So, owners what range are you getting ?

My Nissan Leaf Forum

Help Support My Nissan Leaf Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Mine is still too new for me to tell but I was reading other posts and lots use the cruise control. I have a Mercury Mariner Hybrid and I use a Prius at work and both of those I get better mileage when I don't use the cruise control. is this not the same with the LEaf?
 
philipl411 said:
I can honestly say that I wish I hadnt purchased this car. I love the way it drives, but the range limits where I can drive it. We purchased it with the intent of driving it from home to the office which is 27 miles away from the house. For the first 10 miles it is 70 mph and then much slower due to traffic. The entire drive takes about an hour over all. When she would arrive it has just enough range to go about 7 miles to a charging station at a Nissan dealership. She would then charge for 30 min and get home with about 14 miles of range. Plug it up for the night to do it all over again the next day. We finally gave up and purchased her another car and I drive the leaf 2.3 miles to work and then back. Unless there is a known working charging station I wont drive it more than 20 miles away from my house.

Well in the next few days if all goes right the leaf will be gone and replaced with either a Volt or a C-Max Plug in.
 
Work is 30 miles away from home. I have commuted in my Leaf for > 3.5 years. I've never had to charge midway and I'm pretty sure I got the lizard batteries as I just lost my first bar at > 61K.

I work by the beach in SoCal so the conditions for travel are relatively optimal though.
 
So I've had my 2013 Leaf since May 2017. The past week even though it charges to 100% the range has dropped by about 12 to 15 miles on the dashboard. Any reason why this is happening? It has just over 30000 miles on it.
 
demet1996 said:
So I've had my 2013 Leaf since May 2017. The past week even though it charges to 100% the range has dropped by about 12 to 15 miles on the dashboard. Any reason why this is happening? It has just over 30000 miles on it.

The charge % has nothing to do with degradation. The thing to check is how many kWhs were delivered to get to 100%.

Also, the mileage estimate (aka guessometer) on your dash board can vary wildly from trip to trip. For example, my weekend driving is very efficient - mostly 35 or 45mph roads. So after fully charging on Monday it will display ~90 miles. My work commute is much less efficient, so by Wednesday it will display ~75 miles after a full charge. I've had it display as much as 100 miles and as low a 65 after a full charge.

How many bars do you have left? Do you use LeafSpy?
 
philipl411 said:
philipl411 said:
I can honestly say that I wish I hadnt purchased this car. I love the way it drives, but the range limits where I can drive it. We purchased it with the intent of driving it from home to the office which is 27 miles away from the house. For the first 10 miles it is 70 mph and then much slower due to traffic. The entire drive takes about an hour over all. When she would arrive it has just enough range to go about 7 miles to a charging station at a Nissan dealership. She would then charge for 30 min and get home with about 14 miles of range. Plug it up for the night to do it all over again the next day. We finally gave up and purchased her another car and I drive the leaf 2.3 miles to work and then back. Unless there is a known working charging station I wont drive it more than 20 miles away from my house.

Well in the next few days if all goes right the leaf will be gone and replaced with either a Volt or a C-Max Plug in.


The Leaf is gone and I took a $3,000 loss on it. But replaced it with a c-max plugin. I have been asked several times during the time I owned the leaf if it was a car worth buying and my recommendation was always, Only if you drive it close to home or have access to free charging where you drive to.
 
philipl411 said:
The Leaf is gone and I took a $3,000 loss on it. But replaced it with a c-max plugin. I have been asked several times during the time I owned the leaf if it was a car worth buying and my recommendation was always, Only if you drive it close to home or have access to free charging where you drive to.

Congrats on the CMax. It is a good option. It has served my family well, and should serve you too. It is a step back in electric range, but a huge step forward in total range and utility.
 
philipl411 said:
philipl411 said:
philipl411 said:
I can honestly say that I wish I hadnt purchased this car. I love the way it drives, but the range limits where I can drive it. We purchased it with the intent of driving it from home to the office which is 27 miles away from the house. For the first 10 miles it is 70 mph and then much slower due to traffic. The entire drive takes about an hour over all. When she would arrive it has just enough range to go about 7 miles to a charging station at a Nissan dealership. She would then charge for 30 min and get home with about 14 miles of range. Plug it up for the night to do it all over again the next day. We finally gave up and purchased her another car and I drive the leaf 2.3 miles to work and then back. Unless there is a known working charging station I wont drive it more than 20 miles away from my house.

