Volt Vs. Leaf practical range comparison

[kubel]

24 x 0.8 x 0.8 = 14KWh which is less than the Volt.

I always thought the usable energy was somewhere around 10kWh in the Volt, 21kWh in the LEAF. From 80% to LBW is about 65% of 21kWh, a little under 14kWh. 14kWh is more than 10kWh.

I can drive to work and back with a 80% charge and not reach LBW. I wouldn't be able to do that on the Volt. I would be burning gas.

Add another 30 miles of electric range, drop the price to $36,000, add a 5th seat, and improve the genset efficiency, and the Volt would be a perfect car for me.

 

[DrInnovation]

Good reasonning which can be explained by numbers: The LEAF's pack has a nominal capacity of 24KWh. The Volt has 16KWh.

Battery degradation anxiety = Charge to 80%
Range anxiety = Stay away from LBW (never go to less than 1 bar remaining which means keep 20% charge buffer).

24 x 0.8 x 0.8 = 14KWh which is less than the Volt.

But IMO, comparing the Volt and the LEAF are like comparing apple and oranges. It can be fun but it's pointless. The Prius PHEV and the Volt or the LEAF and the Coda or Tesla fine... but once it has a gas tank, it's no longer a BEV.

Interesting alternative analysis.. but the useful battery in the volt is 10.4 (going up to 10.8 in 2013), so even after the conversion the leaf is a bit (30%) ahead. But the stay away from LBW may be more than 20% reserved.. (I'm not a leaf owner so I'm not sure the difference between usable bottom SOC and actual SOC).


An interesting way to see a bit more about how the volt fleet EV usage, is to look at the voltstats.net daily driving histogram

Is there anything like that type of graph for the Leaf?

And for those using a second ICE when the leaf cannot make the trip, what is the net usage. While my family has 2 cars, if I had a leaf instead of a Volt I would have used at least 25 gallons MORE gas now, since my longer trips would have had to be in that larger awd CUV.

 

[evnow]

Probably don't know what I mean because you didn't read the whole post and skipped to the bottom.

Ofcourse I read the whole post. It looks like you are trying your hardest to play up Volt & play down Leaf.

Apparently your "practice" and mine are very different.

 

[adric22]

Probably don't know what I mean because you didn't read the whole post and skipped to the bottom.

Ofcourse I read the whole post. It looks like you are trying your hardest to play up Volt & play down Leaf.

No, I only said that because you seemed to not understand where I was coming up with the 40 mile figure. Since that was well explained in the body of the post, I assumed you had not read it.

And I don't consider not wanting to go below 17 miles range left to be "extreme range anxiety."

And let me elaborate on that a bit. Lets say I did get home and had 17 miles left. Then I needed to go to the grocery store 2 miles down the road. I'd have no problem doing that. What I refuse to do is plan a trip across town where I would be coming home with less than 17 miles. Because that would mean I'd be cutting it too close and any unplanned detours could end up causing me to run out of power. If I have that 17 miles buffer then I know I can handle any sort of detour.

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

Probably don't know what I mean because you didn't read the whole post and skipped to the bottom.

Ofcourse I read the whole post. It looks like you are trying your hardest to play up Volt & play down Leaf.

No, I only said that because you seemed to not understand where I was coming up with the 40 mile figure. Since that was well explained in the body of the post, I assumed you had not read it.

And I don't consider not wanting to go below 17 miles range left to be "extreme range anxiety."

if you havent guessed from my post, i dont understand it either. both the Volt and the LEAF are excellent transportation choices and the Volt would work for me just fine about 60% of the time but the LEAF because it goes twice as far on electricity works for 95% of the trips i need or want to make including an added 5% strictly due to DCFC options

without DCFC in your area, its hard to quantify the difference the stations make but its pretty extreme. i was in the camp that i would use them rarely if at all. felt they were overpriced and i said frequently i would prefer 20 more L2's over a single DCFC. i was wrong.

after using them a few times i quickly realized that 30 minutes is way too long, but 10 minutes worked just right and with them spaced 20-30 miles apart, that is all the time i needed to charge. i did 110 miles a few weeks ago and started the morning with a 40% charge simply because i was unprepared. the miles i did was a last minute plan and i was able to do it without much compromise by doing 4 different 10 minute charging sessions and parked it at the end of the day with about a 30% SOC. it was awesome

 

[SanDust]

Just looking at the pack sizes the ranges over time shouldn't be all the different. The Leaf has a 24 kWh pack. The Volt has a 16.5 kWh pack. If you use 4 kWh as a reserve, which is quite reasonable (and less than the OP is comfortable with), the pack sizes are 20 kWh and 16.5 kWh, which is only a 20% difference.

