How much mileage are you getting in this cold weather ?

Found the following site, which explains various factors affecting battery life very clearly:

http://www.mpoweruk.com/life.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Scroll down the Depth of Discharge section for that specifically.

kubel said:

...Heater (auto, 75F, feels like 55F), heated steering wheel, and heated seat on hi running non-stop. Eco mode....

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I wanted to add that based on my experience the heater will only draw approximately 1500 watts max in ECO mode. That's probably why your setting of 75 feels like 55. This behavior is overridden with the defrost or when 90 degrees is selected

I'm in the Denver area and I've been getting between 2.4 and 2.7 mKwh. The temps have been in the single digits F on my way to work and merely cold on the way home. I commute 26 miles to work. 10 miles at 82mph, 15 miles at 70 mph. 1-2 miles surface speeds. I charge to 80% at home and work. Blast the heat, crank the seat and I LOVE this car....

Leon said:

I'm in the Denver area and I've been getting between 2.4 and 2.7 mKwh. The temps have been in the single digits F on my way to work and merely cold on the way home. I commute 26 miles to work. 10 miles at 82mph, 15 miles at 70 mph. 1-2 miles surface speeds. I charge to 80% at home and work. Blast the heat, crank the seat and I LOVE this car....

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So, you're doing 52 miles total? Do you hit Low Battery Warning?

TonyWilliams said:

So, you're doing 52 miles total? Do you hit Low Battery Warning?

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Think you might have missed where he says he's charging to 80% at both home AND work.

Tuesday trip in the Bay area; nearly all freeway. Trip 1 was early morning, kept speed at 55 or below; this was not a problem as it fit in with the traffic flow at that time. Arrived with just having dropped to 2 bars, and about 24 miles remaining on the GOM.

Trip 3 was the return. Gridlock on 101 fwy from Palo Alto to San Francisco. Saved enough energy from these slow speeds (5.8 m/kWh) that once I got off the Bay Bridge I was able to take the carpool lane mostly at 65mph all the way to Vallejo, and saved a TON of time. I even threw on the heater near the end Most of the rest of the time I used steering wheel and seat heat only. Ambient temps ranged from 29F to 39F but with a warm jacket I was fairly comfortable. Fogging was not a problem thanks to low humidity and I'd dehumidified the cabin aggresively for a couple of days leading up to the trip. Arrived home with 2 bars and 13 GOM miles; having spent a bit more energy on the return trip knowing I had the power to do so.

Trip 2 was moving the car at end of charge, to be a good EV citizen. Good thing because someone had already ICEd the other port.

Carwings underestimated the miles slightly

Weeks-long stretch of (what I call) very cold weather in Salt Lake City this Jan. single digits in the morning, mid teens in the afternoon. Terrible awful air pollution too. Our long term average for warm weather has been 4.3 mi/kWh. So around 90+ miles IF we press it to LBW which we almost never do.
During this cold snap: we preheat for my wife's commute, she drives in Eco but cranks the heater, no seats or steering wheel (2011). January average was 3.1mi/kWh So again, if we press it to the end, 60+ miles. But after 45 of those we'd likely be running w/o heater. We lose a third, pretty much exactly as expected. I'll add it to my list of reasons to bring on the summer! ML
Edit: occurred to me driving around today- you can hyper mile (or try to) no matter how cold it is. Our big drop in range is a combination of blasting the power hungry heater AND the well established fact that a cold battery actually has less in it. So the bars go away faster because each one represents its usual percentage, but of a lesser whole.
Icidentally, we've seen the Guess-o-Meter read 42 with a new 100% charge, 12 bars, right out of the garage! It's possible to get to our house having gone several miles all uphill. After just a couple of blocks, it goes back to reality-world but still only mid 60s if its really cold. Battery temp stays at 4 bars, we've seen 3 once or twice. ML

Shaka said:

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Note that the only numbers you will ever see on that web page are 0, 8, 17, 25, 33, 42, 50, 58, 67, 75, 83, 92, and 100. It's really just a fraction masquerading as a percentage.

Ray

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A fraction and a percentage are the same thing.

TBag said:

Note that the only numbers you will ever see on that web page are 0, 8, 17, 25, 33, 42, 50, 58, 67, 75, 83, 92, and 100. It's really just a fraction masquerading as a percentage.

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Shaka said:

A fraction and a percentage are the same thing.

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Not at all. A fraction with a denominator of 12 has about 1 digit precision. A percentage with no decimal has 2 digits precision. By presenting it as a percentage they are trying to fool you into thinking it is about 8 times as precise as it really is.

