LEAF range map possibly a better remaining range indicator

Last night I noticed something interesting. I arrived home with 4 bars (the last 2 white and then the 2 red, though I don't know how much of bar 8 I'd used) and and indicated 29 miles remaining. For some reason, I happened to switch to the range map and noticed that the grey circled area on it indicated at 29 miles but the white circled area indicated 20 miles.

Now, with 4 bars remaining (full ones, mind you) I would expect to have anywhere from 20-28 miles remaining, depending on how the car was driven (20 miles if driven hard at highway speeds and 28 miles being babied on surface streets). So my initial summation is (though I need more data points) that the LEAF's range map could well be a better indicator of remaining range than the dash display.

umm, the streets around here do not radiate outwards from my house. (since they would all run into one lake or another) problem is. i live between 3 lakes so all roads run around them.



notice Carpenter Road. this road is typical for this area. we have a ton of water around here

DaveinOlyWA said:

umm, the streets around here do not radiate outwards from my house. (since they would all run into one lake or another) problem is. i live between 3 lakes so all roads run around them.

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What? You didn't order yours with the amphibious option? :lol:

What I'm talking about is not the radius circles themselves, but the distance they indicate can be covered. It appears to be a pretty accurate measure of what you have left under best and worst case scenarios.

hmm. to be honest with you, i always considered that button to be useless. maybe i should actually study it more to see if it takes into account my previous driving patterns and roads.

i thought the different circles were for "drive" and "eco" modes?

Interesting indeed. Thanks for that mwalsh. We just have to train ourselved *NOT* to look the circles and the geographic area they indicate (as supposedly "reachable"), but look instead only at the two range numbers being presented.

After driving today, a couple more thoughts:

1) The numbers do seem to represent both absolute best and absolute worst case scenarios. Meaning that I could definitely better the worst case scenario in just about every driving circumstance you could put me in where I didn't drive insanely.

2) The numbers are dynamic in that they change with the number represented in your dash. But they aren't continuously updated, so you have to switch away from that screen and switch back to get the updated numbers.

An actual range map would be too computationally intensive for the navigation software....it would be really nice though.

But I would much rather see elevation data and speed limits taken in account for more accurate ranging when making use of navigation system and available range.

A simple # with % of charge left would more helpful than any of these car guestimates.
on the dash these is a 1 on the top and a 0 on the bottom that seem to mean nothing
if that number at the top started at 100 and went down I could do the math.

One needs to remember that (apparently, in a few cases reported) the SOC calculated by the car itself was not very accurate, and toward the bottom (empty) end, it would seem that the SOC went down much more quickly than the car designers intended (or the user expected). This was a case of 100 yards in Turtle Mode instead of 1 or 2 miles.

Apparently Nissan chose to "hide" the possibly-inaccurate low end (call it a reserve-that-might-not-always-be-there?), probably to encourage users to stop driving sooner. But, that essentially says, "Don't try to use all the (already reduced) range that we told you the LEAF might have when you bought the car."

I'll check mine when I get home, but remember, Mike, you didn't get the update, so your experience might differ from others. I wonder how the update changed the maps.....???