range gains from weight reduction?

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solardude

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 13, 2010
Messages
109
Location
Corvallis, Oregon
this is an odd idea, i know. i rarely need more than two seats in a car, if ever.
reducing weight increases range in EV's. for example, i assume this is why a spare tire isn't included with the Leaf.
I have no idea how heavy the back seat is, but if one were to remove the back seat from the Leaf altogether, would this appreciably increase range?
 
I'm not an engineer, but common sense tells me that your range would be increased.

Now, if the car weighs, say 3500lbs; and you remove 35lbs of rear seats; you should increase your average range from 100mi to 101mi (1%) ;)
 
Weight is most impacted with weight in city driving and on any hills, reducing weight on a hill can make a significant impact on range.
 
A typical DieHard Group 24F battery weighs 42 pounds.
An Odyssey PC545 Battery: 11.7lbs

That's probably the easiest 30lbs to knock out of the car.

If the 12v system is topped up when on AC charge, then you can probably get away with a pretty small battery for extended garage parking.
 
I understand there is a scissor-jack but no spare wheel? Leave that thing home. It's a AAA towing event, or a hail-mary can of Fix-a-Flat.

The rear "deck" separation thing is just in the way, it gets a dusty spot along the garage wall.

If you don't want the rear seats, take 'em out. They probably weigh more than you think, with three carseat anchors and such.

Beyond that, you're into expensive mods.
 
There's probably a lot of room for weight removal from removing interior bits and sound deadening material. Have a look at what some of the driving/racing enthusiasts do to save weight to improve performance...

A good one will be to find the weight of the stock wheels and see how much roof for improvement there is.

Good 16" wheels will be 12lbs or less - average ones weigh 16-17lbs - heavy ones are 20lbs... Hopefully the stock Leaf wheels are light - reducing rotating mass makes a big difference in performance!
 
mwalsh said:
I weight 194. I could easily weight 170. That's another savings of 24lbs right there. :(

This could be problematic, especially around the holidays as everyone knows "A waist is a terrible thing to mind."
 
If the aftermarket responds to this vehicle then I would imagine that you will see carbon fiber hoods, fenders and hatch doors, with hoods being the first offering.
 
Can't speak about range increase (other than the obvious "lighter = farther"), but rearseatdelete.com makes kits for some cars (apparently not for the LEAF yet, however). For the MINI, they claim you lose 36 pounds. If that little bit helps gas vehicles, then it would definitely help electric. (By the way, the kit is to provide a finished look when there are no seats; of course you can just take 'em out and leave it.)
 
I was thinking about what kind of urban "cargo/deliver" vehicle you could make out of the leaf if you took out the rear and front passenger seats..... The hood feels pretty light already.

I am personally working on an overall 1% weight reduction. There are 20+ stops and starts on the way to work.
 
Recently removed the rear seat "cushion" in our 2015 to put on seat covers. The cushion weighs next to nothing. The rear seat backs do have some weight; you can feel it when you swing them from folded to raised. But I'd guess less than 20 lbs for the whole deal.

Over on evtv.me they have a rule of thumb: Over a long span of time expect 1 watt-hour per mile for every 10 lbs of vehicle weight.
 
Speaking about reducing weight by changing out the glass - http://youtu.be/13B5K_lAabw?t=6m5s" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Can't wait for my EV to have some gorilla glass for all the windows.
 
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