Ray

This might have been posted in other cold weather threads, but here is some very good real-world data for "best" and "average" distance driven in Leafs and Volts as a function of temperature:
http://www.greencarreports.com/news...olt-range-loss-in-winter-new-data-from-canada

I'm getting 3.0-3.4 M/kwh with the heat set to 75 and usually in Eco ( I start off in Normal), with snow tires, average speed about 32MPH. (The average speed may be the best way to judge trips).

New record low range for me due to pretty darn cold temps and some cabin pre-heating on battery: Starting the morning trip at 276 Gids and -20F, and ending the day at 34 Gids at -5F for yesterday's total driving of 35.4 miles in 4 different trips (2 using battery pre-heat for about 10 minutes). By my math that is about 1.8 miles/kwh.

http://www.tc.umn.edu/~rauvo001/IMG_20131230_054947656.jpg

Pretty cold (but not that low !) here outside of Chicago; I had a -1 F on the way in to work and 9 F that dropped to about 6 F by the time I got home. Probably getting in the low 3.x miles/kWh range now where in the more moderate temps mid to high 4.x range. In our semi-heated garage I was showing 4 battery temp bars where having it sit outside all day at work it dropped to 2 temp bars. I tried the pre-heating timer this morning (while hooked up to my charger in the garage) to see if it made any difference on how much 'juice' I'm using and while I did experience that quick loss of the first bar on the GOM display it did use about 11 less GOM 'miles' so it does make a difference, at least on my commute (15 miles each way, suburban, flat terrain, fair number of stop lights but light traffic on the way in heavier on the way home). I do try to cycle the heat/defrost but of course this cold it will fog up fairly quickly --- I saw 44 miles 'left' when pulling into my garage last night (30 miles R/T commute from 100% charge) so not too terrible; will be curious on today's trip home as we're expecting a bit of snow as well. Just had the software update performed and have noticed a drop in the regen amount but not that much --- after all this is IL so not a lot of hills to contend with. The only really kind of annoying fact is simply how long the heater takes to get 'warm' after your shut it down to save some power; as of course there is no 'waste heat' from an ICE I guess this can be expected; plus in the 2 years we've owned ours we've been quite fortunate with fairly mild winters but of course not so this year ... I do sometimes wonder what's the worse case R/T mileage scenario on a full 100% charge but I've seen the charts so know about what to expect. The only times we would run into this would be on the weekends when we drive much more than our daily job commutes and we can break those trips up --- our range even on the 'worse' days still works OK but can see where it could be a problem for other EV's who start off with even a lower range to begin with ...

planet4ever said:

TBag said:

Note that the only numbers you will ever see on that web page are 0, 8, 17, 25, 33, 42, 50, 58, 67, 75, 83, 92, and 100. It's really just a fraction masquerading as a percentage.

Click to expand...

Shaka said:

A fraction and a percentage are the same thing.

Click to expand...

Not at all. A fraction with a denominator of 12 has about 1 digit precision. A percentage with no decimal has 2 digits precision. By presenting it as a percentage they are trying to fool you into thinking it is about 8 times as precise as it really is.

Ray

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What Ray said. And it's not even correct. Take a look at Tony's range chart. The top 11 bars are not the same, and the lowest bar represents much more than 1/12 of the battery capacity. For example, 5 of 12 bars actually represents about 50%, not 42%...

Tomorrow will be the real test of my Winter range. I have a 43 mile RT commute, and I usually have only a small handful of miles left before LBW when I get home in cold weather. I'll be topping off from about 73% to 100% right before I leave, then preheating for 10 minutes after charging ends (I use L-1). I assume that if the temps are around 0F on the way in, and in negative numbers on my drive home, the car will be heated with the PTC heater alone? I'm pretty cold-blooded (bad circulation), so assuming I need the heat on, what is the best way to get heat while I drive, with the least consumption? I'm talking about CC settings, assuming I need at least 72F. I'll be using the seat and wheel heaters.

LeftieBiker said:

Tomorrow will be the real test of my Winter range. I have a 43 mile RT commute, and I usually have only a small handful of miles left before LBW when I get home in cold weather. I'll be topping off from about 73% to 100% right before I leave, then preheating for 10 minutes after charging ends (I use L-1). I assume that if the temps are around 0F on the way in, and in negative numbers on my drive home, the car will be heated with the PTC heater alone? I'm pretty cold-blooded (bad circulation), so assuming I need the heat on, what is the best way to get heat while I drive, with the least consumption? I'm talking about CC settings, assuming I need at least 72F. I'll be using the seat and wheel heaters.

