404CKF2
Member
Hi from Canada, our office here on Vancouver Island (the warmest part of this country) has had a LEAF with the cold weather package in its fleet for three months now. I have driven it a few hundred km now and what follows is impressions I have posted on another car brand forum. Overall I can say that the range so far has been poor, but maybe there is something we have been doing wrong, hence my joining here. I know now, for example, that the "range" estimate the car gives is not to be trusted, and that the battery capacity gauge is the one to watch. Bear in mind that the car did not come to us with a manual so I only recently download it off the Web. So there are some other rookie mistakes too (noted in brackets where I know it's a mistake). In any case, here are the reports on some of my drives in this car:
1) December 21, 2011 - I took our office's new LEAF for a spin today. With five up it accelerates like a big block Caddy from rest up to about 50 km/h (it was not in ECO mode). We have a charger under the building for it and upon unplugging and turning on the car it said that the range was 145 km. Then we turned on the heat (not the heated wheel or seats) and the range went down to 115 km. We did a short loop in town with it and after about 3 km of driving with two bursts of acceleration up to 60 km/h, the range was 102 km. Today the temperature here is about +6 C.
Very interesting car, I will report more when there is more to tell.
2) January 12 2012 - Here is a longer report. Today I had an evening meeting in Cobble Hill so a colleague and I took the LEAF. The ambient temperature was about +2 C when we left the office at 6:30 PM. Upon "activating" the car with the start button, the range figure was 136 km with the car fully charged and with the basic heater and defroster on. The odometer read 350 km. A tad more than our white smart diesel convertible "Snowball", when we bought it!
Our trip was about 15 km each way. In the Duncan city traffic the car was fine, lots of whirring and space shuttle noises, but not unpleasant to hear. We then got on the Trans-Canada Highway heading south and as the speed limit raised to 80 km/h, the car began to make a muted honking noise under the hood, definitely not normal I should think, but we had no idea what the source was. It was loud enough to be annoying, but it was not the horn, though it sounded a bit like muted one, beeping intermittently. After about 1 minute at speed, this noise subsided and the road roar and wind noise took over.
We cruised down the highway at 90 km/h in the 90 zone, with the basic heat on but the heated seats off, so we were trying to conserve energy.
The car at speed handles like most other modern cars - a little numb at the helm, meaning electrically assisted steering which is kind of lifeless, a firm ride, little roll in the corners, bland. This is definitely not a driving enthusiast's car. But it's also not dismal or awful, just a bit anaesthetic. The braking felt unusually good for a car with regenerative system, it is better than the Honda Civic Hybrid is, at least.
At our destination, after 15 km, the remaining range was 98 km - in other words, the 15 km drive used 40 km of energy. That was probably because the car was driven from a cold start and the cabin had to be warmed up from 5 degrees or so.
After a 1.5 hour meeting, the car was driven back to the office. The range estimate upon leaving was 96 km, and when we got back to the office, the remaining range was estimated at 78 km, so for that 15 km, the energy used was 18 km on the "range" scale. Obviously, the lights were on, being evening, and we also had the heated seats on "low" during the drive back. So, overall, for the 30 km trip, 58 km of energy was used up. In colder weather with snow or rain, I can imagine that adding wipers and the high setting for heated seats could make the range go down a bit faster.
When the car is sitting outside, the battery protects itself so I have heard, whether recharging or not, with self-heating. In cold weather, this can consume a fair bit of power. So it makes sense to have the car plugged in a fair bit, especially if it's not going to be used much.
We plugged the car into the 220V charger and that was the end of that.
3) January 25, 2012 - Today it was exactly a 40 km round trip. On the leg south (highway, mainly 90 km/h) my colleague Rob drove. Range estimate when we left was 114 km, and when we arrived, the car has only used 24 km of electricity range: 90 km). The weather was plus 6 C, wipers and lights on plus blower due to the w/s fogging up again. Heated wheel was on as well as both heated seats, on low setting.
