leafme
Well-known member
As sent to Larry Dominique (etal), VP Product Planning, just now following up on a call I received from him 7-10 days ago. I've since read that Nissan is offering the dc port without having to get the SL package. Good to hear.
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Hi Larry,
Just following up on our phone conversation with some thoughts I said I'd send in writing many of which we already discussed and maybe others you are already aware of.
Here goes:
1. Heater seems to work but weak. In non-eco mode, when I press auto, and set the temperature set point at 90degF, with fan on full, why does it simply not bang out 4.5kw at full bore until the 90degF is reached? Poor performance from a users perspective. The manual states the heater is conservative in eco mode and that's fine (and expected).... but in non-eco mode... what's up?
2. Seats. Need leather option and a REAL height adjustment for my 5' 1" wife. She needs a pillow. The fabric is cheap overall. It will be difficult to keep clean (especially on the door rest where you grab ALL the time). Another $1000 in materials would have made a big difference but, of course, also raise the price.
3. 90% charge option (91.7% if 11 bars). Right now I can approximate it by setting to 100% and trimming off an hour of what the cars says it will take to get to 100%. That's 1 hr trim if half full and 1.5 hrs trim if nearly empty. Difficult at best as you can imagine. While 80% will extend battery life I can't operate there. My only other choice is 100% or play the game just mentioned which is not that accurate (and a pain). As I understand it... keeping a full charge EVERY day is also not the best so I'm assuming 90% is still better than 100% even if not by much. 90 is what I need.
4. Custom charge rate. As we discussed this is not needed with the current 3.7kw charger but might be of more value with the 6kw+ charger. Problem here is the super-off peak rate in San die go is midnight to 5am. I need to fill it in that time for max economics. This one may just not be worth entertaining for that reason alone.
5. Smooth ride. Kudos the the design team. They certainly nailed that one. aaaaaahhhh.
6. Acceleration. Again... I'd say perfect. This is especially noted when I jump in my 2003 xc90 Volvo. Yikes ! What a contrast !
7. Door cup holder. With limited space in my 2 car garage I can't open the door much more than 18-22". Wham... my foot hits it most times getting out of the car.
8. Offer dc port option on SV model. Some folks on the forum see the added 1,300$ expense to get things they DON'T want just to get the dc port opting they do want as simple highway robbery. I agree with them.
9. The freeway speeds are a KILLER on the range but I expected exactly what I'm seeing so no surprises there. Some folks may be surprised. Before purchasing the car, with all I've read, I expected to get 65 miles per charge and I'm noticing i get about 65-70 miles range with 80% driving on the freeway at mostly 67-68 mph with some 70 or so (not long at all though I'm thinking about raising the speed after my initial month of testing). The old adage is "speed kills" but here in San Diego, "go slow on the freeway kills" is a better adage. I run with the climate control on full auto (recirc) ALL the time (95%+).
10. Speaking of recirc. Please provide an option to go to recirc mode when the auto climate control button is pressed. Right now the climate control auto button forces the fresh air intake mode requiring that I always have to mash the recirc button after pressing the auto button. In my book the whole point of running the climate control system at all is to keep the outside air out. Another problem is cycling through the various venting options. One stage sets the partial defroster mode and forces fresh air mode. Repressing the mode button to get back to another setting LEAVES the fresh air mode unchanged requiring me to press the recirc (again... arrrggghhh). Not sure how to undo this since fresh air is probably needed for the defroster to work best. In any case, an auto press and lock in recirc is desired (by me). My Volvo also has this "problem" by the way.
11. Convert 12 bars to numbers? I don't really care but I read others who say they do.
12. Mile range indicator as we discussed needs a slower slew rate nearer full charge and a faster one nearer empty. You did indicate this was the biggest compliant you've heard so far.
13. Have the car send me an email at start of car charge in addition to end of charge. I can pay more attention to how long it takes to charge (though i can surmise knowing when I set the charge timer but an email would be better.) While I'm thinking about it, an email any time the timer was set (edited and saved) would help as well as a reminder that I didn't forget to set the timer.
14. An andriod app... you indicated it was coming.
15. Mi/kwh reporting. Carwings reports wrong values and the vehicle is a bit more optimistic than my calcs show. I think your calcs ignore climate control based on what I see in carwings. I just looked at the power quality monitor the utility set on the input to my EVSE. At idle the EVSE is burning up 15.8 w (clipper creek). So, I take the total miles driven (1,185 in 30 days) and divide by the utility meter less the EVSE use (392 kwh - 15.8) and I get 3.15 mi/kwh (past 30 days). During the last 20 days it's been 3.0 mi/kwh. Carwings is saying the month of JAN was 4.4 mi/kwh. I don't believe it. Let's say for sake of argument that the climate control cost 10% of my range and it's not considered in the 4.4 value that carwings states. Modifying carwings down 10% gets us to about 4.0 mi/kwh. A far cry from the 3.0 I'm seeing using my methodology.
Overall, you have a very happy customer here.
Thanks again
Malcolm
(LEAF ME)
correction edit: oops, in item #15 I should have said 11.5kwh/month (energy) for the EVSE subtraction instead of the 15.8 (power) I used in my calc. This correction yields 3.11 mi/kwh instead of 3.15 (not much change but a correction nonetheless).