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Wow, good luck. I hope you make it!

I normally preheat on L2 so it takes little to no energy from the battery. On L1, you can't get enough juice from the wall to preheat, so you'll be drawing from the battery as well. I keep the temperature set at 63F, and often get as little as 40 miles of range. What speed are you driving? If you're taking the highway, you may be taking the last 5 miles on the back of a tow truck with those temperatures.

Do share how it turns out.

You'll need more than good luck, plenty of heavy clothes. I wouldn't do it with my 2011 without keeping the heat off for at least one side of the commute. Unless you're starting inside a warm garage, preheating below 20 F with L1 is nearly worthless and you will probably consume some battery. The coldest I've seen is around 10 F. Don't you have some significantly colder weather and snow predicted for upper NY? Tough!

Reddy said:

Unless you're starting inside a warm garage, preheating below 20 F with L1 is nearly worthless and you will probably consume some battery.

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This is not my experience...we've had our share of arctic weather here in WI too.

What my lady does for her trip to work is, charge her MY2013 to 100% on L1, but then after that a substantial amount (1-2 hours) of preheating activated by Carwings. While it is certainly reducing the 12th bar by the time she gets driving, the car is nicely heat soaked, even when it's 0F. Starting with the car warm, she is able to keep the car at a reasonable temperature during her 18 mile one way trip to work at speeds of 40-50. She arrives consistently into the 5th bar, so 8 bars are still showing.

Here is where I can't be of any help, because when it's this cold (below 10F), I come and snag the car and return it to her when she is getting done with work, charged and preheated. So in sub-zero temps, I'd presume that she'd use the rest of the battery trying to keep warm and getting home without me charging for her. When the weather is in the teens or higher, she arrives home with 2 bars or so.

BTW, she does not garage her Leaf, it sits out in the ambiant elements. I have a heated (38 degrees) shop for MY2012 where the Siemens EVSE is located.

While this may be a moot point by the time the OP is wanting the information, I can have her jot down the battery level percentages when she leaves after preheating, and when she get to work.

I find that as long as the car is plugged in and L-1 has ended recently, I can preheat for several minutes and it still reads 100% when I leave. The car is almost always outside. My trip is a mix of 30, 40, 45 and 55MPH driving, with a typical average speed of 32MPH. (Average speeds are always low, as long as they include stops.) My main concern is the trip home, when the car won't be preheated (although I usually preheat it for a minute or two via CarWings), won't be recently charged, and will be starting off ice cold. The *good* news is that there is a Nissan dealer with what seems to be an always-on EVSE easily accessible from the highway, right on my way home. Also, you do realize I meant 43 miles round trip, right...? Believe me, if I thought this would probably end in me freezing to death at 4:00am, I'd take the Prius!

EDIT: the battery warmer came on last night, for the first time. It ran for about 7 hours before I plugged the car in this morning, and the charge went from 9 bars to 8, according to Carwings. It should easily be at 100% tonight when I leave for work at 10:00pm. I'll definitely preheat for 5 minutes, at least.

Here is some imperfect data for whoever may benefit from it.

I spent the night at Judy's last night, charged to 80% on L1, but it didn't quite make it all the way.

I started preheating while the My2012 was still charging, outside temperature was -13F around 8:40AM. CarWings was showing 9 bars and 65 miles on the GOM. At 9:45, I took off toward my house, 4 below, 21 miles away, with the GOM at 63 miles, still 9 bars, and 2 battery bars. When I got into the car, the chill was gone, it was far from "heat soaked', but I was charging and heating while on L1, trying to both on 120V equates to neither working very well. LOL

I drove in D, (not ECO) for maximum heat output, 75 degrees on the CC (auto), seat heater on high and steering wheel heater was on. I dropped the 9th battery bar pretty quick, but from there on, I was getting around 3.5 miles per bar.

From the energy screens that I reset before I left:

20.9 miles, 35:16 minutes
36.2 Average MPH
2.8 M/kWh
4.5+ on the CC energy screen the entire trip.

I gained a battery temperature bar during the journey somewhere and another when I was pulling into the garage. So started with 2, ended with 4. It was 3F when I got home.

Ended with 3 traction battery bars and 16 miles on the GOM.

I have pictures of all of this, I will attach them when I have some more time to re-figure out how to do that.

Hope that helps, if even a little.