I drove on the way back and despite a reasonable effort to be frugal with the e-juice, the 20 km trip used 30 km of electricity. So the residual range was 60 km as we parked the car and docked it to the charger. So overall it was better than the last test: 54 km of "range" used to get it 40 km. I would think that the real range in this climate at this time of year would be about 80 km at the high end.
This weekend I will be test driving the e-smart fortwo again, we will see how it compares. (Result: I drove the smart fortwo ED in late January and it was a very good car over my 33 km drive in the rain, its range seemed to be similar to our LEAF, that is about 100 km. This was the 40 HP version, not the 70 HP one coming out - with better battery - this fall).
4) February 2, 2012 - OK, so tonight's drive was in cool dry weather 3-4 degrees C. It was a round trip to a meeting, the first leg of which was 21 km, the return leg two hours later being 24 km. I drove sensibly but did have one little burst above 130 km/h when the dry road was empty, that lasted about two seconds. Otherwise I was at 90 km/h or 60 km/h on country back roads. The acceleration even at those speeds is strong, this car will blow any smart ever sold over here into the weeds, remapped ones included. Until it runs out of juice!
The "range" figure probably should not be paid too much attention to, despite my previous postings: it's not as useful as the 12 blobs on the electric juice gauge that is in the instrument cluster. This is partly because the range estimate back-calculates energy use and extrapolates it into the future. This does not even work well on my Mercedes B 200; it is too dependent upon driving style and fluctuates alarmingly on hills or after accelerating to speed. So instead of the analog 100% fully charged pod gauge on the smart Electric Drive, there is a 12 blob LCD on the LEAF.....still, as coarse as that is, it's better than the range estimate as a guide to how far you may be able to go. But for the record, the range - fully charged and with seat heater and heated seat on (only one occupant this time) was 129 km and upon my return it was 69 km, hence 60 km of range had been used in a 45 km drive. A cool but useless feature is the range radius that shows on the GPS screen, but because it's based on "range" (and most certainly does not model a Z-coordinate), it is not reliable. Fun to look at though.
But more importantly, the 12 blob fuel juice gauge had lost 6 of its blobs when I got back to the office just now. So roughly half of the battery capacity had been used up this evening. So the nominal range in these conditions seems to be a bit under 90 km (because the last two blobs on the gauge are red). However, driven more carefully, it would likely pull over 100 km. Recharge time from 50% to full on the 240 V was a bit over 4 hours (estimated), and more like 12 hours on the 110 V.
I do like this car, it is fun to drive and the steering is better than my B-Class (but the unassisted smart steering is better than both).
Tomorrow there will be a longer drive with two-up so that should be interesting to report on.
5) February 3, 2012 - Today we drove it in good weather (sunny, + 8 degrees) 82 km. The range started at 179 km and ended at 42. The more accurate battery gauge started at 12/12 and ended at 3/12. The bottom 2 blobs are red-coloured so we were close to the end of the effective range. Probably we could have eked out 90 km on this charge without running into the bottom two blobs.
No wipers, HVAC was off, heated seats were on for half the drive, DRL only, no radio. Speeds ranged from 100 km/h to 50 km/h and a bit of local neighbourhood driving, usually 90 km/h on the highway.
The LEAF has a "tree growing" reward system to tell you how you drive and we got 3.6 of a possible maximum 4 trees.
So the range in good but cool conditions seems similar to the smart electric drive 40 HP version. To be frank, it's a little disappointing. It's like driving one of my two smart diesel convertibles around all the time with the 5.0 L warning blinking (because that will take you far over 100 km in a smart diesel, probably 130+ km). I mean, with a full charge in the LEAF, it's like the 5.0 L is flashing in your face (maybe a 4.5) and when we got back it was like 0.5 L warning in a smart diesel blinking, if not less. That's the subjective impression.