Of course the ranges won't be this close since the Leaf uses more of its pack. However, the downside is that using a higher SOC degrades the battery faster. That would be a higher proportion of the battery as well as more absolute kWh, suggesting that at eight or ten years the ranges may be identical if you account for the buffer. Yet this may overstate the case since the Volt has a smaller pack and the same number of miles on both packs represents as higher number of cycles on the Volt's pack.

Personally when charging to 100% I get 55-60 miles on a charge to LBW, which is pretty much my limit. If I only charged to 80% I'd get less than that but still more than the 40 miles he's getting on the Volt. Hard to say what would happen in year ten though. And I'd agree with the OP that even when both the Leaf and the Volt are new the Leaf's range is certainly not double.

 

[Cheezmo]

I pretty much agree, we tend to get 40 out of the Volt no matter how we drive it, but I would give the Leaf a little more credit. In my family we take 60 mile round trips in the Leaf without giving it much thought. But 65, is a "check the weather, think about how fast you want to drive" kind of thing.

But with 2 Volts now, I can safely say we can get more Volt EV miles in a day than Leaf ;-).

 

[Herm]

How is the resale value of the Volt holding up?

 

[TurboFroggy]

But with 2 Volts now, I can safely say we can get more Volt EV miles in a day than Leaf ;-).

We have driven our Leaf 300+ miles a day using DC Fast Charging. I doubt you could drive both your Volts 300 miles a day on EV mode only.

 

[Cheezmo]

But with 2 Volts now, I can safely say we can get more Volt EV miles in a day than Leaf ;-).

We have driven our Leaf 300+ miles a day using DC Fast Charging. I doubt you could drive both your Volts 300 miles a day on EV mode only.

A fair point. I have had 150+ days on the Leaf with QC. I wasn't counting any charging. Only real point of my post was to brag on having 3 EV's :lol:

 

[DANandNAN]

But with 2 Volts now, I can safely say we can get more Volt EV miles in a day than Leaf ;-).

We have driven our Leaf 300+ miles a day using DC Fast Charging. I doubt you could drive both your Volts 300 miles a day on EV mode only.

300 miles in a day in a Leaf is quite a commitment to EV only. You're correct, there's no way a Volt could reach 300 miles in a day EV only.

Of course, in the same amount of time the Volt would have gone 500 miles. Or, the Volt would have traveled the 300 miles in 4 hours instead of 7 hours of travel. It's all about trade-offs, some will do anything to not burn gas and some would rather spend more time at their destination.

 

[TonyWilliams]

But with 2 Volts now, I can safely say we can get more Volt EV miles in a day than Leaf ;-).

We have driven our Leaf 300+ miles a day using DC Fast Charging. I doubt you could drive both your Volts 300 miles a day on EV mode only.

A fair point. I have had 150+ days on the Leaf with QC. I wasn't counting any charging. Only real point of my post was to brag on having 3 EV's :lol:

Ok, I'll brag of doing 375 electric miles in one day across Oregon. I could have done a lot more, but crossing Oregon was the only goal for that day... 12 hours total, border to border.

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

that is not bad considering the last time I did that, i took 10 hours (including 2 planned stops 3 or 4 unplanned stops)


From Tony Williams

Ok, I'll brag of doing 375 electric miles in one day across Oregon. I could have done a lot more, but crossing Oregon was the only goal for that day... 12 hours total, border to border.

