On the 2013 (and later) model LEAFs, like the one the OP was inquiring
about, you don't have to deal with the semi-ambiguous charge bars.
There's an option for a direct numeric percentage display which is much
more useful/readable.
Battery temp is still indicated by the left bar display, which works
adequately for that use. On our car it does change, tending a bit lower
in winter and higher in summer. It hasn't exceeded the indicated limits.
Cheers,
-Jamie
On 6/5/15 5:07 PM, Ed Blackmond via EV wrote:
On Jun 3, 2015, at 5:51 PM, Ben Goren <[email protected]> wrote:
On Jun 3, 2015, at 5:05 PM, Ed Blackmond via EV <[email protected]> wrote:
The guess-o-meter provides neither number.
Ignoring the guess-o-meter for the moment...how accurate is the remaining charge meter? Can one use
it mentally like one does the gas gauge on an ICE vehicle? That is, if you know that you typically
get 100 miles on a full "tank" and the meter shows you've got a quarter "tank"
left, you better not plan on going much more than twenty miles before charging and even that's
pushing your luck. Does that sort of thing work?
The remaining charge meter is not linear, but seems to be consistent, at least
for my 2011 Leaf. When I charge fully (100% vs 80%), I get 12 bars (all of
them) on the gauge. The 12th bar lasts for about 3 miles on
residential/commercial streets (25mph - 45mph, traffic signals and stop signs).
The 11th bar lasts for another 4.5 (sometimes as much as 5) miles. The 10th
bar lasts at most 2.5 miles. I can get about 35 miles on the top 8 bars if I
never go over 50mph and never accelerate hard enough to have more than four
power dots filled (N.B. one is always filled even when stopped). I can get
another 37 miles on the bottom four bars: 10 miles on the last bar, 20 on the
last two, 29 on the last three and 37 on the last four. Keeping the speed
under 35mph and accelerating more gently, I can get another mile or so per bar.
One annoying thing is that the system removes a charge meter bar every time it
is power cycled if the charge left is less than some threshold of the bar
removed. I have not been able to determine this threshold. It eventually
recovers from this. If I’m on a trip where I care, I remember the gauge
reading before I power down the car.
My leaf has a 16.5KWH usable capacity pack. I don’t believe this has changed
that much in the 41K miles and 46 months I’ve had the car. When I use it to
what I interpret as completely dead (about 3 miles of residential/commercial
streets after the very low battery warning where it shuts off the meter),
charging to what it indicates as 100% (12 bars on the meter) takes a little
less than 5 hours. Assuming my charger is 3.3KW this is about 16.5KWH.
The display on the center console says I am averaging 3.9 miles/KWH while the
display on the dash says I’m averaging 3.8 miles/KWH. This seems consistent
with the 16.5KWH capacity and the total range. I assume I do a bit better than
this when I’m trying to drive efficiently. I rarely need to drive efficiently
though. The routes I typically travel are well within the range of the car, so
I rarely even look at anything other than the speedometer. I plug it in every
night and it charges off peak and I start each day with 80% charge.
I have 5 bars on the temperature meter. I don’t think that has ever changed.
Maybe that gauge is broken in my car. At any rate it is useless they way it
is, so I don’t look at it much either.
There is the silly gauge that constructs pine trees or something. This does
indicate something, but I haven’t been able to correlate it with anything. The
longer I drive without power cycling, the more trees it builds, so maybe it is
some sort of low resolution inverse range or charge indication. I ignore the
tree gauge too.
Ed
_______________________________________________
UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub
http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org
For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
_______________________________________________
UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub
http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org
For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