6) February 7, 2012 - This evening there was a more severe range test. A colleague and I had a meeting at Youbou, which is about 43 km from Duncan where the car is based, and the community hall at Youbou is at Cowichan Lake, about 225 m above sea level - Duncan is more or less at sea level. So the car was fully charged when we left - just unplugged with 12 blobs showing on the "fuel" charge gauge - and the range calculation indicated 195 km with the HVAC off. It was dark both ways so the LED headlights were on with occasional high beam use, the speed limit is 100 km/h and we were doing it. HVAC was off until the windshield started fogging up and we had to start the blower, with the temperature set at 22 and seat heaters on low. Radio was off. Outdoor temperature was about 3-5 degrees C.
We drove up there and when the car was parked, the gauge indicated 6 blobs. After the meeting, the car upon startup indicated only 5 blobs. The drive home was interesting, as the charge blobs dropped precipitously despite being generally downhill. About 10 km from the office we got halfway into the red zone, one blob left. We were white knuckling it for the last few km and about 500 m from the office, a synthetic female voice warned us that we were very low on charge and had to charge ASAP. So we squeaked her in and got the 220V plug on there right away.
Total distance driven: 87.6 km, charge blobs used: 11/12. So a safe range for average conditions so far is about 85-90 km.
7) March 1, 2012 - I just got back from Victoria in the LEAF; it was clear and sunny, no HVAC, no heaters on, in Eco mode. Left the office with 11/12 blobs in the battery, got to town with 5/11 blobs. That's 60 km for half the battery capacity. Our feet were cold when we got to Victoria for our meeting.
How did we get home after the meeting with only 5/12 blobs? Well, the Fairmont Empress hotel has a free charging station, 220V, right out front and they kindly consented to let us use the charger twice - once for an hour and half when we ate lunch (not in the Empress) and again after the meeting way down Fort Street, because we felt that the 6/12 blobs would not get us home. So we went back to the Empress, put it on the free charger again for an hour and had a dessert at Milestone's across the road.....free parking as well, it doesn't get any better than that!
An hour on the charger gives about 1/12 blobs on the charge gauge, at least at that one.
Anyway with the car and us feeling better, we headed into rush hour traffic with 7/12 blobs. When we arrived in Duncan at the office 60 km later, there were still two blobs left, in the red zone but not on the one blob which gives rise to panicky messages to recharge the car soon. So a 130 km round trip (the other 10 being to and from the meeting site) proves it is possible to go 130 km in the car, but without both recharges (2.5 hours total) we'd not likely have made it home.
8) March 20, 2012 - Did another 84 km in the car two evenings ago - three up to Youbou and back, wipers on due to rain, temp around freezing, no heated seats etc on. Total estimated range on leaving the plug was 165 km. We made it to 84 km at the end of the round trip before the battery reserve was down to 1/12 with noisy warnings to recharge about to begin, and "range" down to 16 km. The manual warns you not to get into the "red zone" of the battery gauge if you can avoid it, we were halfway through it. On the drive home we were going 40-60 km/h due to snow covered roads. Car was in ECO mode. The range in this weather truly is godawful.
This car has headlights that manage to be both hideous (personal taste, OK) and have about 80% of their plastic lens exposed to the sky versus the 20% that represents frontal area (i.e. where the light is supposed to go, ahead of the car).
Although the LED low beams do have projector lenses, there is so much chromed plastic within the headlight assemblies, 80% of which is exposed to the sky, that the low beams shoot fugitive light upwards. On a clear evening, this is not an issue, but in fog or falling snow - even heavy rain, it is a DISASTER. On the return leg of this trip, we were unable to drive faster than 45 km/h in the falling snow on our way home from Youbou due to this ridiculous artefact of the surrealist car stylists at Nissan. Otherwise we probably would have been doing 70 km/h on the snow covered roads, in a 100 km/h zone. Ironically, even the fog lights, that are mounted in the lowest part of the front bumper, also had a fugitive light problem. This really is a major design flaw.
