76 miles and bust

[trojanm50]

Last Friday I had my most disappointing day yet with the leaf. I was only able to drive 75.7miles before I hit turtle about 200 yards from mycharger.

It was very cold - about 42 degreesF, I still did not switch on the heater and towards the end not even the defogger. This was my first turtle mode experience. I had vlbw at 71 miles. Tires were inflated to36 psi. Mycar has close to 25 k miles and Im in the bay area. This summer I was able to go 85miles before any serious issues.

I have now resorted to overinflating my tires at 40 psi. Leaf is a fussy car, doesn't like it too cold or too hot???

At this rate by next summer I willbe driving a brick. Anyone else in the same boat?

 

[surfingslovak]

Sorry to hear that. Would you have an idea what your energy economy was on that 75-mile trip? My best guess is 3.8 to 4 m/kWh, judging from the VLB-to-turtle distance.

You mentioned 251 Gids and 391 Volts on a full charge this past summer. Would you have any more recent data? Also, have you performed any type of range test shortly after purchasing the Leaf?

 

[LEAFfan]

Last Friday I had my most disappointing day yet with the leaf. I was only able to drive 75.7miles before I hit turtle about 200 yards from mycharger.

It was very cold - about 42 degreesF, I still did not switch on the heater and towards the end not even the defogger. This was my first turtle mode experience. I had vlbw at 71 miles. Tires were inflated to36 psi. Mycar has close to 25 k miles and Im in the bay area. This summer I was able to go 85miles before any serious issues.

I have now resorted to overinflating my tires at 40 psi. Leaf is a fussy car, doesn't like it too cold or too hot???

At this rate by next summer I willbe driving a brick. Anyone else in the same boat?

When you hit VLBW/8.5%, how slow did you go? You may have made that 200 yards without going to Turtle/1.4% if you had gone slower.

 

[TonyWilliams]

Last Friday I had my most disappointing day yet with the leaf. I was only able to drive 75.7miles before I hit turtle about 200 yards from mycharger.

It was very cold - about 42 degreesF, I still did not switch on the heater and towards the end not even the defogger. This was my first turtle mode experience. I had vlbw at 71 miles. Tires were inflated to36 psi. Mycar has close to 25 k miles and Im in the bay area. This summer I was able to go 85miles before any serious issues.

I have now resorted to overinflating my tires at 40 psi. Leaf is a fussy car, doesn't like it too cold or too hot???

At this rate by next summer I willbe driving a brick. Anyone else in the same boat?

When you hit VLBW/8.5%, how slow did you go? You may have made that 200 yards without going to Turtle/1.4% if you had gone slower.

If I read this correctly, he hit turtle mode only 200 yards away, so that means he easily could have driven 200 yards to plug in. Or, he really means it quit 200 yards short?

 

[GaslessInSeattle]

without TMS the cold saps range. this is our second winter now and I don't even bother with the long trips when it's cold now. that said, if you stick with a commute that is closer to what the car is ideal for, say 40-50 miles, then these fluctuations in range can be handled gracefully, even with some heater use.

 

[DaveEV]

Impossible to compare summer and winter driving range even when not using the heater. A substantial part of the difference is range is explicable to air density difference between 40F and 80F air alone all else being equal.

Add in increased friction in the drivetrain, reduced battery capacity due to temperature and you can easily go from 85 miles with a few kWh to spare down to 76 miles to turtle. Don't even mention driving style!

 

[TEG]

It was very cold - about 42 degreesF, I still did not switch on the heater...

How did you keep the heater off?
You should probably set the temp to minimum (60 degrees).
The heater can run in some situations when people assume it is off.
You can pull up the energy meter screen and see how much power the climate system is using.

 

[TonyWilliams]

Air density between 70F and 42F is 103% to 97%, so only about a 2% increase in drag at the colder temp.

At that cold temp, there's a 7% loss in battery capacity, and at least 10% loss from mileage.

Welcome to the club.

 

[surfingslovak]

Welcome to the club.

Yeah, I was guesstimating around 14 to 15% range loss when compared a factory-new Leaf driving in 70 degree weather. His average energy economy was likely pretty close to what we were seeing during the range test in Phoenix. The only good news is that he might recover some of the range when the weather warms up. Of course, we don't know yet what will happen to the battery next summer. Here's to hoping that whatever degradation trojanm50 has seen so far will level off. Isn't that what Andy Palmer said?

 

[cwerdna]

trojanm50: Can you update your location field so it's easier to find, at a glance?

If it were only mandatory...

 

[adric22]

I suppose temperature is a culprit.

Twice per month I have to make a trip that is 63 miles round trip, which is mostly on back highways around 50 mph.

I made the trip yesterday and came home with 30 miles still showing on the GOM. It was 79 degrees yesterday. (unusually hot day for December)

I made the same trip 2 weeks ago when it was much colder and came home with LBW.

