0-60 Time?

[mctom987]

Just to throw in my 2 cents I think a lot of "feel" of electric drive is the lack of shifting. While in a similar 0-60 time ice you get what looks like waves in the acceleration as it speed up, in the leaf, as you can see in the chart above, it is nice and smooth without the dips for shifting. You can actually see it if you race an ICE, it is very obvious when the ice shifts when you watch them from the leaf On the other hand when the ice is at its peak it sort of lunches forward compared to the leaf, then drops again to shift.

This is becoming less true with technologies like CVT and tiptronic clutch.

 

[BrockWI]

This is becoming less true with technologies like CVT and tiptronic clutch.

Yes very true, I was thinking more of a manual transmission, but newer vehicles don't have as much of a dip or drop as they used to. I must be old

 

[johnrhansen]

Why would the speedometer and odometer get it's information from different sources, or more accurately, sensor? The Motor knows exactly how fast it is spinning, and it is connected to the wheels through a single speed gear box.. There is a resolver on it! If the odometer is accurate, then the computer has a dead on accurate knowledge of the speed of the car. The only thing that makes sense is that the manufacturers pad the indicated speed to keep their customers from driving too fast... (to improve the safety ratings of the car?)

 

[OrientExpress]

1: Why not adjust the speedometer calibration?
Because there is no adjustment for speedometer calibration. Some cars with electronic speedometers allow adjustment with a console, but most do not.

2: Some chalk up the inaccuracy to account for tire wear. While this may be true, you'd need about an inch of treadwear to compensate for this. An average tire has 8/32" of treadwear. This comes out of overshooting the speed almost exactly 2% on the 17" tires the Leaf uses. Ideally, it should be calibrated at 0 tread left, meaning the speedometer is not 5% off, but only 3% off.[/quote]

At some point tire wear or size can become an issue, but for these baseline tests, all of the cars were new with less than 1000 miles on them. I did the GPS comparison with LEAFs that had both 16" & 17" tires, and the results were the same, 5%.

Over time as the tires wear, they do become smaller and their rotations per mile increase, which would narrow the error, but in practical terms, it is negligible.

 

[mctom987]

Because there is no adjustment for speedometer calibration. Some cars with electronic speedometers allow adjustment with a console, but most do not.

I don't know if the S can, but I know the SV/SL with navigation can.

Over time as the tires wear, they do become smaller and their rotations per mile increase, which would narrow the error, but in practical terms, it is negligible.

This is why it should be calibrated at 0 tread. If you're measuring 0-60 times, lap times, or something else where every second counts, it's far from negligible. But yes, practical terms in day to day driving, 5% is nothing. My VL800 is off by ~25%! I can be doing 60, and it will say 75, or doing 80 and it will say 100.

 

[TomT]

Bingo. Federal specs require a minus zero tolerance on the speedometer. Thus, manufacturers usually build in a little plus tolerance (which is allowed) to make sure that it never indicates too low...
This is not required on the odometer so they try to be dead on or even a tad low to preclude lawsuits...

The only thing that makes sense is that the manufacturers pad the indicated speed to keep their customers from driving too fast... (to improve the safety ratings of the car?)

 

[CMYK4Life]

It seems that every article that talks about the LEAF poo-poos it's relatively slow acceleration. They quote 0-60 times of 10+ seconds.

I thought that seemed too high, and not consistent with my experience so I tried a little unofficial experiment.

With my son manning the stopwatch I was able to get times close to an admirable 8 seconds from a stop. It makes me wonder if for the officially posted times they are using ECO mode or something.

What are your experiences?

My exp is they are the same.

I always find it interesting how articles/people poo poo the 0-60 time... Since when is that really a big deal?

I dont know too many peole who worry about the 0-60 time on the SUV's, crossovers, or pick-ups they buy... but all of a sudden it matters on an EV? I can get to highway speeds quickly enough to merge onto the highway safely. What else matters?

It seems anytime you are talking about an EV all of these situations that almost never happen all of a sudden matter; like the ability to drive across the country or go 0-60 faster than the next guy. The speed limits on most streets are lower than 60 anyway... so why do I need to get there so fast?

 

[TomT]

Zero to 60 became something of a bench mark many years ago when it was thought that it was a good indication of how easily you could merge in to the highway flow from a stopped on ramp.
Tom McCahill of Mechanix Illustrated magazine popularized it in his automotive tests which I still vividly remember reading as a boy.

I always find it interesting how articles/people poo poo the 0-60 time... Since when is that really a big deal?

 

[OrientExpress]

I don't know if the S can [have its speedometer field calibrated], but I know the SV/SL with navigation can.

How is this done?

 

[mctom987]

I don't know if the S can [have its speedometer field calibrated], but I know the SV/SL with navigation can.

How is this done?

Easiest to do in park

With the radio off, press these buttons:
Map x3
Radio power x2
Map

You can change the speedometer in one of the options in that menu. It has 0.1% increments.

Edit: Found the source Hidden Screens: show GPS speed?

