Dave,
DaveinOlyWA said:
personally i think that this has been a very long conversation on something that quite simply did not happen.
i really think the real issue here is not how to stretch the mileage. I think you have a handle on that. I think its the perception that unless one pulls into the garage with "xx" miles...no wait... unless one pulls into the garage with "XX" miles left on the GOM, they are in some sort of danger. where does that perception come from?
I didn't bring up the GOM except to mention that the car stated ---, and I had VLWB. I don't think that's simply a perception that there is a problem. I wouldn't be posting if I wasn't getting this.
You don't t think VLBW and no miles on the dash is an issue worth worrying about ?
It was determined in this thread that I had about than 5% left at the end. And I may not have made it home at all if not for my partner being late and the extra hour of L1.
do we ever go to the gas station nearing empty and not get gas?
I wish I could give you better stats but not as easy as I thought it would be to find out but there are literally hundreds of people that run of GASOLINE every day. granted, much more of them out there but they only run that risk every 4-5 days or so. we run into it once sometimes twice a day so our currently small #'s are adding up fast.
Now, I do know some people mostly in the mountains who fill up their gas tank when its down to 3/8th of a tank in winter due to snow storm issues but Me? well in 8+ years and 3 (probably soon to be 4) Priuses, I almost always got gas with no more than 2 bars and probably 80% of the time, got gas at least 40 miles past the "blinking bar" so what the diff? is it any less risk? or is it a risk at all if you know the vehicle you are driving?
Honestly, it has never happened to me in my lifetime. But I have always driven Prius before the Leaf. And the range on a full tank o a Prius is a comfortable 450 - 500 miles without even really trying. Refueling takes 5 minutes. Gas stations are almost everywhere. One would have to completely ignore all instrumentation to run out of gas on such a car. Or do so intentionally.
If there were any gasoline cars with a 73 mile EPA range on a full tank of gas, then we might have valid comparisons. I don't wish to derail the thread. I don't mean to compare the Leaf to a gasoline car.
lets examine the facts. on the trip in question, you did a few unplanned errands and STILL made it.
Actually, I did only one unplanned errand, the extra trip to the theater.
waaaay back in post 2 or 3 or whatever one it was, I asked "so what is the problem?" and still waiting for an answer.
Sorry, but I must have missed that. The problem is that I have had to try really hard and I'm still not coming close to the stated EPA range of the car.
Put it another way : when I got the car, I expected to be able to get 73 miles under average driving conditions with a new car with full battery.
But the real range, when driving with the flow of traffic on the freeway, and with the heat to avoid freezing, is really much lower than that, and that's quite a shocker.
** note** your 2.7 miles /kwh is a bit too low. you need to get your tire pressures up or your alignment checked. FYI; now getting reports of 3rd LEAFer who may have received car from the factory out of alignment
Well, FYI, I had a flat recently. One tire had to be replaced on 12/11/2012. Hopefully, for the $157 that the Nissan dealer charged for the matching tire, they checked the tire pressure. Not sure about alignment.
I took original delivery on 10/20.
I doubt it has anything to do with alignment, though. On the downhill commute to work during the daytime, when heat is typically not needed, I get miles/kWh that are in line with expectations.
Calling it downhill is a bit of a stretch, there is really only 0.5 mile of steep downhill, the rest is mostly flat. It mostly means the first half mile uses almost no energy, but after that it's flat.
On the return, things are much different.
As I previously mentioned in this thread, I have carwings data for 12/6 which has just that one-way trip to work (because I came back from work past night, on 12/7). It shows one trip, 12.9 miles, 4.2 miles/kWh. I would think that mileage is within normal expectations for a trip that includes 9 miles of freeway at max 65mph, and 3 miles of city streets. Tony's chart states 3.6 miles/kWh for 65mph. So, I wouldn't suspect that there is something wrong with my car in particular. I think the impact of heat and hills are underestimated in the range chart's footnotes. I am not sure what if anything the EPA does in its mileage tests to account for those factors.