Just drove home with 2015 Leaf S. —-> half the range stated. Please help

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Bosc

New member
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Nov 17, 2021
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Hello,

My name is Bosc and I live in Southern Vancouver Island. I just drove home with my new to me 2015 Leaf S. Super exciting except I used half the battery to drive 27km. What happened? I hardly used the heat, I drove gently. The car says it has 11/12 bars and 120km range at 100%. Is this to be expected? I can’t use this car if it only goes a maximum of 60kms. Thanks.
I searched around but couldn’t see this topic so apologies if I’m wasting peoples time.
 
It is possible that the Battery Management System (BMS) was reset a couple of weeks ago to reflect more capacity bars than were present. However, since the battery in the 2015 is fairly slow to degrade, I think it's likelier that the battery has one or more bad cells, and that those bad cells (or single cell) are what is killing the range. You need to get LeafSpy Pro and a suitable ODBII port reader like the one in my signature to go with it. LeafSpy will show any bad cells, and may show a BMS reset if it wasn't done very recently. You should also be considering options to return the car.

Welcome. Others will have more to say about this - I have to go.
 
Did you actually use 50% of the battery capacity to drive 27 kms, or are you exaggerating a bit?

At this time of year, with a 2015 Leaf S, you will definitely get substantially less range than during summer, but 54 km total range is more indicative of an 8 or 9 bar Leaf. I would expect a summer range of maybe 80 km, if 54 km is the limit right now.

Was the route home very hilly? Was there a strong head wind? Are the tires flat? Were you driving most of that distance at highway speeds?

Something is definitely not right...
 
Bosc said:
Hello,

My name is Bosc and I live in Southern Vancouver Island. I just drove home with my new to me 2015 Leaf S. Super exciting except I used half the battery to drive 27km. What happened? I hardly used the heat, I drove gently. The car says it has 11/12 bars and 120km range at 100%. Is this to be expected? I can’t use this car if it only goes a maximum of 60kms. Thanks.
I searched around but couldn’t see this topic so apologies if I’m wasting peoples time.

There are a lot of small things that can add up to range loss when the Leaf itself is actually fine. The issue is going through a check-list of sorts to get the "easy" ones out of the way before moving on to the actual battery in the Leaf, if that turns out to be the issue.

I can say with my experience some of my friends have with the 2015 line, that would not be expected behavior, but without more info about the route, driving conditions, condition of the Leaf, etc; it's hard to say.

The easy list starts with the tires, running snow tires vs. summer tires for example, are the tires properly inflated since the Leaf is a lot heavier than your average ICE vehicle, so it can really squish the tires and eat up a lot of range. Was the drive in sub-zero temperatures with a mighty head-wind, while you have the heat cranked on high with the windows down, etc? Anyone coming from an ICE vehicle to an EV always have a bit of a learning curve because the dealerships tend to gloss over a lot of technical stuff that be done to improvement range and still have a comfortable ride for example.
 
There are dozens of threads exactly like yours. Search some more.

Your question comes down to this: how much energy was used for the battery SoC to drop from 100% to 50%.
Charge up at a public L2 that shows energy metered to find out.
 
Thanks for the replies.

I’m running nearly flat and super smoothly about 80km/hr (50mph) with no heat in eco mode. Summer tires. I was a hyper miler before this so very aware of all the range loss factors. Heated at home before unplugged.
Had the same thing happen on the drive in to work. Losing 30km but only driving 15km. I really can’t drive any smoother.
For sure investigate more. I’m sure everyone starts out driving with pazazz and wonders what happened, but there has to be more to it.
 
Don't believe the dashboard range display. It will give horribly misleading inflated range values.

Get LeafSpyPro. Have it show you the remaining kWh in the battery pack. Tell it your current driving efficiency in the app (km/kWh) - you can get this from the dashboard. This will show you the actual remaining range on the car as you drive.
 
i like to use the Energy Info screen on the center display--it gives a great picture of how much you are using for climate control plus driving, etc. Turn climate control off or the heater will be running when the fan is On.
 
Basically, at this point you need to run LeafSpy on the car. It will both give a more accurate range estimate, and identify both any bad cells and/or a BMS reset - provided that it wasn't done very recently. It does that by giving an accurate capacity reading, in AH, for the battery.
 
nlspace said:
i like to use the Energy Info screen on the center display--it gives a great picture of how much you are using for climate control plus driving, etc. Turn climate control off or the heater will be running when the fan is On.

Agreed, I find that summary screen very useful too. Unfortunately, the OP has an S trim.
 
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