2019 40kWh Leaf First Impressions

[ClarksonCote]

I've had my Gun Metallic Leaf SV with All Weather Package for a little over a week now, coming from a Volt I'm really enjoying the all electric driving without any worry of an engine coming on once the battery is depleted. The Volt was amazing, and I loved it for a lot of reasons, but the "all electric" bug really is addictive, and that (with some very nice local rebates) is what led me to the recent Leaf purchase.

As a brief aside, I also run a website called "EV Extend" that makes charging magnets and inverter kits for back-up and off-grid power scenarios, primarily for Leaf and Volt. I'm looking forward to seeing if the 2018-2019 Leaf is the same under the hood as earlier models, as I'd like to offer the inverter kits for the newer model Leafs as well.

Anyways, I wanted to share my general first impressions, to give other some insight into the 2019s and also to hear from others if I'm missing some obvious feature that I complain is lacking below. Here are my impressions (good and bad) in no particular order:

The Good:

1. Acceleration is great, I didn't expect this much pick up from the Leaf's 100kW motor.
2. The ePedal functionality is awesome (see a negative though in the list below). I love how smooth and effortless it makes driving.
3. When I want to coast, it's very easy to find the accelerator point where there's no acceleration or deceleration. If you get close to no power use, Nissan designed the accelerator pedal software so that it just goes to coast mode even if you're not quite at the right pedal position. I thought this was a pretty neat design element and well thought out, no need to mess with shifting to Neutral.
4. The configurability on many items is more detailed than I expected: persistent ePedal option, ability to set lane-changing momentary directionals to be off, 1 blink, 3 blinks, or 5 blinks, lots of driver displays behind the steering wheel, etc.
5. The Heat pump on the all-weather package seems to really decrease the amount of power needed to keep the cabin warm.
6. The displays are generally very refined, and well thought out.
7. The infotainment system is very responsive, not laggy or anything which I appreciate.
8. The door lock/unlock buttons are also very responsive. I can press twice quickly to unlock all doors instead of just driver door and it responds. My prior car I needed to wait a split second before pressing a second time, which was annoying.
9. Definitely enjoy the heated steering wheel. It's a bit variable (gets nice and hot, then cools off a bit then gets nice and hot again) but having one is much better than not having one.
10. I like that there are still 2 trip meters, seems a lot of vehicles are doing away with that for some reason.
11. Intelligent Cruise Control is fantastic. I now know what I've been missing. I also like that by pressing and holding the ICC button when enabling it, it will go into standard cruise control mode instead, should I ever want to use that.
12. The ability to lock/unlock the Leaf from the hatch is nice, a friend pointed out the small button next to the release button that locks and unlocks everything.
13. The glove compartment is huge, wow!

The Bad:

1. It seems like there's no feature to have the Leaf automatically lock after you've left the car and start walking away. This stinks, I've had it in my Volt for years and loved that I never needed to worry about locking up, just walk away and seconds later it would lock and beep at me, if I configured it to do so. There's so much configurability on some features, I'm amazed this wasn't implemented.
2. When I turn the Leaf off, my music turns off too. I want the music to stay on (retained accessory power?) until I open the door and leave the car. Maybe there's another way to get this behavior but so far I haven't found it.
3. For a 40kWh battery, the Leaf should have more regeneration when slowing down than 30kW. My 16kWh Volt had 60kW, 30kW is too little. More regeneration, even if for a few seconds, could save a lot more brake pad.
4. The ePedal uses far too much brake for me. I can tell it's going beyond the 30kW regenerative braking, and I hate the idea of using brakes much. I want a mode that is ePedal with no brake over 3mph; stronger than B mode, but perhaps a bit weaker than ePedal given limited regeneration.
5. The charging timers are frustrating. I want to tell it a percentage to charge the battery to and an end time, I can't seem to easily do either so I have to try and "trick" it by setting a start time just prior to the end time and selecting full charge on battery as priority, and pushing the end time out hours beyond my actual planned departure. This is resulting in mixed results, because the timer seems to remember the last charge rate I had on a given day when calculating times, and that can cause my Leaf to be done charging far before I wanted it to finish.
6. When you turn off intelligent cruise control, even with the ePedal enabled, there's a few seconds where it doesn't behave like the ePedal, and coasts more instead. I guess this could be both good and bad: Good if you want the time to adjust, bad if you expect the car to slow down like it always does in ePedal mode.
7. B mode vs. ePedal vs. Eco mode could have some more flexibility. B mode seems to behave similar to Eco mode when ePedal is off, when ePedal is off, B mode vs. D mode seems to make no difference.
8. The music interface is awful. I can only see 255 songs and 50 folders?? There's no way to select songs based on Artist, Genre, Album, etc. It's very antequated despite being 8 years newer than my last vehicle (a Chevy Volt)
9. The range estimator is pretty bad. The ability to go into the Nav system and get two circles for best case and worst case range helps, but I wish they'd implement that capability right in the dash display instead, like what's done on the Chevy Bolt EV.
10. I wish they provided more detail in the displays sometimes; despite having a ton of information, I wish I could view a battery temperature with the battery temp graphic, without having to resort to something like LeafSpy.
11. The TPMS tire pressure numbers always reset to "--" when the car is started up. I wish they'd do something a bit smarter here and use the previous values or something to initialize with. I get they may not be valid if the tires were just changed, but it just seems clunky to me (my opinion, I get this is subjective)
12. Subtle, but on one of the two efficiency screens behind the steering wheel, the Y-axis is on the left hand side of the graph, and the current instantaneous efficiency starts on the right hand side of the graph. It's hard to easily read what your efficiency is because of that. I wish they put another duplicate Y-axis on the right-hand side of something, or had the most recent efficiency be on the left instead of the right.
13. Center console storage is TINY, wow.
14. Only one USB and one 12V accessory power outlet? Bummer.