So there you have it, my impressions so far. Do you think our car has a duff battery? The range is about 1/2 to 1/3 of what I am reading about here.
I will check the VIN next week and update my profile with it. I assume you have a Registry? I am doing one for Peugeot 404s, so I know the VIN is important.
1) December 21, 2011 - I took our office's new LEAF for a spin today. With five up it accelerates like a big block Caddy from rest up to about 50 km/h (it was not in ECO mode). We have a charger under the building for it and upon unplugging and turning on the car it said that the range was 145 km. Then we turned on the heat (not the heated wheel or seats) and the range went down to 115 km. We did a short loop in town with it and after about 3 km of driving with two bursts of acceleration up to 60 km/h, the range was 102 km. Today the temperature here is about +6 C.
Very interesting car, I will report more when there is more to tell.
2) January 12 2012 - Here is a longer report. Today I had an evening meeting in Cobble Hill so a colleague and I took the LEAF. The ambient temperature was about +2 C when we left the office at 6:30 PM. Upon "activating" the car with the start button, the range figure was 136 km with the car fully charged and with the basic heater and defroster on. The odometer read 350 km. A tad more than our white smart diesel convertible "Snowball", when we bought it!
Our trip was about 15 km each way. In the Duncan city traffic the car was fine, lots of whirring and space shuttle noises, but not unpleasant to hear. We then got on the Trans-Canada Highway heading south and as the speed limit raised to 80 km/h, the car began to make a muted honking noise under the hood, definitely not normal I should think, but we had no idea what the source was. It was loud enough to be annoying, but it was not the horn, though it sounded a bit like muted one, beeping intermittently. After about 1 minute at speed, this noise subsided and the road roar and wind noise took over.
We cruised down the highway at 90 km/h in the 90 zone, with the basic heat on but the heated seats off, so we were trying to conserve energy.
The car at speed handles like most other modern cars - a little numb at the helm, meaning electrically assisted steering which is kind of lifeless, a firm ride, little roll in the corners, bland. This is definitely not a driving enthusiast's car. But it's also not dismal or awful, just a bit anaesthetic. The braking felt unusually good for a car with regenerative system, it is better than the Honda Civic Hybrid is, at least.
At our destination, after 15 km, the remaining range was 98 km - in other words, the 15 km drive used 40 km of energy. That was probably because the car was driven from a cold start and the cabin had to be warmed up from 5 degrees or so.
After a 1.5 hour meeting, the car was driven back to the office. The range estimate upon leaving was 96 km, and when we got back to the office, the remaining range was estimated at 78 km, so for that 15 km, the energy used was 18 km on the "range" scale. Obviously, the lights were on, being evening, and we also had the heated seats on "low" during the drive back. So, overall, for the 30 km trip, 58 km of energy was used up. In colder weather with snow or rain, I can imagine that adding wipers and the high setting for heated seats could make the range go down a bit faster.
When the car is sitting outside, the battery protects itself so I have heard, whether recharging or not, with self-heating. In cold weather, this can consume a fair bit of power. So it makes sense to have the car plugged in a fair bit, especially if it's not going to be used much.
We plugged the car into the 220V charger and that was the end of that.
3) January 25, 2012 - Today it was exactly a 40 km round trip. On the leg south (highway, mainly 90 km/h) my colleague Rob drove. Range estimate when we left was 114 km, and when we arrived, the car has only used 24 km of electricity range: 90 km). The weather was plus 6 C, wipers and lights on plus blower due to the w/s fogging up again. Heated wheel was on as well as both heated seats, on low setting.
I drove on the way back and despite a reasonable effort to be frugal with the e-juice, the 20 km trip used 30 km of electricity. So the residual range was 60 km as we parked the car and docked it to the charger. So overall it was better than the last test: 54 km of "range" used to get it 40 km. I would think that the real range in this climate at this time of year would be about 80 km at the high end.
