Dashboard display suggestions

[Herm]

Nissan should provide an option to toggle the trees display with little outlines of oil tankers, and the little tankers can slowly fill up as the number increases

The bubbles display is cryptic.. just use fast reacting solid bars to indicate power levels, and label them in kW or horsepower.. green in regen, white as you accelerate and slowly changing to red at the maximum levels.

Nissan is playing psychological tricks on the drivers with the existing GOM, so they are unlikely to give us true numbers unless they get rid of this idea.. ideally they should provide two ranges: one fast reacting based on your present power level and speed , and another based on your long term (weekly) efficiency and speed.

 

[leafydragon]

Come to think of it, it's probably true that at least 80% of my trips are under 5 miles. Maybe that's why I haven't paid any attention to trees - there hasn't been enough to pay attention to.

Yes!

From what I understand from the pro-tree people, it sounds like the trees are supposed to be a measure of efficient-driving-behavior, after normalizing away circumstances outside of the driver's control. (which circumstances? traffic lights? stop signs? congestion? outside-temperature? cargo load? passengers? AC thermostat setting?)

I very seldom see any complete trees. Is it because my trips are short? Why not make it trip-length independent by resuming tree-display across stop/starts?

Is there any write-up from Nissan about what the tree-display is?

What is the arc of dots surrounding the growing trees?

 

[LEAFer]

Nissan should provide an option to toggle the trees display with little outlines of oil tankers, and the little tankers can slowly fill up as the number increases

Now THAT ... I like ! And ... when you put the LEAF in Park, the set of oil tankers animates, slowly blowing up each one. If you don't power off, they silently re-appear as you continue the journey. In the alternative, they are "X'ed-out" like the fighter pilot tracking his kills on the side of his plane.

Thanks for the suggestion, Herm.

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

Come to think of it, it's probably true that at least 80% of my trips are under 5 miles. Maybe that's why I haven't paid any attention to trees - there hasn't been enough to pay attention to.

Yes!

From what I understand from the pro-tree people, it sounds like the trees are supposed to be a measure of efficient-driving-behavior, after normalizing away circumstances outside of the driver's control. (which circumstances? traffic lights? stop signs? congestion? outside-temperature? cargo load? passengers? AC thermostat setting?)

ya, pretty much. its not perfect but its a measure of efficient driving that is NOT based on your miles/K which is related but can be markedly different.

I very seldom see any complete trees. Is it because my trips are short? Why not make it trip-length independent by resuming tree-display across stop/starts?

i find it does suck that you cant have "trip" settings and the only reset option is to power cycle the car

Is there any write-up from Nissan about what the tree-display is?

yep. but we have gone over that. its a measure of how efficiently you drive. what gives you trees? smooth slow acceleration. maintaining constant level of power and speed. slow gradual stops. iow, driving efficiently

What is the arc of dots surrounding the growing trees?

"near" instantaneous feedback on how well you are doing. its not perfect by any means. in fact, try this. go for a drive, try to "peg" it to say... well, we will call it 15 pips (why i dont call it 10, i dunno) so if moving and you have say 12 pips for X seconds, eventually you will gain a tree segment. supposing we say each tree has 5 segments (once again, 10 would make sense, but just saying ya know) after a bit, park it. leave it on.

your tree meter will be sitting somewhere. say its the 12 pips. now the pips will stay that way...for a while anyway. but the car is on and using power but not moving which means VERY inefficient driving right...so, soon you will have 11 pips and so on as you sit there. if you sit there long enough, all your pips will disappear INCLUDING your gained tree segments. (i am guessing this takes about 45 minutes if you started with 7 pips)

now for some people; they will never see trees because
1) short duration drive
2) they drive inefficiently.