 

[Pipcecil]

I have to agree, the Volt battery has a greater practical range. Not only because of the 100% charge and 0%, but even with the same driving habits I get better average range:

Leaf - 100 LA4, 73 EPA - real world with new battery 90-95 (above EPA below LA4)
Volt - 40 LA4, 35 EPA - real world with new battery 48-52 (WAY above EPA and above LA4)

Remeber, this is with the same trips and same driving style. Part could be due to the aerodynamic efficiencies at highway speeds in the Volt over the Leaf (a lot of our driving is highway), but easily beating the predictions in the Volt gives it way more respect in my book

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

I have to agree, the Volt battery has a greater practical range. Not only because of the 100% charge and 0%, but even with the same driving habits I get better average range:

Leaf - 100 LA4, 73 EPA - real world with new battery 90-95 (above EPA below LA4)
Volt - 40 LA4, 35 EPA - real world with new battery 48-52 (WAY above EPA and above LA4)

Remeber, this is with the same trips and same driving style. Part could be due to the aerodynamic efficiencies at highway speeds in the Volt over the Leaf (a lot of our driving is highway), but easily beating the predictions in the Volt gives it way more respect in my book

cherry picking are we?

 

[edatoakrun]

I think the range comparison is highly variable, dependent on the type of driving you do.

The longest single charge drive I regularly make in my LEAF is shown In the profile below:

My maximum Summer range seems to be about 113 miles on this trip that has close to 6,000 ft of ascent and descent, using 100% charge. and driving to just past VLBW.

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=9064&p=203116#p203116" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

But my winter maximum range on this trip is more like 90 miles.

You can argue what "practical" means as long as you like.

It sounds to me like a Volt on this trip, would have an initial all-electric range of only 15-20 miles.

...When I left for Seattle on my long trip, I kept the car in electric mode until I used up about half of my battery—approximately 15 miles—which got me out of the city and about 10 miles down the highway. At that point I switched to Mountain Mode and within three miles my Volt test car switched over to charge-sustaining hybrid mode. I soon entered the mountains and the car did use some battery power to get me over both passes....

http://www.plugincars.com/chevy-volts-mountain-mode-vastly-underrated-yields-new-driving-strategies-107176.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

What a Volt would tell its driver is the "electric miles driven" at the end of this trip is any one's guess.

From what I can tell, Volts may overstate "electric miles" driven, by counting the lower kW use miles driven (downhill) disproportionately, as "electric".

If a Volt driver want to give this drive a try, I might consider letting you recharge at my home.

But I also doubt you'll even make it up the grade to my Home, the 25-30 mile trip from Redding, without burning gas, In "mountain mode".

That's the reverse trip on this one-way profile:

I can drive the first 25 miles of this trip, to central Redding locations, and return, year round, on an 80% charge.

I do like to give my LEAF a higher charge, to 90%-100%, in winter, or when I want to drive further, to insure I get home without the LBW or VLBW.

 

[SanDust]

I'd agree that the better relative performance of the Volt with respect to the EPA numbers is because the Volt is more aerodynamic. You can see that on the Highway numbers, and actual freeway driving would just make the comparison more in the Volt's favor. (The Highway Cycle is not very fast). The Leaf is convenient to get into and out of but it sits fairly high, which doesn't do anything for its frontal area. The Volt just sits much lower.

From what I can tell, Volts may overstate "electric miles" driven, by counting the lower kW use miles driven (downhill) disproportionately, as "electric".

It would probably be more accurate to say that using this approach more accurately states the EV miles. As I understand it from a post the Volt thread, once the Volt starts the gas engine all miles are considered gas miles, even if the miles are electric. As a result, all electric miles once the engine came on would be gas miles even though they would actually be electric miles. The choice is really between a more accurate count of the electric miles or an inflated MPG number. If you drove 30 miles up a hill on the battery, then finished the last ten miles of the climb using a half gallon of gas, and then came down 40 miles using no gas at all, just regen, your choices would be:

1. 30 EV miles and 100 MPG
2. 70 EV miles and 20 MPG

You could get some spectacular MPG numbers. On your map, if the Volt went from right to left, the gas engine might come on right before the peak, but it probably wouldn't use any gas on the way down.