 

[golfcart]

Seems like a reasonable assessment, any disagreement I might have would just be because of subjective personal preference. Glad you are enjoying the car.

 

[ClarksonCote]

Seems like a reasonable assessment, any disagreement I might have would just be because of subjective personal preference. Glad you are enjoying the car.

Thanks. I was thinking more people may chime in with other tips/tricks that I didn't discover, but maybe I discovered them all?

I really like the car so far, despite some of the shortcomings (some subjective) that I've noted. The biggest one that I didn't highlight is no active cooling for batteries, but I think in my area it should be a moot point except in rare circumstances.

 

[LeftieBiker]

Since the car is virtually identical to the 2018, you may want to look at reviews of that.

 

[golfcart]

Thanks. I was thinking more people may chime in with other tips/tricks that I didn't discover, but maybe I discovered them all?

I really like the car so far, despite some of the shortcomings (some subjective) that I've noted. The biggest one that I didn't highlight is no active cooling for batteries, but I think in my area it should be a moot point except in rare circumstances.

I've got a 2018 which is basically the same car but I just got mine last Thursday so I'm still feeling it out. Having had a week to assess, I think it is better in basically every way than my 2015 Leaf which is surprising because I thought the two cars felt very similar during the test drive.

I'm sure you did like I did and just went through the menu one by one so it's hard to come up with any real tips that others don't know already.

As far as locking the car goes I just press the button on the door handle if I don't feel like pulling the key out. It's not as easy as walking away but it is pretty simple.

I'm on a lease with a reasonable residual so I'm about 50/50 on buying it out it'll just depend what used E-Plus, Bolts, and model 3 are going for in 3 years.

By the way, how did you determine Regen is limited to 30kW? I couldn't find the scale in the manual I just know I can get "full bars"of it with B mode and epedal pretty easily once the SOC drops below 90% or so.

 

[HerdingElectrons]

By the way, how did you determine Regen is limited to 30kW? I couldn't find the scale in the manual I just know I can get "full bars"of it with B mode and epedal pretty easily once the SOC drops below 90% or so.

There's a screen in the center display that shows energy used by the motor, the climate control & the regen energy recovered & it tends to not display higher than 30K while decelerating. This screen shot is from a Gen1 Leaf so the Gen2 has a wider scale range.

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

How are you determining the level of friction braking used in E Pedal?

As far as claims on 30 KW max gen? I find my car outdoes that by quite a large margin. Referencing LEAF Spy data logs, max regen in B mode was 38 KW, max regen with E Pedal was almost 60 KW.

 

[GerryAZ]

Since the car is virtually identical to the 2018, you may want to look at reviews of that.

I think the instrument panel in front of the steering wheel is different (or seating position/steering wheel position are different). I looked at a 2018 a few months ago and decided I would not consider one because I could not see the speedometer without moving my head or right hand from my normal driving positions. I received an offer for a gift card or free oil change from my dealer to come in and look at the 2019 so I went to see if they had received any E+ models yet (not yet). I looked at the 40 kWh units they had in stock and noticed I could see the speedometer without moving my head. I mentioned that to the salesman--he said I was not the only one who complained about that with the 2018.

 

[LeftieBiker]

I'm guessing that it wasn't just the steering wheel position?

 

[golfcart]

By the way, how did you determine Regen is limited to 30kW? I couldn't find the scale in the manual I just know I can get "full bars"of it with B mode and epedal pretty easily once the SOC drops below 90% or so.