now, this is not really a good measure of driving efficiency because if you play with the trees you will see that as long as you brake slowly you can maintain the 15 pips. now what is better is maintaining near constant speed (which does gain trees but not as quickly i dont think. this is hard to quantify...or at least it is for someone like me and my patience level)

but general observations show that at speeds around 30- 40 mph, you can apply power up to 10 KW and stay pegged. in most cases, going up to 12-15 KW will drop you down into the 10 tree bar range. 20 KW will drop you into the 5-6 tree bar range.

now, if you increase speed to say 50-55 mph you will almost never see 15 tree bars, but 12-13 is doable if you are careful and this is with power up to the aforementioned 15 KW so the meter is somewhat speed dependent which means outside variables like elevation, wind direction, etc. will affect your #'s so the trees is not an absolute measure

 

[TomT]

It has to be in D or Eco and not moving.

I tried your method of growing trees by going no where and it didn't work - I turned the car on and let it sit just like you said and no trees grew.

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

It has to be in D or Eco and not moving.

I tried your method of growing trees by going no where and it didn't work - I turned the car on and let it sit just like you said and no trees grew.

how many trees have you grown this way? because mine disappear if i am not moving (along with my GIDs)

 

[TomT]

It happens to me when I am in very congested stop and go traffic where I am getting something less than 2M/Kwh with AC on, and yet I've grown two or more trees while going all of one or two miles over an hour or so... The Gids, bars, and efficiency drop but the trees grow...

It has to be in D or Eco and not moving.

I tried your method of growing trees by going no where and it didn't work - I turned the car on and let it sit just like you said and no trees grew.

how many trees have you grown this way? because mine disappear if i am not moving (along with my GIDs)

 

[thankyouOB]

you want to appreciate the dash and the trees, try on my shoes.
the car has been in the shop for a rear-ender since may 30.

no trees, no charging.
yesterday was -- fingers crossed -- the last commute without the car, which is due back Friday.

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

All this tree talk had caused me to log into Carwings for first time in about 8 months and I have my flora mixed up a bit. The LEAFs trees represent an amount of CO2 not produced. I guess I mixed it up with the Focus Which generates leaves based on driving efficiency.

So trees could represent the amount of CO2 a tree absorbs or in this case CO2 the LEAF did not produce

 

[Nekota]

It has to be in D or Eco and not moving.

I tried your method of growing trees by going no where and it didn't work - I turned the car on and let it sit just like you said and no trees grew.

Ok I put the car in Eco and sat still for 15 mins - no tree nor even any stump. There was a full arc of segments which slowly dropped to none over a couple of minutes and my mile/kwhr dropped from 4.3 to 4.1 during this exercise so the idea trees grow while stationary is less than 1 tree per 75 mins. I typically see trees at the rate of one per 11 miles.

 

[adric22]

Count me into the camp who has absolutely no idea what the trees represent. I never pay attention to it. The only time I've ever even noticed trees being there is on longer drives. It is totally ambiguous looking at the trees to determine how good you did. There is nothing to really compare with. I don't even know what number of trees would be considered good. I agree it is a total waste of dash real-estate. I also wish the bubbles were marked in kilowatts so they represented a real number that people can understand, yet show a graphic representation for those who don't really care about kilowatts (or even know what a kilowatt is). However, I do wish there was some way of showing when the friction brakes are kicking in to help better train a person how to use the breaks better to regen more. I'm not entirely sure how they would do that. Another possible improvement would be to have some sort of indication when you are using too much power. For example, I have driven a 2010 Honda Insight and the background behind the speedometer changes colors if you are accelerating too hard. Maybe the bubbles could each be different colors so that maybe the first 3 or 4 could be one color and the next few a different color and so on. That way people know if they can try to keep the power below a certain threshold then they are being more efficient.

 

[leafydragon]

However, I do wish there was some way of showing when the friction brakes are kicking in to help better train a person how to use the breaks better to regen more.

I want to see this too.

 

[Nubo]

However, I do wish there was some way of showing when the friction brakes are kicking in to help better train a person how to use the breaks better to regen more.