The bigger point which I made after looking at the Argonne presentation on the length of daily trips was that over the course of a year the average driver will get more EV miles from a Volt than from a Leaf because: (1) even on days when the drive exceeds the Leaf's range, so the Leaf isn't used, the Volt will still get its EV miles; and (2) the number of daily trips that exceed the Volt's EV range but not the Leaf's EV range is very small (6% if I remember correctly).

 

[Herm]

Leaf - 100 LA4, 73 EPA - real world with new battery 90-95 (above EPA below LA4)
Volt - 40 LA4, 35 EPA - real world with new battery 48-52 (WAY above EPA and above LA4)

I dont remember exactly but the original EPA city cycle (LA4) was a lot higher than 40 miles, around 60 miles I think. Obviously this is not what goes on the monroney sticker.

GM did a very good job on the Volt, lots of people are surprised about that

 

[edatoakrun]

...the number of daily trips that exceed the Volt's EV range but not the Leaf's EV range is very small (6% if I remember correctly).

Yes, but the more valid figure is daily driving, not "trip driving", as PHEV daytime recharging, IMO, is neither economically or environmentally advisable. Very few PHEV drivers would ever recharge during the day, unless offered heavily subsidized rates per kWh (as they generally are now) at public charge stations.

Volt drivers pre-select themselves, and may be disproportionately short-range drivers. So it's not surprising the "electric" miles driven make up a relatively large proportion of their total miles. this doesn't mean you can extrapolate to a universal population of drivers.

The Volt's range is inadequate for about 99% of my daily drives, for example, while the LEAF is good for over 90%.

This is because I require between 50-85 miles, on most days.

="SanDust"... As I understand it from a post the Volt thread, once the Volt starts the gas engine all miles are considered gas miles, even if the miles are electric....On your map, if the Volt went from right to left, the gas engine might come on right before the peak, but it probably wouldn't use any gas on the way down....

Well, I could be wrong. I had the impression that all miles driven with the engine off are counted as "electric", whether the energy that increases the charge level to the engine-disengage-battery-capacity level comes from the engine, regenerative braking, or a stationary grid charge. Would someone with Volt knowledge please explain?

 

[DANandNAN]

It would probably be more accurate to say that using this approach more accurately states the EV miles. As I understand it from a post the Volt thread, once the Volt starts the gas engine all miles are considered gas miles, even if the miles are electric. As a result, all electric miles once the engine came on would be gas miles even though they would actually be electric miles. The choice is really between a more accurate count of the electric miles or an inflated MPG number. If you drove 30 miles up a hill on the battery, then finished the last ten miles of the climb using a half gallon of gas, and then came down 40 miles using no gas at all, just regen, your choices would be:

1. 30 EV miles and 100 MPG
2. 70 EV miles and 20 MPG

You could get some spectacular MPG numbers. On your map, if the Volt went from right to left, the gas engine might come on right before the peak, but it probably wouldn't use any gas on the way down.

The bigger point which I made after looking at the Argonne presentation on the length of daily trips was that over the course of a year the average driver will get more EV miles from a Volt than from a Leaf because: (1) even on days when the drive exceeds the Leaf's range, so the Leaf isn't used, the Volt will still get its EV miles; and (2) the number of daily trips that exceed the Volt's EV range but not the Leaf's EV range is very small (6% if I remember correctly).

That's correct, once in CS or mountain mode the EV counter stops.

I have no idea how a seasoned Volt driver would do on your mountain pass edatokorun, but I don't think it's "fair" to compare what someone did a year ago as fact. I appreciate that you made the offer to let a Volt owner charge at your house. But, I think we all know the results, the Volt should take that drive in mountain mode and I think it would burn some gas. The Volt regenerates just like the Leaf (better IIRC).

I think you should change your statement to "Very few EV drivers would ever recharge during the day, unless offered heavily subsidized rates per kWh (as they generally are now)" because it's just as easy to find posts of Leafers complaining about $2/hr charging and L3 is heavily subsidized and/or tied into a monthly billing plan.

"Volt drivers pre-select themselves, and may be disproportionately short-range drivers" is forgetting that most folks are short-range drivers. That study has been posted here too. The Volt's range is perfect (though I wish it was longer) for most of the U.S. population. You have a much longer, much steeper drive than most.