LONGEST COMMUTE FOR LEAFS????

[wsbca]

If it does'nt work for me. My wife will use it for her local flower shop. (10 miles away and rarely does she drive more than 50 miles on deliveries).

That sounds good - with L2 or even just L1 at the shop she'd have pretty good flexibility on any given day. The rear cargo area is nice and deep as well, would be good for carrying arrangements? And I wouldn't discount the possible advertising value to certain segments of her market of being able to say her deliveries are zero emission...

 

[LEAFer]

Cargo organizer might help for her deliveries.

 

[cinmar]

My husband plans to drive our future LEAF 2-3 days/week from Stockton to Old Sacramento, a 46 miles-each-way commute on I-5. We plan to lease with a mileage cap. He will L1 charge while at work, especially on hot days where he would have to use the A/C. My commute is very short, including errands, so I will drive the LEAF on the other days. However, his commute may change in the near future somewhat, where he may work from home more, so we'll see if I will be driving it full time or not. He usually commutes in our smart, which gets near 50 mpg on I-5.

 

[Bassman]

I used to live in Stockton and do that same commute to downtown Sacramento. Wish I still lived at the old house in Stockton. That $3000 SJAQMD rebate would have been nice.

 

[cinmar]

I used to live in Stockton and do that same commute to downtown Sacramento. Wish I still lived at the old house in Stockton. That $3000 SJAQMD rebate would have been nice.

We're leasing LEAF, so it's cut in half to $1500, but still nice.

 

[planet4ever]

Luckily for me, my brother works in the same office, so I would just have him drive me home and leave the car to charge overnight at work.

The solution is obvious. Buy two LEAFs and alternate, leaving one overnight at your work site every night. :lol:

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

OP; you have a tough road ahead of you. first thing i would do is not drive a constant speed. that will kill your range if you have a lot of elevation changes.

going downhill, you can use gravity to build momentum, so (if you can legally get away with it) when going downhill build speed to as much as 10 mph faster than you would normally travel or whatever you are comfortable with.

then when going back up hill, maintain enough power (you will have to watch your meter until you learn the feel) that would normally have you cruising at your set speed. this will cause you to decelerate more slowly.

now whether traffic conditions (or the cops!@!) will allow you to do this or not is the question. to do this really requires a variation of 25 mph+ depending on how big the hills are. i did this in my Prius on various hills around here and my speeds varied from 40 mph cresting the hills to 75 mph at the bottoms of them, but it did increase my mileage performance. (all this was done on a road with a speed limit of 50 mph... the road is pretty straight so 75 mph is not as scary as you think) and the reason is i was regening less to the battery (which is inefficient but better than nothing right?) building speed and using the car's weight and momentum to climb the next hill.

pretend you are on one of those old fashioned roller coasters that had the free fall downhills with the chain drives to pull you up. remember how you would be almost up the next hill when the chain finally grabbed you with a jerk to get you over the next hill?

 

[LKK]

I think you should treat range sort of like the way pilots fly their planes, and that is always plan some reserve into your trip. In your case you are doing two things that I think might be troublesome. The first is your commute assumes the full specified range of the Leaf, the second is you are depending on recharging at work. The reason you need to include a reserve is there might be some unexpected event in your journey like an accident requiring you to detour 10 or 20 miles. The other issue is what happens if there is a power outage at work? Say there is a bad storm and the power lines come down, you won't have the range to make it home, and this is a situation when you really need to get home. My suggestion is to wait a few years until battery technology improves.

In regards to L3 charging, I spoke with a Nissan rep who told me frequent charging at L3 will make the battery degrade more quickly.

 

[ENIAC]

My suggestion is to wait a few years until battery technology improves.

(cough) FUD (cough)

 

[evnow]

The other issue is what happens if there is a power outage at work? Say there is a bad storm and the power lines come down, you won't have the range to make it home, and this is a situation when you really need to get home.

He will then do just what he would have do if the ICE car breaks down. I think your scenario and the ICE breakdown have similarly likelyhood.

 

[ENIAC]

The other issue is what happens if there is a power outage at work? Say there is a bad storm and the power lines come down, you won't have the range to make it home, and this is a situation when you really need to get home.

He will then do just what he would have do if the ICE car breaks down. I think your scenario and the ICE breakdown have similarly likelyhood.

True, also gas pumps also don't work if the power is out. So if you needed gas you're also stuck!

 

[LEAFer]

The other issue is what happens if there is a power outage at work? Say there is a bad storm and the power lines come down, you won't have the range to make it home, and this is a situation when you really need to get home.

He will then do just what he would have do if the ICE car breaks down. I think your scenario and the ICE breakdown have similarly likelyhood.

