62kwh Leaf Plus Efficiency Posting

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The losses from hard acceleration are a result of electrical resistance, primarily internal resistance in the battery but also some in the wiring and motor windings. Doubling current doubles motor power, but quadruples resistance losses. Lots of time at high current heats up the battery, which is not good for it.
For a highway trip where you are getting up to speed only once it won't make a significant difference, so there is no need to get in the way in the merge zone. Around town, the difference between moderate acceleration and mashing the pedal every time the light turns green may be more noticeable. There's still no need to get in the way though, as half of maximum current results in a quarter of the maximum resistance loss. Just accelerate with the traffic, don't speed, and try to anticipate slowdowns to minimize braking.
 
September Efficiency:
2,496 miles
4.1 mi/kWh

October Efficiency:
2,411 miles
4.0 mi/kWh

November is currently a significant drop in efficiency(3.7 mi/kWh) but my husband was driving it while I was in Florida so hoping to improve the average before the month is over.
 
Glad to see that most are in the 4 - 4.4 range of efficiency. Based on usage and remaining charge, it puts the car's usable range close to 250 than 226/216.

Anyone on the forum have both a Bolt and a Leaf plus? I would be curious to know if they felt the Bolt has significantly better range.
 
DougWantsALeaf said:
Glad to see that most are in the 4 - 4.4 range of efficiency. Based on usage and remaining charge, it puts the car's usable range close to 250 than 226/216.
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It does not. Range is a matter of highway driving, and that is a very YMMV based on driving speed. The reports you are reading are mixtures of highway and city driving.
 
SageBrush said:
DougWantsALeaf said:
Glad to see that most are in the 4 - 4.4 range of efficiency. Based on usage and remaining charge, it puts the car's usable range close to 250 than 226/216.
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It does not. Range is a matter of highway driving, and that is a very YMMV based on driving speed. The reports you are reading are mixtures of highway and city driving.

The vast majority of my driving is highway, I'd say probably close to 85% of the miles on my car are highway, possibly even more than that. Given we don't take the battery below 20% if we can avoid it we generally get about 200 usable miles on road trips(starting at 100%) and as a daily driver closer to 150 (start 80%-end 20% charge).

It would be nice if the car had a more "usable" range in that aspect but we are saving $$$$ so who am I to complain?😊
 
DougWantsALeaf said:
Glad to see that most are in the 4 - 4.4 range of efficiency. Based on usage and remaining charge, it puts the car's usable range close to 250 than 226/216.

Anyone on the forum have both a Bolt and a Leaf plus? I would be curious to know if they felt the Bolt has significantly better range.

Better range? yes. Significantly better? No. Driving styles can easily flip the placement.
 
My results are dropping fast in the cold, and even more significantly with night driving. The Plus we have does not have LED headlights, and the mileage for November with a fair amount of 65MPH highway and night driving and cold weather is running around 3.7 M/KWH. Is there a way I can find out how to see "actual" energy use as opposed to traction motor use, including headlight and heater draw? (our Plus is the base model... Thanks all, BTW, for this forum!
 
dmacarthur said:
My results are dropping fast in the cold, and even more significantly with night driving. The Plus we have does not have LED headlights, and the mileage for November with a fair amount of 65MPH highway and night driving and cold weather is running around 3.7 M/KWH. Is there a way I can find out how to see "actual" energy use as opposed to traction motor use, including headlight and heater draw? (our Plus is the base model... Thanks all, BTW, for this forum!

Headlight use is not significant. Heater use and increased rolling resistance from colder temperatures are main causes of reduced range. I think the S+ (base model with 62 kWh battery) includes the larger navigation screen. If so, there is an energy use screen which displays graphs for traction motor, climate control, and auxiliary (12 volt) power use.
 
I gotta think that dash efficiency graphic does exclude draws other than traction motor, and I can not seem to find on my screen anything like the detail that the fancier models might have- they DO have larger screens. Maybe less-affluent people are less likely to be energy geeks? seems like the opposite would be true....
 
Sorry, meant to say "include" external electrical draws, because my miles/KWH drops significantly at night, in the cold, and with winter tires. I would just like to ba able to see the extra drain in real time: how much, exactly, is the heat element or the headlights using?
 
dmacarthur said:
Sorry, meant to say "include" external electrical draws, because my miles/KWH drops significantly at night, in the cold, and with winter tires. I would just like to ba able to see the extra drain in real time: how much, exactly, is the heat element or the headlights using?