There's a screen in the center display that shows energy used by the motor, the climate control & the regen energy recovered & it tends to not display higher than 30K while decelerating. This screen shot is from a Gen1 Leaf so the Gen2 has a wider scale range.

I have that screen but mine doesn't show 30kW as the end point it looks more like a 3/4 marker. I'll have to connect leaf spy and drive around in b-mode and with the epedal to see what I get.

 

[golfcart]

How are you determining the level of friction braking used in E Pedal?

As far as claims on 30 KW max gen? I find my car outdoes that by quite a large margin. Referencing LEAF Spy data logs, max regen in B mode was 38 KW, max regen with E Pedal was almost 60 KW.

I counted a maximum of 19 bars on the circle thing that shows instantaneous power and regen, 38kW would make sense if each bar was worth 2kW. (assuming I counted correctly )

That's interesting that epedal goes that much higher, that's good to know it makes me like epedal even more. The regen is off scale with epedal most of the time so I could never tell how much was friction brakes vs engine braking.

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

In a nutshell; the 40 kwh pack acts completely different and not sure if its the pack itself or BMS. (I have doubts the BMS is working properly) But I tested B mode and E Pedal for regen. results below

https://daveinolywa.blogspot.com/2018/11/e-pedal-verses-b-mode.html


I also tested cold pack charging and found we are getting screwed at both ends. As pack gets colder, the knee moves down. IOW, I see full rate DCFC to about 63-65% when pack is in the 80's. But when pack was in the mid 40's knee dropped to 48%. I verified the change over a few temperatures.

https://daveinolywa.blogspot.com/2018/12/cold-verses-leaf.html


As far as regen, I plan to revisit the experiment when Summer hits to see if there is a change when pack is hot. I did glance thru logs from last Summer and it does look like regen goes up (A bit of a surprise)

 

[LeftieBiker]

Not a hard rule, but it's more polite to give some explanation for a link, rather than just post it by itself.

EDIT: Thanks for elaborating.

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

Not a hard rule, but it's more polite to give some explanation for a link, rather than just post it by itself.

oh crap... not typing all that again... I will create a shorter edited version

 

[LeftieBiker]

Not a hard rule, but it's more polite to give some explanation for a link, rather than just post it by itself.

oh crap... not typing all that again... I will create a shorter edited version

??? I was talking about describing - briefly is fine - what the linked page is about when you post a link. I'm not sure what "not typing all that again" refers to...

 

[LeftieBiker]

I also tested cold pack charging and found we are getting screwed at both ends. As pack gets colder, the knee moves down. IOW, I see full rate DCFC to about 63-65% when pack is in the 80's. But when pack was in the mid 40's knee dropped to 48%. I verified the change over a few temperatures.

I know that the L-2 rate has always dropped when the pack was cold, and I'd be astounded if the QC rate didn't also drop under similar circumstances. Or are you saying that the temp threshold for reducing charge rate has risen a lot...?

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

Not a hard rule, but it's more polite to give some explanation for a link, rather than just post it by itself.

oh crap... not typing all that again... I will create a shorter edited version

??? I was talking about describing - briefly is fine - what the linked page is about when you post a link. I'm not sure what "not typing all that again" refers to...

All me. I had quite the intro but somehow lost everything but the link (one of two) Too bad this place isn't like Google; autosave every few seconds.

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

I also tested cold pack charging and found we are getting screwed at both ends. As pack gets colder, the knee moves down. IOW, I see full rate DCFC to about 63-65% when pack is in the 80's. But when pack was in the mid 40's knee dropped to 48%. I verified the change over a few temperatures.

I know that the L-2 rate has always dropped when the pack was cold, and I'd be astounded if the QC rate didn't also drop under similar circumstances. Or are you saying the the temp threshold for reducing charge rate has risen a lot...?

I could still get the max 124-125 amps at the start of the charge as long as SOC was low enough but with knee dropping, the overall amount of charge for say 30 mins was less.

 

[LeftieBiker]

I guess it's like "EPA Range." Ideal conditions only...

 

[rogersleaf]

Four days into mine, very impressed with how well systems work together... e-pedal, pro pilot, basic regen, etc. Yesterday was relatively windy & cold, still managed to get 125 miles of mixed freeway and rural highways and finished with 20% charge. Wasn’t conservative with the heat or the freeway speeds, 0 range concerns. Find the seating comfort excellent when compared to the Bolt that I test drove. My only comfort complaint thus far is the center console side wings intruding into knee space. Setting up the charging accounts for NCTC is probably the worst nuisance. Believe it or not, went 3 years & 45k miles on a 24KWh LEAF and never used a public pay charger, so this part is all new to me.