Wheels, tires and range -- what works best?

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I, too, am trying to wrap my head around Doug's range numbers.
I don't charge to 100% very often, so don't have a recent GOM reading
at full (54.5kWh battery capacity @ 100%). Will report that when possible. My opinion is that it's all about the
flat terrain around the Windy City.
 
Correct, I am in flat land. Today drove to and from the city (from North side) in traffic at 82F. I had 6 miles/kWh going in and 5.8 coming back (including last 4 miles at 55-60mph). About 14-15 miles each way.

Maximize momentum, get really good at the 0 power pedal position of the accelerator, and minimize braking (and regen when possible).

The eRange tires are doing really well now (45psi). ~10K miles on the tires. SoH is 89.57%

I will try to make a short video tomorrow.
 
The SOH on my Leafspy reads out as 0.00%. Everything else seems to read out just fine. Battery capacity shows as 60+ kWh. Not sure what is going on. At any rate, I am still not clear how Doug is getting GOM estimates of more than 300 miles on a car the factory says is rated for no more than 226 miles. I really would like to get a definitive answer to that.
Just for giggles, I took a small trip yesterday up to Pinecrest Lake - a distance of 30 miles from my home, but an elevation change of +3400'. I forgot to plug in my dongle, so did not get a Leafspy reading. However, the GOM when I started from home showed 193. I zeroed out the Average kWh meter. The highway up the hill is a good smooth road, mostly two lane with 3 short sections of 4 lane divided highway. There are lots of turns, of course, so speeds are usually in the 35 to 45 range on those, going up to 65-70 on the longer straighter sections. Temp outside was about 75, with no wind to speak of, and light traffic. With climate control set to automatic, trans in B range, Eco mode, and e-pedal (usually) engaged, I drove as I normally do, with no attempt to "hyper-mile". Even going up-hill, the car had plenty of power, and had no trouble getting up to 70 mph.
When I got to the lake, the GOM read 125 miles, and the Average kWh meter showed 2.2 kWh. Since the usual average I see is about 3.2 kWh, that doesn't seem too bad considering it was up-hill all the way. On the way back, I zeroed out the meter again. 3400' in 30 miles is a fair elevation change, but it really isn't radically steep. Other than a couple of spots, it is a pretty gradual grade change all the way. I took it out of e-pedal a couple of times on a downgrade to see what the regen was doing, and noticed that clicking e-pedal back on added a couple of bars over just being in straight B mode, so after noticing that, I just left e-pedal on. I have read comments on the forum that using e-pedal "applies the brakes" and therefore reduces the amount of regen, but I did not find that to be the case at all - just the opposite, in fact. At any rate, when I got home, the GOM showed 185 - meaning I used a net 8 miles of range to make a round trip of 60 miles. I'll take that all day long! Even more startling to me was that the Average kWh meter showed a reading of 27.2 kWh! I guess getting that downhill regen is one of the advantages of living here in the Sierra foothills! Also, I should note that I only lightly touched the brake pedal perhaps two or three times on the entire trip - another advantage of using e-pedal.
Hopefully this info will be of interest to at least a few of you folks. I realize that my driving conditions are totally different than for most of you, but these facts will give you (at least for the newbies) an idea of what a Leaf is capable of. As long as it is used for what it is designed for, it is a great little car!
 
We routinely get 5.2 to 5.6 on level country roads over long distances. The sweet spot is around 40 mph with constant velocity, moderate temps, smooth roads. 44 psi 205/55R-16 Bridgestone Ecopia EP422 Plus SL. Normal driving otherwise. We have a 60 mile trip one way, and arrive with 33% left on the battery.
 
At any rate, when I got home, the GOM showed 185 - meaning I used a net 8 miles of range to make a round trip of 60 miles.
I don't think you're interpreting this correctly. The GOM is telling you that if you continued driving on a net downhill road your range would be approximately 185 miles on that road and under the conditions you were most recently driving in. But, I doubt that you can drive downhill for 185 miles.

Our lowly 10 SOH bar 2014 Leaf (24 kWh battery) shows >100 miles (I've seen as high as 115) on the GOM after my wife charges it at her work, but I would never try to drive it 100 miles. The last few miles of her drive to work are downhill with the speed limit and slope such that you roll almost the entire way, so the GOM is estimating future range based on driving conditions that the car only sees during those last few miles to her work. When she leaves for home and starts the long uphill, the GOM drops precipitously, but that estimate is also not realistic because the entire trip home is not an uphill climb. In both cases, using the GOM range estimate presents an unrealistic sense of the true range of the car over the totality of her 35 mile roundtrip drive to/from work.

Our lifetime efficiency over almost 4 years/20K miles of ownership is 5.4 miles/kWh. That is a far more useful metric for estimating range than whatever the GOM shows at any given moment.
 