I did not run the climate control on either day. Traffic was the same, driving style was the same, etc.

 

[thankyouOB]

I suppose temperature is a culprit.

Twice per month I have to make a trip that is 63 miles round trip, which is mostly on back highways around 50 mph.

I made the trip yesterday and came home with 30 miles still showing on the GOM. It was 79 degrees yesterday. (unusually hot day for December)

I made the same trip 2 weeks ago when it was much colder and came home with LBW.

I did not run the climate control on either day. Traffic was the same, driving style was the same, etc.

GOM doesnt mean a thing.
what were the bars?

 

[Stanton]

GOM doesnt mean a thing.
what were the bars?

Exactly. Personally, I think the OP's 76 mile range wasn't bad given the weather. I can't believe that people still think they can drive as far in the cold as they can in warm (or moderate) temps in ANY EV (even those with TMS will have a small range penalty).

 

[OrientExpress]

Last Friday I had my most disappointing day yet with the leaf. I was only able to drive 75.7miles before I hit turtle about 200 yards from mycharger.

It was very cold - about 42 degreesF, I still did not switch on the heater and towards the end not even the defogger. This was my first turtle mode experience. I had vlbw at 71 miles. Tires were inflated to36 psi. Mycar has close to 25 k miles and Im in the bay area. This summer I was able to go 85miles before any serious issues.

I have now resorted to overinflating my tires at 40 psi. Leaf is a fussy car, doesn't like it too cold or too hot???

At this rate by next summer I willbe driving a brick. Anyone else in the same boat?

This last weekend was a short mileage day for all LEAF owners in the Bay Area with temps in the 40s. On Saturday we got to LBW at about 60 miles, but we had the heater wipers, lights, etc on and were doing some freeway driving. Yesterday, with temps in the 50~60s it was business as usual.

 

[Ingineer]

It was very cold - about 42 degreesF, I still did not switch on the heater...

How did you keep the heater off?
You should probably set the temp to minimum (60 degrees).
The heater can run in some situations when people assume it is off.
You can pull up the energy meter screen and see how much power the climate system is using.

If you turn the climate control to "off" it will use no electricity for the heater, but will almost always result in fogging on the windshield. If you roll down a window in an attempt to clear the fogging, that creates additional drag which will reduce range. Setting the climate control to 60 WILL NOT stop it from consuming a large chunk of range! This is why I developed the Climate Control Upgrade.

-Phil

 

[Deleted member 3147]

It was very cold - about 42 degreesF, I still did not switch on the heater and towards the end not even the defogger.

The way I read that, you were using the defogger until near the end. That uses the same heater as the CC.

 

[dgpcolorado]

My winter range is down a bit compared to last winter. A few days ago I did 68 miles, about five miles beyond LBW, with 2300 feet of total elevation change as usual. Outbound temperatures were about 30ºF and homebound 23º to 13º, nighttime with lights on, no heater needed (except steering wheel and seats, of course), occasional cold air defogging thanks to Phil's CC mod. Even going slower than normal, due to the extreme danger of deer on the roads at night—I always see deer carcasses along the road this time of the year—I was surprised to hit LBW on such a short trip.

By next winter I am going to be wishing we had charge stations around here!

 

[trojanm50]

I will try to get to all the questions that were posted. If i miss something, just leave me a reminder.


I dont know the efficiency for the trip per se, I usually for 4.4kwh but that is over 23000 miles. I havent done any gid tests, I should so one again. When I bought the car I would got 78 miles and come back home with 12 miles left on the display. The most I have done is 90 miles on one charge I think, never needed to push it more than that.

I hit LBW at 62-63 miles, VLBW at 70.5 and Turtle at 75.7. After I hit LBW I was doing mostly city driving with a max speed of 40 mph. I did have multiple short stops of 10 minutes or so for the next 10 miles.

I did make it home, I hit turtle 200 yards away from home so thankfully I sputtered and stuttered but made it to that charging plug

Heater was at 60 and climate control was off. I used the defogger sparingly during my commute. After I hit VLBW, I rolled down the windows and literally stuck my head out


Im usually a conservative driver. Btw,I decided to inflate to 40psi to see if that helps. I was surprised to see the indicator lights blinking as I got past 36psi. When I continued to inflate it I got 3 beeps from the car for each tire. I did not know the leaf had that feature.

 

[trojanm50]

trojanm50: Can you update your location field so it's easier to find, at a glance?

If it were only mandatory...

Done!

 

[TomT]

I noticed an interesting thing today... It has been unusably cold here (about 43 degrees overnight average in my garage) and today, even though I was only at 8 fuel bars, it did not show and would not allow more than two bubbles of regen... The bat temp was showing 5 bars.