Larry told me a good one. "How to you make a mechanical engineer?" You start with an electrical engineer and cut off half of his/her head !
------------------------------------------------------
Hi Larry,
Just following up on our phone conversation with some thoughts I said I'd send in writing many of which we already discussed and maybe others you are already aware of.
Here goes:
1. Heater seems to work but weak. In non-eco mode, when I press auto, and set the temperature set point at 90degF, with fan on full, why does it simply not bang out 4.5kw at full bore until the 90degF is reached? Poor performance from a users perspective. The manual states the heater is conservative in eco mode and that's fine (and expected).... but in non-eco mode... what's up?
2. Seats. Need leather option and a REAL height adjustment for my 5' 1" wife. She needs a pillow. The fabric is cheap overall. It will be difficult to keep clean (especially on the door rest where you grab ALL the time). Another $1000 in materials would have made a big difference but, of course, also raise the price.
3. 90% charge option (91.7% if 11 bars). Right now I can approximate it by setting to 100% and trimming off an hour of what the cars says it will take to get to 100%. That's 1 hr trim if half full and 1.5 hrs trim if nearly empty. Difficult at best as you can imagine. While 80% will extend battery life I can't operate there. My only other choice is 100% or play the game just mentioned which is not that accurate (and a pain). As I understand it... keeping a full charge EVERY day is also not the best so I'm assuming 90% is still better than 100% even if not by much. 90 is what I need.
4. Custom charge rate. As we discussed this is not needed with the current 3.7kw charger but might be of more value with the 6kw+ charger. Problem here is the super-off peak rate in San die go is midnight to 5am. I need to fill it in that time for max economics. This one may just not be worth entertaining for that reason alone.
5. Smooth ride. Kudos the the design team. They certainly nailed that one. aaaaaahhhh.
6. Acceleration. Again... I'd say perfect. This is especially noted when I jump in my 2003 xc90 Volvo. Yikes ! What a contrast !
7. Door cup holder. With limited space in my 2 car garage I can't open the door much more than 18-22". Wham... my foot hits it most times getting out of the car.
8. Offer dc port option on SV model. Some folks on the forum see the added 1,300$ expense to get things they DON'T want just to get the dc port opting they do want as simple highway robbery. I agree with them.
9. The freeway speeds are a KILLER on the range but I expected exactly what I'm seeing so no surprises there. Some folks may be surprised. Before purchasing the car, with all I've read, I expected to get 65 miles per charge and I'm noticing i get about 65-70 miles range with 80% driving on the freeway at mostly 67-68 mph with some 70 or so (not long at all though I'm thinking about raising the speed after my initial month of testing). The old adage is "speed kills" but here in San Diego, "go slow on the freeway kills" is a better adage. I run with the climate control on full auto (recirc) ALL the time (95%+).
10. Speaking of recirc. Please provide an option to go to recirc mode when the auto climate control button is pressed. Right now the climate control auto button forces the fresh air intake mode requiring that I always have to mash the recirc button after pressing the auto button. In my book the whole point of running the climate control system at all is to keep the outside air out. Another problem is cycling through the various venting options. One stage sets the partial defroster mode and forces fresh air mode. Repressing the mode button to get back to another setting LEAVES the fresh air mode unchanged requiring me to press the recirc (again... arrrggghhh). Not sure how to undo this since fresh air is probably needed for the defroster to work best. In any case, an auto press and lock in recirc is desired (by me). My Volvo also has this "problem" by the way.
11. Convert 12 bars to numbers? I don't really care but I read others who say they do.
12. Mile range indicator as we discussed needs a slower slew rate nearer full charge and a faster one nearer empty. You did indicate this was the biggest compliant you've heard so far.
13. Have the car send me an email at start of car charge in addition to end of charge. I can pay more attention to how long it takes to charge (though i can surmise knowing when I set the charge timer but an email would be better.) While I'm thinking about it, an email any time the timer was set (edited and saved) would help as well as a reminder that I didn't forget to set the timer.
14. An andriod app... you indicated it was coming.
15. Mi/kwh reporting. Carwings reports wrong values and the vehicle is a bit more optimistic than my calcs show. I think your calcs ignore climate control based on what I see in carwings. I just looked at the power quality monitor the utility set on the input to my EVSE. At idle the EVSE is burning up 15.8 w (clipper creek). So, I take the total miles driven (1,185 in 30 days) and divide by the utility meter less the EVSE use (392 kwh - 15.8) and I get 3.15 mi/kwh (past 30 days). During the last 20 days it's been 3.0 mi/kwh. Carwings is saying the month of JAN was 4.4 mi/kwh. I don't believe it. Let's say for sake of argument that the climate control cost 10% of my range and it's not considered in the 4.4 value that carwings states. Modifying carwings down 10% gets us to about 4.0 mi/kwh. A far cry from the 3.0 I'm seeing using my methodology.
Overall, you have a very happy customer here.
Thanks again
Malcolm
(LEAF ME)
correction edit: oops, in item #15 I should have said 11.5kwh/month (energy) for the EVSE subtraction instead of the 15.8 (power) I used in my calc. This correction yields 3.11 mi/kwh instead of 3.15 (not much change but a correction nonetheless).
Larry told me a good one. "How to you make a mechanical engineer?" You start with an electrical engineer and cut off half of his/her head !
