stonymtnleaf wrote:Hello everyone;
I am a new (to me) Leaf owner in Canada as well with a lot of the same questions as Paulcf and maybe a few others.
Location: just north of Winnipeg, Manitoba (think 100 miles north of North Dakota, FWIW)
My Leaf: It's a 2012 SL, American spec, purchased in MN, imported to MB abt 18 mths ago, driven uneventfully, I'm the second owner here.
Driving conditions: Cold - low of -30C last night, abt -22F and snowy!
A few comments to date (just a week into ownership)
1. I am not going to worry abt the DRL issue, the car seems to have them already.
2. It's an American Spec car in Canada, and the local Nissan dealer shrugs and says the part numbers are all different. True or ??
3. Carwings was working fine when when I looked at the car in late Dec. Not any more apparently due to the 2G network shutdown issue.
4. I am attempting to source the 3G TCU module from the US and will install it myself (or try the dealer), what needs ot happen next?
5. Parking inside an unheated garage, got a L2 EVSE with the car which is hooked up and working.
6 Out for a drive this AM, left with 12 bars charge and zero battery temp. Local drive abt 25 km/15miles and returned with 3 bars and GOM range of 20 kms. Did not use climate control except for 3-4 mins to clear windshield frost. Average cold wx range or something else to try?
7. Still trying to figure out non-timer preheat selections (I know, read the manual!)
8. After a couple of stops, power steering warning came on when restarting at -24C, man-handled it out of the parking lot, shut down and restarted and PS warning went out after a few seconds, then OK on return home. Something to watch for in cold wx ops, or somehing more ominous?
All for the moment.
Cheers, Jim
Hello fellow Northerner, quite a few miles South of you but I awoke to -15F, so not much better
Being a '12 the only way to turn off the heater is to totally turn off the climate control, did you do that? Unfortunately the '11/'12 models really have a energy hog heater, like 6+ kw, which really kills range. The bad part is you cannot even run the air to help defrost/defog the windows, as soon as you turn the climate control on, the heat will come along with it. Now you can purchase a relatively cheap option to disable the heater(about $25 USD) and still allow the fan(I installed one on my '12) but I've found in sub zero temps you basically have to run the heater to keep the windows clear so for very cold temps it doesn't really help all that much. Where it does help is in more moderate temps, above freezing.
It sounds like today your range may have been as low as 25 miles?(15 + a possible 10?? more) how many bars health does your battery have? the small bars to the right of the wider capacity bars. 25 would be very low for a 12 bar Leaf but not unheard of for a 10 bar in your extreme cold temps. My '13 S has a summer range of ~70-75 miles but drops to a little over 60 in the teens and yesterday when the temps were in the single digits it was closer to 50, I've seen as low as 40 in single digits sub zero and my worst range was 35(1/2 summer range) in teens below zero. My 10 bar '12 is a good 20%?? worse than my '13 which would put it around your 25 miles. Note I'm not sure how your reading your charge %(if you even are) but I'd strongly suggest something like LeafSpy which uses your cell phone or I was lucky enough to find a used LeafDD which gives me exact SOC%(like the '13 and on Leafs) as well as other very handy capacity measurements. The GOM(guess-o-meter that tells you very roughly how many miles you have left) is quite poor on the pre '13 models and gives you serious
range anxiety, much better alternatives are available and really should be used.
Where in MN did you get your Leaf? I'm guessing it could have been Wayzata Nissan? It's where I got my '12 and they said they are the largest seller of used Leafs, at least in the midwest, they ship all over. Yesterday was taking advantage of their free L3 charger which I normally don't use but was forced to due to my 60 mile trip and like I said I'd have been lucky to get 50 miles. they were loading a Leaf up to truck to Iowa, looked like a nice Leaf. The nice thing about the L3 charger was I only charged for 20 minutes but gained 30% on my battery, plus I gained 1 battery temp bar(was 2 but jumped to 3 after the charge) so I was easily able to make it home.