True, also gas pumps also don't work if the power is out. So if you needed gas you're also stuck!

Right. Happened to my son traveling to SoCal at the bottom of the grapevine two weeks ago when it was closed due to snow.

 

[leafme]

Okay,
I'm going to throw this out as I think it will be ineteresting to see who has or is going to have the longest LEAF commute. I' m suppose to get my LEAF in March. My commute is going to be 125 miles round trip with 120 volt charging at work (10 hours). 30 miles or so at 50 to 55 mph up and down hills, a 20 mile section at 65 mph and then 12.5 miles at 45 to 55 mph.
Also I'm at about 1500 feet elevation and work at about 30 feet elevation (Foothills to the Central Valley).

All I can say Bassman is you got balls. Not trying to rain on your parade but if you can do it my hats off to ya.

Three things pushed me over the edge into actually buying this car (beside being a geeky Electrical Engineer). One was the fact that it's the first eCar on the market with the practical capability to meet my needs (I, like gudy, was a Volt man when the Volt pitch was electric which of course ended up not being), two, rebates (12.5k$ here in CA), and three, the fact that I could meet all my needs using the charge equipment in my garage. In my mind the practicality of "gassing up" outside my garage was just not realistic enough for me due to the time required to stuff the energy in this beast (admirable as it may be and chemical reactions being what they are). As the out-in-the-wild charge stations become available, it will offer additional exploratory "opportunities" but did not affect my purchase plan. With your place of work offering charging it changes the calculations to the extent that you can rely consistently on it. Keep in mind my power charge measurements indicate you can get 4.5 mi/hr of charge at 120v (1.44 kw) and 12 mi/hr of charge at 240v (3.77kw). Of course a L3 charge station fairly close to your place of business (+/- 15-20 miles?) would significantly change the analysis in your favor.

So when I'm showing off my LEAF the question I get asked the most is, "So how far will it take you on a charge?" My response is always the same. I say, "Well I look at it more like this. Who is the ideal purchaser of this vehicle (ignoring purchase economics)?"

1) You own a gasoline vehicle that you are going to keep, and
2) you travel less than 75 miles per day.

Can this 75 be stretched? Sure it can. It's just my pitch on what I see as the optimal owner of this vehicle. If you want to travel more, then you get in to all the marginal tactics to make sure you don't get stranded (no climate control, go real easy ALLLLL the time - not to mean I don't ALWAYS run in eco mode as I always do - always "looking over your shoulder" regarding range.... heck... who needs it).

I know there are a lot of eCar lovers out there like me but there is a point where it doesn't fit a particular situation. In the future there will be vehicles that have a greater range. With your daily commute you might be one of those that would be better suited to wait until that time (though I completely understand your interests.... after all, we're all junkies on this stuff or we wouldn't be here on this forum). Now that's not to say you should not purchase this car, but maybe, not purchase this car for purposes of your daily commute. Also, I'm not saying you can't pull it off but rather I don't see it as an ideal fit.

Malcolm

 

[walterbays]

30 miles or so at 50 to 55 mph up and down hills, a 20 mile section at 65 mph and then 12.5 miles at 45 to 55 mph.
Also I'm at about 1500 feet elevation and work at about 30 feet elevation.

As mentioned the hills will kill you. A Leaf fully loaded might be 1750 kg. You might go 1000 meters -- that would ordinarily be a lot elevation gain but you're looking at 500 meters even if you didn't have hills between home and work. And of course gravity will be gravity.

The math says that you'll use 4.75 kWh hill climbing each way. You'll get some of that back through regen but perhaps only 25%. In that case you're looking at using over 7 kWh just for hill climbing, which may be more than half what you'll get charging at work.

That means that sans hill climbing losses you'll need to go 120 miles on about 28 kWh, or almost 4.3 miles per kWh. That's borderline doable but throw in cold weather and bad weather and a couple of years of battery degradation and you may find yourself short of charge with some frequency.

A 240v charger at work would help a lot.

This app tells you the altitude of points on a map. So for instance I can see the altitude of my home, of my work, and of the valley in between. Early on at least I might keep a log of trips to give me a better idea of influences on range. I already see that I should note temperature and whether I use climate control. But also for some of my recurring routes, I might record elevation loss and gain.

http://www.appbrain.com/app/get-altitude/com.roomfour0four.android.getaltitude

Of course what I'd really like is for the car's computer to look at origin and destination and topography inbetween, and initial state of charge, and use that to refine its range estimates. But since the car can't even seem to manage yet to shut off charging remotely, I don't think I'll hold my breath for more esoteric features.