The SOH on my Leafspy reads out as 0.00%. Everything else seems to read out just fine. Battery capacity shows as 60+ kWh. Not sure what is going on. At any rate, I am still not clear how Doug is getting GOM estimates of more than 300 miles on a car the factory says is rated for no more than 226 miles. I really would like to get a definitive answer to that.
Just for giggles, I took a small trip yesterday up to Pinecrest Lake - a distance of 30 miles from my home, but an elevation change of +3400'. I forgot to plug in my dongle, so did not get a Leafspy reading. However, the GOM when I started from home showed 193. I zeroed out the Average kWh meter. The highway up the hill is a good smooth road, mostly two lane with 3 short sections of 4 lane divided highway. There are lots of turns, of course, so speeds are usually in the 35 to 45 range on those, going up to 65-70 on the longer straighter sections. Temp outside was about 75, with no wind to speak of, and light traffic. With climate control set to automatic, trans in B range, Eco mode, and e-pedal (usually) engaged, I drove as I normally do, with no attempt to "hyper-mile". Even going up-hill, the car had plenty of power, and had no trouble getting up to 70 mph.
When I got to the lake, the GOM read 125 miles, and the Average kWh meter showed 2.2 kWh. Since the usual average I see is about 3.2 kWh, that doesn't seem too bad considering it was up-hill all the way. On the way back, I zeroed out the meter again. 3400' in 30 miles is a fair elevation change, but it really isn't radically steep. Other than a couple of spots, it is a pretty gradual grade change all the way. I took it out of e-pedal a couple of times on a downgrade to see what the regen was doing, and noticed that clicking e-pedal back on added a couple of bars over just being in straight B mode, so after noticing that, I just left e-pedal on. I have read comments on the forum that using e-pedal "applies the brakes" and therefore reduces the amount of regen, but I did not find that to be the case at all - just the opposite, in fact. At any rate, when I got home, the GOM showed 185 - meaning I used a net 8 miles of range to make a round trip of 60 miles. I'll take that all day long! Even more startling to me was that the Average kWh meter showed a reading of 27.2 kWh! I guess getting that downhill regen is one of the advantages of living here in the Sierra foothills! Also, I should note that I only lightly touched the brake pedal perhaps two or three times on the entire trip - another advantage of using e-pedal.
Hopefully this info will be of interest to at least a few of you folks. I realize that my driving conditions are totally different than for most of you, but these facts will give you (at least for the newbies) an idea of what a Leaf is capable of. As long as it is used for what it is designed for, it is a great little car!
Ancient Member:
it would be interesting to see the mi/kWh and GOM readings on that route if you reset them at the start and let them on w/o resetting for the entire trip. This will of course give a more accurate avg numbers. Thanks for posting.
 
I don't think you're interpreting this correctly. The GOM is telling you that if you continued driving on a net downhill road your range would be approximately 185 miles on that road and under the conditions you were most recently driving in. But, I doubt that you can drive downhill for 185 miles.

Our lowly 10 SOH bar 2014 Leaf (24 kWh battery) shows >100 miles (I've seen as high as 115) on the GOM after my wife charges it at her work, but I would never try to drive it 100 miles. The last few miles of her drive to work are downhill with the speed limit and slope such that you roll almost the entire way, so the GOM is estimating future range based on driving conditions that the car only sees during those last few miles to her work. When she leaves for home and starts the long uphill, the GOM drops precipitously, but that estimate is also not realistic because the entire trip home is not an uphill climb. In both cases, using the GOM range estimate presents an unrealistic sense of the true range of the car over the totality of her 35 mile roundtrip drive to/from work.

Our lifetime efficiency over almost 4 years/20K miles of ownership is 5.4 miles/kWh. That is a far more useful metric for estimating range than whatever the GOM shows at any given moment.
Thank you for your input, but I respectfully disagree. The GOM told me I had recovered 60 miles of range, getting me back to 185 miles available. My state of charge (SOC) also increased back up to 68%, from the 45% it had dropped to when the GOM had dropped to 125. If the GOM were merely estimating how many miles I could drive based on the conditions I had just experienced, I don't think the SOC would have also adjusted itself. It would have stayed at its low point, and continued dropping until the next charging session.
May I ask how you determine your lifetime efficiency figure? Do you never reset your Average kWh meter? Or are you getting that from Leafspy? If so, where do you see that figure? I don't see anything like that on my Leafspy. I am probably missing something that should be obvious, which wouldn't be unusual!
 
The average kWh reading is somewhere in the dash display. I have a 2014 so it's most likely different on newer cars, but I suspect it's still there somewhere. I have reset it a couple times and after a few days it settles back in at 5.4 miles/kWh, which is not too surprising as the vast majority of the car's miles come from my wife's commute along the same route with a bit of additional local driving (e.g., it's 2.5 miles into the nearest town for the grocery and public library).

You definitely recover charge on a long downhill, but you won't recover nearly as much energy as you spent to go up that hill. That's just physics. If you want to test my hypothesis, charge your battery to 68%, reset your trip meter, and try to drive 185 miles without charging.

To look at it another way, during the uphill leg of your drive your battery most likely was at 68% charge at some point. Did the GOM read 185 miles then?

If you like using the GOM that's fine. All I'm saying is that your miles/kWh efficiency is a more broadly applicable metric to use.
 
As promised here w as s today's commute into work. I got off a few minutes late, so was on streets a couple miles more than normal, result was still pretty consistent. If you carefully manage throttle in heavy (but not completely stopped) traffic, efficiency can be excellent.

 
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