Winter is underway in Minneapolis. Since Thursday morning we have around or below zero (F). This morning it was -7F. Observations -
1. Pre-warming the car even with it plugged in cost me 2%. I think the climate control is taking more than the charger can deliver? I should be able to avoid this lost by proper use of the timer.
2. Any trip, no matter how short, will have a big impact on range. I didn't bring a lunch to work today so I ran out for a bite. The 4 mile trip took almost 10%...most of which went to keeping the windows clear and warming the cabin. It had warmed to about 2F at lunchtime.
3. The Leaf handles very well with snow and icy roads. Traction control kicks in at the appropriate time and works as it should. This was with the original tires.
4. Heated seats and steering wheel really help, but I'm not a huge fan of the cycling they go through. They also seem slow to warm in extreme cold like this morning.
5. Based on one data point from yesterday, the range dropped about 40% from my summer range. This was with the climate control set at 60F (the lowest setting...wish we could set it lower). This was with slow driving as traffic was backed up yesterday...lot's of time spent at 10mph or slower. In this case this probably cost me range as I was running the heater and defrost for a good portion of the time.
6. Looks like we will be in a cold to very cold pattern for a couple of weeks....good chance to learn more and to figure out how to optimize cold weather range. Outside of a couple of days where it is suppose to sneak into double digits it looks like we will be just oscillating between single digits above and below zero.
7. At lot of you guys do not know what 'cold' means