 

[OrientExpress]

Yes, that is for calibrating the navigation's system speed for calculating time to arrival, etc., but it is not used for changing the main speedometer, that message comes from the ECU. Also the 2014 and later LEAFs may not support the sequence of button pushes to activate the navigation system tuning that the earlier cars do.

If there is an adjustment of the car's ECU speedometer parameters, it would require a Nissan CONSULT console.

 

[DaveInAvl]

Tom McCahill of Mechanix Illustrated magazine popularized it in his automotive tests which I still vividly remember reading as a boy.

Yes, indeed... I can still remember trying to convince my dad to have half the transmission fluid drained from the Flash-O-Matic in his '60 Ambassador to improve the acceleration - McCahill said it was just like shaving the flywheel

 

[mctom987]

Yes, that is for calibrating the navigation's system speed for calculating time to arrival, etc., but it is not used for changing the main speedometer, that message comes from the ECU. Also the 2014 and later LEAFs may not support the sequence of button pushes to activate the navigation system tuning that the earlier cars do.

If there is an adjustment of the car's ECU speedometer parameters, it would require a Nissan CONSULT console.

I know it works on a '14, as that's what I have.
I've yet to test that setting though. I'll give it a try and let you know if you're right.

As for now, it's pretty much dead on. at 55MPH indicated, my GPS says 54-55MPH. As I don't see 1/10s on either, it's hard to say how close it actually is.

 

[johnrhansen]

Something I've noticed when comparing GPS speed to Speedometer speed: The difference between the two changes if you get to a hill... Why? Because most GPS devices look at speed in 2 dimensions (NS EW) the UpDown portion is not seen. If you are going up or down a hill, the speed the GPS sees is the horizontal component of the speed, while the Speedometer is looking at the value of the hypotenuse.

 

[sparky]

This discussion is quite interesting to me, that two other 0-60 times quoted were so similar but both equally inaccurate, and that neither of the posters seem to be aware of why they are inaccurate.

I think I'm fairly aware of the accuracy.
Some clarification: It's true that my chartsmanship was rather sloppy since I did not provide error bars.
When I did this measurement 3 years ago I was more interested in the general curve showing what we all feel in the seat of our pants when we hit the "go-pedal". And then comparing TC on and off modes.
I did estimate my accuracy to be around 1%, coming mostly from my tire circumference measurement weakness. I wasn't using the CAN-bus to extract the speedometer, but rather the RPMs.

Now for my soapbox, this brings up the larger issue about using CAN-bus based data for evaluating the LEAFs performance. While the basis and background of some CAN-bus data is public domain, the majority of platform or manufacturer CAN-bus data is proprietary and can only be theorized as to what it really means, and the accuracy or even the meaning of the data is suspect. ....

Agreed. and I tried to confirm my CAN-bus data theories with testing.
For example, to determine if I had an RPM value or reasonable proxy, I integrated the thousands of readings over a known distance (easier to verify than speed) and got very good repeatability (at least at the 1% level). The LEAF's direct drive was key here.
GPS velocity has it's own accuracy issues and nav-level GPS is probably good to 0.5 mph with 1-sec resolution.
I wanted much finer detail of the acceleration curve.
I suppose I could have done better and certainly would have tried if I thought my silly 0-60 plot would garner much attention. Later, I made more careful measurements and calculations when trying to extract drag losses using CAN-bus data. This was sort of a one-off. In retrospect, possibly my largest error source was doing the test with about 60% charge. A full charge would likely give the best 0-60 performance.

All of the LEAF smartphone scanner developers use this secret data (along with known data) fully aware they don't really truly know what it means, where it comes from, and what it really does, so they make best guesses (many of which seem to be very good, but at the end of the day, they can't be proven without the manufacturer's help), but to the end user, especially the novice, all of the data is taken as factual and accurate. This has caused a number of the major controversies that about the performance of the LEAF, that I think could have been avoided if the data was qualified instead of being taken for fact.

I hope that my 0-60 plot doesn't contribute to any major controversy.

 

[EVDRIVER]

All this is splitting hairs, even if 0-60 were 9 seconds, it's slow. Nothing to get excited about, slice it any way you like the car is slow to 60 and worse after that.

 

[OrientExpress]

I know it works on a '14, as that's what I have.

Interesting, I have a very late '14 car, and that car does not respond to the key sequence, but my '11 car does.

 

[OrientExpress]

All this is splitting hairs, even if 0-60 were 9 seconds, it's slow. Nothing to get excited about, slice it any way you like the car is slow to 60 and worse after that.

How far we have come, it was not that long ago that 9 second cars were "Performance" cars, and 7 second cars were "Supercars".

Nowadays if a car can't crack 7 seconds to 60 it is a snail.

 

[UBUYGAS]

I don't care about 0 to 60, I care about 0 to 35, because I drive local all the time. If they want to go faster than 35 they can.

My 0 to 35 is pretty darn fast. I can't beat a GTR but all the 4 & 6 cylinders np

 

[johnrhansen]

Yes at stoplights the acceleration is very much appreciated as is the low drama way the car goes about making that acceleration.