I have a suggestion for Nissan. Nissan needs to put in a software enhancement that I'll call "turnaround". Most everyone charges at home, especially until more remote charging stations are out there. Once you put your house address into the navigation unit you could select a button that says "turnaround". It would track the mileage from your home and basically let you know when you've hit the "point of no return". Stay tuned, this is different than how it calculates remaining mileage.
Let's say you go on a 30 mile (i.e. 60 mile round trip) trip. The first 10 miles would be at freeway speeds of 65 mph or more. The second 10 miles would be at stop and go city traffic. The third 10 miles would be up a gentle incline. The "Turnaround" feature would keep track of the mileage vs energy consumption so it would know the last 10 miles on the return trip will use more energy than usual. It would also know by how you are stopping and starting from stoplights how much energy is being consumed by your driving style. And third it would know that the incline will mean you use less energy on the return trip.
I think it would give a much more accurate picture of whether you'll be able to make it home. After 900 miles with our LEAF, my experience has been that it keeps a running picture of the history of the energy usage of the car. It seems to think that whatever your latest usage is (i.e. some have indicated it uses the last mile and a half to gauge future use), is what the car will experience in the future. By keeping track on a turnaround trip the system would know to keep a running total from your home point and not assume that future energy use will always be like the immediate past. It should be very easy just to have the system use the history from when the "Turnaround" feature was turned on and compare that to the amount of energy left in the battery.
If anyone agrees with this, how do you think is the best way to get a decision maker at Nissan to respond to this.