Well in the next few days if all goes right the leaf will be gone and replaced with either a Volt or a C-Max Plug in.


The Leaf is gone and I took a $3,000 loss on it. But replaced it with a c-max plugin. I have been asked several times during the time I owned the leaf if it was a car worth buying and my recommendation was always, Only if you drive it close to home or have access to free charging where you drive to.

What exactly was the problem with your Leaf? Did you buy a used model with only a few bars left?
 
2012 SL, bought in Jan. 2013. Now has 17,000 miles, almost all of it in Los Angeles. It lost at least one bar last year and the range started dropping from 90+ when new to 70 in October 2017 - our use of it remained the same throughout, same traffic, same routes. We charged when it dropped below 40 miles, though if we needed it the next day and it had only 50 miles estimated and we were going to use at least 30 miles of that, then we'd charge it up. Like I said, in 2016 it lost a bar - the bars seem to disappear as they're lost so I don't really know how many it's lost, or maybe I'm just looking at it wrong. We've always gone by the estimated miles since the charge gauge always seemed lit to the top after charging.

Anyway, in October 2017 we moved to Eugene, Oregon. Temps started out in the 50s, 40s at night, but lately it's been 40s max in the day and mid-20s at night. The Leaf is in a carport - no garage. The estimated miles has dropped to 42 in Eco, though driving here is a piece of cake compared to LA - timed lights on one-way streets so very little stop and go, no long waits at left turns, and short distances to everything. And the estimated mileage has plummeted anyway.

Our neighbor across the street has a 2013, and her estimated mileage is about 75. I see no good reason why ours dropped so badly - if Nissan's battery can't stand more than 86º then why are/were they selling it at all? And LA gets into the 90s sporadically for a few days at a time max. But whatever the reason, the car has lost a lot of value for us. We can still use it around town, but only close in because we can't be sure what will happen if we venture farther out, like across the river (where Trader Joe's is! ;-} At this point we're going to have to sell it because we bought a new car and don't have room for the Leaf anymore - we love the car, it's been very reliable and comfortable and quiet. But we can't leave it outside here with all the pine sap and needles and far from the charger.

We're wondering if we have a warranty claim. Does Nissan still tell you that your battery is fine when it's not? Are they more generous with battery replacement? I believe that the warranty is 5 years now - ? - and if so we'd slip in just under the wire.
 
Look at the little capacity "bars" right next to the much larger charge bars on the dash display. How many of them remain? If you have 8 or fewer then you have a claim. You have to document it before you hit that 5 year mark, though! Not one minute over, or one mile over 60,000.
 
Dang! There are 9 bars - well, 8-1/2 because the bottom one next to the red zone is like half a bar. Seems like we should be doing better in miles on 9 bars - is that 75% capacity left? We have only till Jan. 31 for it to drop to 8 bars...I wonder what would make that happen since we've never changed our driving and charging habits.
 
Leave it charged to 100% when not in use. I assume your climate isn't hot enough to get the pack hot in December... one last bit of bad news: if it's actually cold where you are, the BMS probably won't register another bar loss until Spring. I'm sorry. That would be 9 full bars, as there are no half bars. The first one is worth 15%, so it isn't a uniform drop for all the bars. You have less than 70% capacity left, IIRC.
 
Would discharging it completely renew it? Like you're supposed to (or used to be supposed to) discharge cell phones completely once a month or so. Or would that deplete it further? I think the lowest we've ever let it get is in the high-20 miles.

Well, trying to research this in the forum - seems like full discharge wouldn't have any effect, positive or negative. We always charged it to 100% because we needed the range, and even when it would get down to 50 miles we'd charge it up again in case we needed the full range. It looks like that wasn't a very wise practice. But we didn't have much choice if we were going to use the car for the reasons we bought it - big city driving.
 
