Range confusion

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leafgogogo

New member
Joined
Sep 20, 2017
Messages
3
I bought a '13 leaf this year, love it.

One thing I don't understand is range calculation and the way it's displayed.

When I got the car, it had only 12K miles on it, I thought the battery would be good as new. However, it had one bar already off the day I drove it off the lot. Fine, not a problem.

However, as I am using it now, the extra bar sometimes comes back. Sometimes it's off. How is this possible and why?

Usually, I get approx. 72 miles every morning showing on the dash after a night of Level 2 charging. This is less than I expected, but ok, no problem.

One day I drive from Denver up to Evergreen and back. On the way back it's entirely down a steep hill, so obviously the battery is charging like crazy. I get home, plug the car in.

Next morning, the car is showing 95 miles range available.

How did I suddenly get extra 20+ miles? Obviously going down the mountain had something to do with it, but how does this work exactly? Does this mean I should drive up a mountain and back once a week to keep the battery in good shape?

Is this is a known trick to increase the battery range? I don't have the Level 3 in my car, so is going down the hill the only way to me to super-charge the battery?

Thanks and my apologies in advance if these are really obvious questions.

Anton
 
Range estimation is based on the last few minutes of driving, and is inaccurate most of the time (it tends to get accurate as you near the end of a trip). The on-again, off-again bar indicates that the pack is hovering around 84%-85% capacity. It will, alas, go away for good soon.
 
The GOM is nearly worthless. There's no point in spending time on it: http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=271853#p271853.

You should consult the range charts at http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=101293, in particular "Use this 82% chart for a battery that has 11 of 12 capacity bar segments." New 24 kWh Leaf has about 21 to 22 kWh usable out of 24. That chart assumes 17.22 kWh usable due to capacity loss. Reset your miles per kWh dash display. Think of how many kWh you have as how many gallons you have in the "tank" and miles per kWh analogous to miles per gallon.

(BTW, many .gov sites say 1 gallon of gasoline has about 33.7 kWh of energy content.)

Just to confirm, you have sometimes 11 or 12 capacity bars showing? (the thinnest bars all the way on the right) http://www.electricvehiclewiki.com/File:Scott_3_bars_s.jpg is a fully charged 3 bar loser.

Also, you should use the % state of charge display on the dash instead of the worthless GOM.

If you want to see more about what's going on, use Leaf Spy. You can watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgE8lmySdMI for more info.
 
I just got my used 2015 SL showing all 12 bars (still need to Leaf Spy to see its actual battery state) and my shows a consistent 75 mile range when fully charged. I reset all the dash displays this weekend after fully charging over Friday night and I did 56.2 miles of driving over the course of Saturday, ended my day with 41% of battery life on the center dash display. I could easily hit 80 miles with what is left so I know the dash estimation is not that great. Even on the bit of freeway driving I did were I was doing 65mph on cruise it was not really keeping with what my battery level was compared to range. If I had gone by range I would have felt I only had 45 miles of driving by I estimated based on battery loss rate I should have been able to go closer to 60 miles.

I do need to get Leaf Spy up and running on my spare tablet so I can get it mounted and get a more real world sense of range and how my driving habits affect it.
 
Your car is showing a very good degree of charge and range... If you started from a full 100% charge, drove 56 miles, and ended with 40% capacity, then your 100% charge "may in theory" give you a 96 mile range before the battery gives out. (Obviously you do not want to do this because you will hurt the battery. However, getting these results is a great deal of range for the Leaf....

What are you worried about? How much better do yo expect a used car to be in its range???
 
SOCDriver said:
I just got my used 2015 SL showing all 12 bars (still need to Leaf Spy to see its actual battery state) and my shows a consistent 75 mile range when fully charged. I reset all the dash displays this weekend after fully charging over Friday night and I did 56.2 miles of driving over the course of Saturday, ended my day with 41% of battery life on the center dash display. I could easily hit 80 miles with what is left so I know the dash estimation is not that great. Even on the bit of freeway driving I did were I was doing 65mph on cruise it was not really keeping with what my battery level was compared to range. If I had gone by range I would have felt I only had 45 miles of driving by I estimated based on battery loss rate I should have been able to go closer to 60 miles.

I do need to get Leaf Spy up and running on my spare tablet so I can get it mounted and get a more real world sense of range and how my driving habits affect it.

You have a more accurate range estimator available, built into your car. Press the little Blue button on the steering wheel, and look at the Nav display. You will see a map with 2 concentric circles and 2 range estimates. The lower estimate is the accurate one. The higher one is the GuessOmeter estimate.
 
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