This weekend I will be test driving the e-smart fortwo again, we will see how it compares. (Result: I drove the smart fortwo ED in late January and it was a very good car over my 33 km drive in the rain, its range seemed to be similar to our LEAF, that is about 100 km. This was the 40 HP version, not the 70 HP one coming out - with better battery - this fall).
4) February 2, 2012 - OK, so tonight's drive was in cool dry weather 3-4 degrees C. It was a round trip to a meeting, the first leg of which was 21 km, the return leg two hours later being 24 km. I drove sensibly but did have one little burst above 130 km/h when the dry road was empty, that lasted about two seconds. Otherwise I was at 90 km/h or 60 km/h on country back roads. The acceleration even at those speeds is strong, this car will blow any smart ever sold over here into the weeds, remapped ones included. Until it runs out of juice!
The "range" figure probably should not be paid too much attention to, despite my previous postings: it's not as useful as the 12 blobs on the electric juice gauge that is in the instrument cluster. This is partly because the range estimate back-calculates energy use and extrapolates it into the future. This does not even work well on my Mercedes B 200; it is too dependent upon driving style and fluctuates alarmingly on hills or after accelerating to speed. So instead of the analog 100% fully charged pod gauge on the smart Electric Drive, there is a 12 blob LCD on the LEAF.....still, as coarse as that is, it's better than the range estimate as a guide to how far you may be able to go. But for the record, the range - fully charged and with seat heater and heated seat on (only one occupant this time) was 129 km and upon my return it was 69 km, hence 60 km of range had been used in a 45 km drive. A cool but useless feature is the range radius that shows on the GPS screen, but because it's based on "range" (and most certainly does not model a Z-coordinate), it is not reliable. Fun to look at though.
But more importantly, the 12 blob fuel juice gauge had lost 6 of its blobs when I got back to the office just now. So roughly half of the battery capacity had been used up this evening. So the nominal range in these conditions seems to be a bit under 90 km (because the last two blobs on the gauge are red). However, driven more carefully, it would likely pull over 100 km. Recharge time from 50% to full on the 240 V was a bit over 4 hours (estimated), and more like 12 hours on the 110 V.
I do like this car, it is fun to drive and the steering is better than my B-Class (but the unassisted smart steering is better than both).
Tomorrow there will be a longer drive with two-up so that should be interesting to report on.
5) February 3, 2012 - Today we drove it in good weather (sunny, + 8 degrees) 82 km. The range started at 179 km and ended at 42. The more accurate battery gauge started at 12/12 and ended at 3/12. The bottom 2 blobs are red-coloured so we were close to the end of the effective range. Probably we could have eked out 90 km on this charge without running into the bottom two blobs.
No wipers, HVAC was off, heated seats were on for half the drive, DRL only, no radio. Speeds ranged from 100 km/h to 50 km/h and a bit of local neighbourhood driving, usually 90 km/h on the highway.
The LEAF has a "tree growing" reward system to tell you how you drive and we got 3.6 of a possible maximum 4 trees.
So the range in good but cool conditions seems similar to the smart electric drive 40 HP version. To be frank, it's a little disappointing. It's like driving one of my two smart diesel convertibles around all the time with the 5.0 L warning blinking (because that will take you far over 100 km in a smart diesel, probably 130+ km). I mean, with a full charge in the LEAF, it's like the 5.0 L is flashing in your face (maybe a 4.5) and when we got back it was like 0.5 L warning in a smart diesel blinking, if not less. That's the subjective impression.
6) February 7, 2012 - This evening there was a more severe range test. A colleague and I had a meeting at Youbou, which is about 43 km from Duncan where the car is based, and the community hall at Youbou is at Cowichan Lake, about 225 m above sea level - Duncan is more or less at sea level. So the car was fully charged when we left - just unplugged with 12 blobs showing on the "fuel" charge gauge - and the range calculation indicated 195 km with the HVAC off. It was dark both ways so the LED headlights were on with occasional high beam use, the speed limit is 100 km/h and we were doing it. HVAC was off until the windshield started fogging up and we had to start the blower, with the temperature set at 22 and seat heaters on low. Radio was off. Outdoor temperature was about 3-5 degrees C.