Well, we have to sell it, and given what I've seen of the resale value, we could never get back that $6,000. It's a conundrum - a $37,000 car (minus the tax credit and rebate) that's only 5 years old, and we're looking at having to sell it for what? $2,000 if we're lucky? Who would want such a car? We wish we could keep it, but we simply don't have room, and we can't add on to the carport - and besides it would a constant shuffle of cars parked behind each other.

Hmmm...maybe we could donate it to NPR...
 
With 40 miles of range you should be able to get $5000 for it if it's in good shape otherwise. Look for someone who drives locally, like a retired person or someone who lives near their work.
 
Well, whaddya know. We took the Leaf in for a checkup - turns out it needed a software update. Who knew? We didn't because Nissan didn't tell us - I guess they leave that up to the dealers unless it's a recall? Anyway, they did the update, cleared the battery's "memory" - I didn't know Li-ion batteries had a memory to be cleared, but the service mgr said the early ones did, up thru 2012. At any rate, when we took it in, it was forecasting 47 miles in Eco; when we picked it up the forecast was 83 miles! They also told us that 45-50 miles is typical of Leafs in this climate - Eugene OR in winter - because of the heater, especially the defroster, which is kind of essential. We have the heat turned way down, use the heated seats and steering wheel.

It will be interesting to see if it performs at that high level all winter, or if it drops back down to the 40s. Still, with one bar gone, 75 miles is pretty good, I guess.
 
The update likely didn't affect the car's range one way or the other. It mainly changed how it estimates its range. You may also find that you have less regenerative braking available.
 
The update likely didn't affect the car's range one way or the other. It mainly changed how it estimates its range. You mat also find that you have less regenerative braking available.

arrgghh! It's always something! So if you're right, we'd see the remaining miles on a given trip decline faster than usual? Like a trip that used up 20 miles would now use up, say, 40? And the miles gained coasting down hills wouldn't be as many? Now that I think of it, that recalculation was the point of a software update years ago - one that I thought I'd gotten. Is it something that needs to be done more than once?

I drove from the dealership to our house - 4.5 miles, most of it pretty flat, the last mile of it uphill, the last 1/4 mile steep uphill - virtually the same kind of climbing we did to our house in Los Angeles, and there was a similar substantial drop in estimated miles in that last bit. So the estimated miles was 83 when I left and 64 when I arrived home - about what I would expect but better than before the update, when I would have left with 47 miles and arrived home with 25. No heat or defroster going.

Listen to what the service guy told me: The battery is guaranteed for 10 years. I told him 5. He was condescending, insisting on 10. Went to check it out - came back and weaseled himself into saying 5 years, that that was what he'd meant all along but I just hadn't understood. I think he'd been thinking of the drive system, not the battery itself.

I was also puzzled by his claim that they'd cleared the battery's memory - not something I thought had to be done with Li-ions, but he claimed it was necessary for the 2011 and 2012 batteries. But those are still Li-ions. I know the battery was improved for 2013 - I don't recall reading anything like this about them. As far as I know, that battery doesn't have memory that has to be cleared any more than phone batteries do - so why would he say that? I asked him about the conflicting things I've read about preserving battery life, especially charging only to 80%, minimizing the length of time it's at that 80% by timing it so it reaches the charge you need about an hour before you need it; minimizing DC quick charging. He said none of that stuff matters. I don't believe him. Since the distances in Eugene are so short, and traffic is ridiculously light, with well-timed signals, I think we'll just start doing the 80% charge, just in case it works.
 
The "battery's memory" may mean the digital memory in the battery management system, aka "BMS." You are right in that lithium batteries don't develop a memory effect. Service people can drive you mad with their half-right (?), half-gibberish claims. Don't get too upset about the rapidly dropping range estimate. We all have to deal with that, and it isn't likely that you actually lost any real range. The car just isn't lying about it quite as consistently. ;-)
 
Back
Top