I want to see this too.

I understand the goal, but I can't imagine that any manufacturer would put something like this in place. I think there would be too much liability risk in case of an accident. Someone would try to construe that the instrumentation was encouraging them to use less braking force, etc....

 

[planet4ever]

All this tree talk had caused me to log into Carwings for first time in about 8 months and I have my flora mixed up a bit. The LEAFs trees represent an amount of CO2 not produced. I guess I mixed it up with the Focus Which generates leaves based on driving efficiency. So trees could represent the amount of CO2 a tree absorbs or in this case CO2 the LEAF did not produce

Sounds to me like Nissan may have its flora and its fauna mixed up. I mean, since trees depend on CO2 you'd think that the more CO2 you produce the more trees you'd grow. :roll:

Ray

 

[LEAFer]

All this tree talk had caused me to log into Carwings for first time in about 8 months and I have my flora mixed up a bit. The LEAFs trees represent an amount of CO2 not produced. I guess I mixed it up with the Focus Which generates leaves based on driving efficiency. So trees could represent the amount of CO2 a tree absorbs or in this case CO2 the LEAF did not produce

Sounds to me like Nissan may have its flora and its fauna mixed up. I mean, since trees depend on CO2 you'd think that the more CO2 you produce the more trees you'd grow. :roll:

Ray

Let's go back to the oil tanker idea :lol:

 

[davewill]

What is the arc of dots surrounding the growing trees?

... "near" instantaneous feedback on how well you are doing. ...

Sure, I can see how the arc might be helpful, although I can get much the same result by using the instantaneous MPK readout. The only way the trees seem to be of any use might be comparing how many I get on the exact same route from one day to the next.

 

[dgpcolorado]

the tree is representative of how efficiently you are driving and takes away the variances of traffic, elevation and speed and only shows "you" how "you" are doing.

now, if a personal critique of your driving is not your cup of tea that is easy to understand. considering the limited real estate this information currently holds; what would you rather see there?

I don't find the trees useful and don't track them, perhaps because I already know how to drive efficiently.

I have given some thought to what I'd rather have in that spot and it would be the D-ECO-P display. The current "gear" display is difficult or impossible to see when the steering wheel is turned a bit so I'd like to have it in a more prominent position. Or, as an alternative, I'd like to see the energy pie chart in that spot since it is my most watched display, aside from the basics like the speedometer and fuel gauge.

 

[leafydragon]

I have given some thought to what I'd rather have in that spot and it would be the D-ECO-P display. The current "gear" display is difficult or impossible to see when the steering wheel is turned a bit so I'd like to have it in a more prominent position. Or, as an alternative, I'd like to see the energy pie chart in that spot since it is my most watched display, aside from the basics like the speedometer and fuel gauge.

I agree about the D-ECO-P!

I like to watch the 3 energy pies too.
Is it just me or does it take about 3 touches to get to the energy pies? (there's that disclaimer screen to OK away, every single time!)

 

[TomT]

Works for me. Perhaps a different software version... In two miles from work to the freeway, taking an hour, I can grow a tree and a half at least...

It has to be in D or Eco and not moving.

I tried your method of growing trees by going no where and it didn't work - I turned the car on and let it sit just like you said and no trees grew.

Ok I put the car in Eco and sat still for 15 mins - no tree nor even any stump. There was a full arc of segments which slowly dropped to none over a couple of minutes and my mile/kwhr dropped from 4.3 to 4.1 during this exercise so the idea trees grow while stationary is less than 1 tree per 75 mins. I typically see trees at the rate of one per 11 miles.

 

[Nekota]

Works for me. Perhaps a different software version... In two miles from work to the freeway, taking an hour, I can grow a tree and a half at least...

It has to be in D or Eco and not moving.

One of these things is not like the other. I can see how one might feel like two miles in an hour is 'not moving' but the LEAF is moving - not stopped.