Drive train is using multiple kW. Headlights are using less than a hundred watts. At 60 MPH, less than a 1% error in measuring the drive train power would be the headlight power. There are no meters measuring this, so either use an estimate or you need to add instrumentation to the car.

Heat element is larger, and can have a noticeable impact.

Other things you can't measure, like increased drag from thicker air, stiffer grease, and such, and factors such as different driving behavior also have significant impacts.
 
I have yet to find any real info on the current draw of the heater element- this model does not have the heat pump so it could be similar to a toaster, or 1500 watts or so, at least while warming up. any ideas? I have asked the dealer for this info.... And my old BMWs had single 100 watt halogen headlights, the Leaf has 2 and they are brighter than the BMW, seems like it is going to be several hundred anyway.... over a period of three hours that could knock a few miles off the range.
 
The heat pump has a variable draw, from about 500 watts to, IIRC, 3kw. If it isn't that high it's 1.5kw. It's hard to determine exactly, because the PTC heater runs as well when the heat is started.
 
Halogen headlights are 60 watts each (120 watts total). Resistance heater is 5 kW (5,000 watts) maximum, but draws less at moderate temperatures with fan on lower speed. Traction motor is 160 kW maximum so headlight use is negligible compared to heater and traction motor.
 
DaveinOlyWA said:
Birillo said:
Hi, new to this forum, just doing some pre-reading before my probable Leaf purchase. Currently I have a Volt but I suffer psychological harm every time the ICE kicks in.
I've seen it proposed that lower acceleration getting up to highway speed will improve efficiency. From an kinetic energy perspective it should not matter. Is there some inefficiency in energy used when there is a higher power draw from the battery?

Gentler acceleration will reduce degradation of the pack. We have a LEAFer who has 135,000 miles on his 2015 and LESS than halfway to losing his first capacity bar. He shuns the freeway to take country roads with speed limits of 50-55 mph. He charges to 100% and QC's twice daily to make his commute.

There is a higher resistance factor for higher power but from what I can tell, its pretty negligible. DK how regen works in Volt but I drive in B mode which is high regen and try to anticipate traffic and usually never touch my brakes unless I come to a full stop.

SageBrush said:
Birillo said:
Is there some inefficiency in energy used when there is a higher power draw from the battery?
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Yes, but it is a very minor contribution to the overall result

City: reduce brake use
Highway: reduce speed

Thanks for the responses. Sounds like there is no real efficiency gain from lowering acceleration, although there are other advantages.
I bought my Leaf plus a few weeks ago and so far very happy with it. Impressed my buddies with a golf/road trip with 3 guys, 3 sets of clubs and 3 pull carts!
 
Birillo said:
Sounds like there is no real efficiency gain from lowering acceleration, although there are other advantages.
I'm not sure where you get that conclusion. Lowering acceleration will result in real efficiency gains.
 
jlv said:
Birillo said:
Sounds like there is no real efficiency gain from lowering acceleration, although there are other advantages.
I'm not sure where you get that conclusion. Lowering acceleration will result in real efficiency gains.

Why is that?
 
We put the studded tires on the Plus and made an essentially identical round trip of about 250 mile (with charging at the far end). Mileage result- loss of about another ten percent (3.3 vs. 3.7) of thruway m/KWH using about the same heat and headlights. This is pretty drastic, but it is the price we pay for living where studs are essential and having bought the Plus S without heat pump heater. It is amazing to see how fast the battery depletes compared to summertime daylight driving on smaller roads, where we average around 4.3-4. Heater, studded tires..... OTOH we get loads more power from the solar panels in the summer, when driving is essentially free, so winter usage is the cost of doing business.....
 
jlv said:
Birillo said:
Sounds like there is no real efficiency gain from lowering acceleration, although there are other advantages.
I'm not sure where you get that conclusion. Lowering acceleration will result in real efficiency gains.

+ 100!

Aggressive acceleration isn't the best thing for any battery and the higher the current, the higher the resistance so gentle acceleration will boost your efficiency dramatically. This is why I drive Eco all the time. In fact, its the ONLY mode that I use all the time. E Pedal I love but its not always engaged. D mode is used the least, B mode is at least 75% of the time, but Eco is always on simply because it smoothes the power demand spikes that may be fun to do but is wasteful and detrimental to range.

TBT; the newer LEAF's increased power means I rarely have to go as much as half throttle to do what I need to do.
 
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