuring on worst case scenario of A/C on full blast for the entirety of the trip and likely charging to 100% each evening, would you be concerned about not having enough juice for such a trip 12 or 18 months down the road?

You're in great shape for a LEAF. Flat and warm are ideal for best range, and best economy with the climate control (it cools better than it heats).

The bad is the battery degradation, but it won't affect you like Phoenix, and you're leasing anyway. So, in 24 months, I expect 15-20% degradation. If you've been following along, expect your new LEAF to go a bit over 80 miles at 65mph on the flat freeways when new, minus whatever the air conditioning uses. Let's arbitrarily say 10%, for 72 mile range.

80% of 72 miles is 57.6 miles with the "worst case" of 20% degradation and air conditioning. I'm not saying it won't work, but it will not be comfortable at the end if you have to turn off the air conditioning in Florida!!!

I suspect that you are doing a bunch of "in town" driving, and not so much freeway, in which case you should be able to fairly easily exceed 4 miles/kWh of economy to complete this trip. On the freeway, as you near 24 months, you may have to slow down to 55mph.

Tough call (my wife freaks out when I came home on empty all the time), but you CAN do it if you choose to, but I wouldn't recommend it for the general population.

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

SOC meter will allow u to do it. This will allow u to project your range and adjust your driving early plus u really dont have far todrive

 

[nickdwagner]

Thx for the responses. I decided to go with it (admittedly, before reading your responses ) and leased a 2013 Slate SL this evening. Love this car!!

 

[bobsfreeleaf]

Thx for the responses. I decided to go with it (admittedly, before reading your responses ) and leased a 2013 Slate SL this evening. Love this car!!

Slate is the best color! Good luck with her. I have had no problems in San Diego, except air seems to suck 3-6 miles of range for me, used intermittently. I have to admit tho, I have not stiffened my resolve enough to charge to 80 percent. If I did that I would be returning from my 50 something mile commute with under two bars. However, I do like to speed (actually in San Diego, that would be going the rate of trafic). Although as I recall, in Florida, driving 55 makes you a speed dem on.

 

[TonyWilliams]

If you're leasing the car and driving 50+ miles per day, just charge every day to 100% unless you plan on leaving the car for any extended time, particularly in a hot climate.

 

[wlegro]

Got our 2012 SL on Jan. 31, 2013 (a fantastic deal!). Since then we've put a whopping 581 miles on it - its primary use is an 18-mile rt to work, plus shopping and errands, a couple of trips on the freeway to Santa Monica and back. We live in the hills, but only at about 600 feet - work is at about 100 feet. LA doesn't know how to time traffic signals, so it's a block or two at a time, and much of the time there are no left-turn signals at even the busiest intersections, and if there is one half the time it's not working. Every time the city talks about making some major streets one way, you can hear the merchants screaming.

Here's what the city says about timing signals: "Los Angeles Department of Transportation traffic signal timing engineers deploy the latest in computer technology to implement the most efficient timing that would reduce overall delay at a signalized intersection while maintaining "signal progression" to allow drivers to travel along major streets with least number of stops." I guess that's why you start up from a green light on Beverly Bl. and watch as the next light two blocks away turns yellow and then red. Then they say they figure they reduce stops overall by 12%. So instead of 30 stops on the way to work, we'll only have to stop 26 times? Wow! And that's not counting pedestrians taking their own sweet time while people are trying to turn left and right.

Don't know our average speed, but our Prius tells us it's about 17 mph. Whoa! We try our best to use the braking. Almost never use heat or AC, just the stereo. We never let the charge get below about 35, and rarely above 90.

And our m/kwh in these 7 weeks has held steady at 3.5. A couple of days I got it up to 4, and that was part freeway. Judging from what I've seen here, 3.5 is not great - it's level 3, "good." To me, "good" is miserable. Our acceleration technique is only good at 444 Wh/mile - our braking technique is very good at 193.4, accessories also very good at 20.7.

My wife uses the car most by far - and for some reason she's not totally obsessed with mileage. I'm sure that if I used it more, the average m/kwh would go up because I'm up near OCD territory, but I don't see how it could ever get above 4. My thinking is that the constant stop-and-go is the culprit - each time we stop, we get brownie points for braking techniques. But every time we accelerate, we lose - it's not that we accelerate hard, it's that we have to constantly accelerate from a stop. And we try to take the least congested routes. So in Los Angeles conditions, I don't think we can do much better in m/kwh. Am I on the right track?

Still, we love the car. No gas, no gas stations, very little electricity, rides like a Cadillac (much appreciated on our third-world streets) and is nearly silent in a cacophonous world.

 

[ELROY]

(I posted this in my troubleshooting thread, but thought it might be informative in this range thread also)
Did some more testing tonight. Last weekend was the first time I ran the LEAF down to turtle mode. On a 100% Charge, I only drove 67.5 miles till turtle with a 3.5 mi/kWh average.

Tonight was the first time I ran the LEAF all the way down from 100% to the point where I had to push it back home! Temps range from 50-65F.
Test Results:

65.4 miles: Low Battery Warning (4.1 mi/kWh avg to this point)

75.1 miles: Very Low Battery Warning (4.2 mi/kWh avg to this point)

82.4 miles: Turtle Mode (4.2 mi/kWh avg to this point)

83.0 mile: Car will not move or shift into "D" (4.3mi/kWh avg to this point)

Based on Tony's range chart, At 4.3mi/kWh, I should be getting about 89 miles with a 281 GID new battery pack.
My 82.4 miles till turtle (at 4.3 mi/kWh) seems to match his 93% battery capacity chart. So for a 5 month old LEAF with 3924 miles, do I have a legitimate basis to complain to Nissan? I mean, its almost as if I am missing 1 bar of charge capacity.
Secondly, if your battery capacity goes down to 93%, do you just lose that 7% off the top? Or do you lose 7% of range even when charging up to 80% capacity?

Anyone have a GID meter close to me in Ventura County?

Morning after this test:
6.55hr (6hr 33minutes): Time to charge the car to 100% again from dead, beyond turtle.
Shouldn't it take longer than this? Isn't there a way to extrapolate battery capacity by charge time?
6.55hr x 3.3kw=21.61kWh at the most...assuming constant full charge rate. What are others getting for full L2 charging from empty to 100%?

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

Elroy; at 83 miles you still have access to full power by your pix or has this changed?

your power meter has double circles which means this power level is available either as regen or power to the motor. in my one foray to Turtle, I went down to 5 power circles remaining (the circles go to single wall lines) and was still able to drive at "street speeds" or 25-35 mph without any discernible slow down.

**edit** not really a range test, but the other day we were having a "Norwester" and I had to detour from home to Tumwater DCFC because after 63 miles, I was out of range.

the plan was get off work, go home plug in for about 90 mins and relax a bit before taking my Son to his appointment which requires about 20 miles. I realized that I would be so low that I could not charge up enough, so with 63.2 miles on the trip meter, I pulled into the Tumwater station at 8 GID (lowest I have been ever with the exception of my 100 + mile range test nearly two Summers ago...)

weather conditions; heavy rain, temps warm in the 50's (more monsoon than anything.) and winds from 15-35 mph.

I know this will hurt but FYI; we have lost our chance of having snow this Winter but Spring snow is pretty common around here so not holding my breath

Either way; 2 days later; same route, going home instead. temps in morning 30º, afternoon, 41. clear, dry. got home at 64.5 miles with 42 GID.