Roughly how many km will my Leaf 2017 go once it stops telling me my battery life?

[drbrake]

Maybe I can't be trusted with the answer? As I recall, as your battery runs out, first you can still see % power left but no range estimate. Then you can't get a % either (maybe at < 10%?) That only happened once and I was 5kmish from home, it was summer, and I made it back fine. So how panicked should I have been? Is there a "turtle mode" that kicks in when things get REALLY low? If so, what does it do? And can running the battery that low harm it or does the battery management software take care of that?

[estomax]

it varies a bit on battery health, but you will get --- for the range remaining when you hit Very Low Battery Warning (~10%) and then around 5-6% you will get --- for battery charge percent remaining also. After this you will get turtle mode (with accompanying light on the dash) where it cuts power (i think around 1-2% but only LeafSpy can tell you that), i have never hit that myself but have plenty of times hit the double --- in the 5% remaining capacity point. Either way, it is not awesome for the battery to run it super low, but in the grand scheme of things the BMS doesn't allow the battery to get low enough to cause significant damage to itself.

Marko

[drbrake]

I was on the highway and I worried that turtle mode would reduce my speed or something! So -- would be about 5% - 8km? I was lucky to get home - and I live on the top of a big hill!

[PrairieLEAF]

If you press the button with the square on it that pages through info screens, you should be able to get back to battery percentage after the low charge warning comes up.

How far it will go at a certain percentage depends on instantaneous draw. It will go much further rolling slowly along level residential streets than on the highway or climbing a hill!

I would try to avoid getting that low on charge, for all reasons! Find a place to boost up along the way, and/or modify driving style on that entire trip to avoid getting that low.

Cheers!

[SageBrush]

How far it will go at a certain percentage depends on instantaneous draw. It will go much further rolling slowly along level residential streets than on the highway or climbing a hill!

This is the key point. Any one cell that drops to ~ 2.6v pushes the car into turtle mode, even though the pack has energy. Nissan LEAF packs are known for cell to cell variation of 200 mV (or more) at low SoC so you can easily leave a couple percent SoC un-utilized, and more if the car is trying draw a lot of power.

[cwerdna]

If you press the button with the square on it that pages through info screens, you should be able to get back to battery percentage after the low charge warning comes up.

Eventually, the numeric % value will become ---%. I've personally experienced this. Doesn't matter how many times you page thru the screens. It's ---%.

If the OP wants more visibility, they need to get Leaf Spy and a compatible OBD2 dongle for their phone OS to see stuff like battery gids, cell voltages and the max imbalance in mV.

[jjeff]

My experience with turtle mode is it's basically to get you off to the side of the road, not much more. I got it once very near home while testing and was only able to go a long flat block at 5mph followed by coasting down a slight hill but was unable to make it all the way up my shorter driveway. I ended up having to run a 50' extension cord and use my 120v EVSE to charge it up enough to drive into the garage where I could use my 30a L2 EVSE. Unfortunately, I had to charge for several hours @ 120v to give it even enough power to turn it on and move the 30' slightly uphill to get to my L2.
Long story short, don't expect really any range on turtle and what you do have is slow on the flat and almost nonexistent power for a hill.