We drove up there and when the car was parked, the gauge indicated 6 blobs. After the meeting, the car upon startup indicated only 5 blobs. The drive home was interesting, as the charge blobs dropped precipitously despite being generally downhill. About 10 km from the office we got halfway into the red zone, one blob left. We were white knuckling it for the last few km and about 500 m from the office, a synthetic female voice warned us that we were very low on charge and had to charge ASAP. So we squeaked her in and got the 220V plug on there right away.
Total distance driven: 87.6 km, charge blobs used: 11/12. So a safe range for average conditions so far is about 85-90 km.
7) March 1, 2012 - I just got back from Victoria in the LEAF; it was clear and sunny, no HVAC, no heaters on, in Eco mode. Left the office with 11/12 blobs in the battery, got to town with 5/11 blobs. That's 60 km for half the battery capacity. Our feet were cold when we got to Victoria for our meeting.
How did we get home after the meeting with only 5/12 blobs? Well, the Fairmont Empress hotel has a free charging station, 220V, right out front and they kindly consented to let us use the charger twice - once for an hour and half when we ate lunch (not in the Empress) and again after the meeting way down Fort Street, because we felt that the 6/12 blobs would not get us home. So we went back to the Empress, put it on the free charger again for an hour and had a dessert at Milestone's across the road.....free parking as well, it doesn't get any better than that!
An hour on the charger gives about 1/12 blobs on the charge gauge, at least at that one.
Anyway with the car and us feeling better, we headed into rush hour traffic with 7/12 blobs. When we arrived in Duncan at the office 60 km later, there were still two blobs left, in the red zone but not on the one blob which gives rise to panicky messages to recharge the car soon. So a 130 km round trip (the other 10 being to and from the meeting site) proves it is possible to go 130 km in the car, but without both recharges (2.5 hours total) we'd not likely have made it home.
8) March 20, 2012 - Did another 84 km in the car two evenings ago - three up to Youbou and back, wipers on due to rain, temp around freezing, no heated seats etc on. Total estimated range on leaving the plug was 165 km. We made it to 84 km at the end of the round trip before the battery reserve was down to 1/12 with noisy warnings to recharge about to begin, and "range" down to 16 km. The manual warns you not to get into the "red zone" of the battery gauge if you can avoid it, we were halfway through it. On the drive home we were going 40-60 km/h due to snow covered roads. Car was in ECO mode. The range in this weather truly is godawful.
This car has headlights that manage to be both hideous (personal taste, OK) and have about 80% of their plastic lens exposed to the sky versus the 20% that represents frontal area (i.e. where the light is supposed to go, ahead of the car).
Although the LED low beams do have projector lenses, there is so much chromed plastic within the headlight assemblies, 80% of which is exposed to the sky, that the low beams shoot fugitive light upwards. On a clear evening, this is not an issue, but in fog or falling snow - even heavy rain, it is a DISASTER. On the return leg of this trip, we were unable to drive faster than 45 km/h in the falling snow on our way home from Youbou due to this ridiculous artefact of the surrealist car stylists at Nissan. Otherwise we probably would have been doing 70 km/h on the snow covered roads, in a 100 km/h zone. Ironically, even the fog lights, that are mounted in the lowest part of the front bumper, also had a fugitive light problem. This really is a major design flaw.
So there you have it, my impressions so far. Do you think our car has a duff battery? The range is about 1/2 to 1/3 of what I am reading about here.
I will check the VIN next week and update my profile with it. I assume you have a Registry? I am doing one for Peugeot 404s, so I know the VIN is important.
