My list of things I'd like to see changed on the Gen 2 LEAF

[EVDRIVER]

I thought they stopped doing that in autos, if I have to say ok every time I get in the car it's going to drive me nuts. I thought that was the point if opting into Carwings. Please don't tell me that you have to pull over to enter a new destination into the Navigation.

 

[TomT]

Unfortunately, unlike every other car I have owned with a factory Navigation system, Nissan locks out most Nav inputs when you are moving. I sure hope someone finds a hack around this! If the nav was an option and not standard, I'd not order it for this reason alone.

I thought they stopped doing that in autos, if I have to say ok every time I get in the car it's going to drive me nuts. I thought that was the point if opting into Carwings. Please don't tell me that you have to pull over to enter a new destination into the Navigation.

 

[garygid]

What Nav functions are available by voice?

Voice functions are usually available while driving.

 

[EVDRIVER]

Boy, that's irritating since the time I need Nav is when I'm driving and want to find something and it's not like I'm going to get off the freeway, I usually have the passenger look it up. I saw some voice spelling prompts but that seems like it would be painful. I had an Acura TL and the Nav was great with full access all the time and none of the ok screens. I liked voice features such as "find nearest Chinese restaurant", etc. I hope there is a hack as this is quite irritating, to many lawyers involved I suppose. This will be my first Nissan ever and it seems that their electronics technology/interface is lagging compared to other auto makers and Nav units out there, seems it should have better voice recognition than my very old Acura, that worked quite well. I look forward to reports on this feature....

 

[garygid]

On a route, driving, and you want a POI. In the 2010 Prius Nav, you can only select "Near Here" or "Along Route". The "near" places are often "past-by" places by the time you locate it. The "along route" apparently does not extend very far, and rarely finds much (my limited experience). Further, the distance and relative direction are not shown, so you do not know if it is ahead, behind, or way off-route. And, if you do chose one of the very few that it finds, it shows a closeup (zoomed in) map of the POI's location so that it is generally impossible to tell at a glance where the POI is relative to you. Overall, one of the poorest implementations that I have seen. The "text-to-speech" is one of the worst I have heard (but my hearing IS poor).

Good in Prius-Nav, is voice input of city, street name, and address number to set a destination, even while driving.

So, how does the LEAF-Nav do with these same (or similar) functions?

 

[Googler]

Since I'm buying this as a commute car and my smart phone already has turn by turn directions anyway, the nav system is pretty useless to me. I'm not planning to activate Carwings, so I'm hoping that this will eliminate the nags.

 

[waidy]

I have just submitted the following comments/inputs to Nissan USA. I can't find a button to attached the two reports. If you would like to see and compare the two reports, please tell me how.
-----------emailed to nissan-usa.com
Please accept our inputs below, after taking delivery of the LEAF for two weeks and driving over 600 fossil fuel free miles.

• NO TURTLE LIGHT: Turtle light never turns on, even after driving 5 miles after the dash board indicated there was -- mile left. We charged it afterward and found it took 23.899kWh to refill. We were in danger of running out of juice. Since the turtle mode did not kick on, my LEAF did not reduce its power.

• BAD VISIBILITY: The back seat headrests block 1/3 of the rear window. What is worst is that the visibility on the right rear back window (aka blind spot) is so bad that you cannot be sure whether there is a car coming on your right lane, hence it make changing to right lane very difficult and unsafe.

• I wish the number of miles left can be switched off. The number of miles left is really dependent on your driving habits. An experienced EV driver can do that better than what the LEAF calculates. It creates confusion.

• I wish there are heated seats available.

• I wish there is a 6.6kW on board charger upgrade.

• I wish Voltage can be displayed.

• I wish the SOC indicator is ON when changing. The 3 flashing lights is useful but having seeing the SOC indicator is much, much better.

• I wish information on the CARWINGS can be interactive (i.e. I don't need to do "update", it will update every N minutes when the LEAF is in operation)

• I wish the "Check Local Traffic" displays the "mph" information on the list. Currently, it has "ABC street - congestion..", my wish would be "ABC street - 25mph congestion"

• Battery Health Report is too simplistic. it does not contain any actual/specific data. Attached are two files. One of them is the battery health report I requested from Nissan Service Department for a print out. The other one is the battery health report for my RAV4-EV. As you see from the RAV4-EV battery report, it really shows the health for individual cell.

Thanks you so much. I look forward for a fix on item 1 soon, and Nissan's comments on the rest of the items.
Best,
Waidy Lee

 

[aqn]

Another design for those fender mounted turn signal lamps. One that looks more integrated into the body than the current version, which looks like it was stuck to the fender as an afterthought.

The "guide" for our "tour" during the Leaf test drive event here in Austin took pain to point out that since the Leaf is so quiet, and since the outside rear view mirrors are among the "bigger sources of noise", Nissan designed the headlight/turn signal to route air around the rear view mirrors. That sounded good (pun!), even if it might not be true.

 

[aqn]

The ECO package as I envision it, could have everything on the table from grill blocks to cambacks, to boat tail like extension, to air dams, to diffusers, to lightweight rims & tires, fender/wheel skirts, to narrowing the cars track, you name it.

I agree on the weight factor and other points of metering but few wan't cars that look what you describe.

Why not? Just look at how many bought the Leaf.

And oh yeah: ditto on the weight.

 

[Jimmydreams]

• NO TURTLE LIGHT: Turtle light never turns on, even after driving 5 miles after the dash board indicated there was -- mile left. We charged it afterward and found it took 23.899kWh to refill. We were in danger of running out of juice. Since the turtle mode did not kick on, my LEAF did not reduce its power.

I wouldn't be so sure your turtle mode isn't working. There are losses in the charging of your car.....so putting 23.899kWh into your car probably translates to 22.5kWh actually getting into your packs. IOW, you weren't as close to Turtle Mode as you thought. Unless your car went from "---" miles available to completely shutting off, you haven't yet reached Turtle Mode. IIRC, you'll get the "---" display after hitting 9ish miles remaining....so it goes from 9 miles remaining to "---". If you drove 5 more, you'd still have 4+ miles left. Turtle Mode probably kicks in around 2 miles left.

YMMV.

 

[waidy]

• NO TURTLE LIGHT: Turtle light never turns on, even after driving 5 miles after the dash board indicated there was -- mile left. We charged it afterward and found it took 23.899kWh to refill. We were in danger of running out of juice. Since the turtle mode did not kick on, my LEAF did not reduce its power.

I wouldn't be so sure your turtle mode isn't working. There are losses in the charging of your car.....so putting 23.899kWh into your car probably translates to 22.5kWh actually getting into your packs. IOW, you weren't as close to Turtle Mode as you thought. Unless your car went from "---" miles available to completely shutting off, you haven't yet reached Turtle Mode. IIRC, you'll get the "---" display after hitting 9ish miles remaining....so it goes from 9 miles remaining to "---". If you drove 5 more, you'd still have 4+ miles left. Turtle Mode probably kicks in around 2 miles left.

YMMV.

If you were to look at Board index » Leaf Ownership » Range / Efficiency / Carwings Topic My Experiments With Turtle you will see other LEAFers has turtle as early as 11 miles left or as late as 7 miles left. I have "---" + 5 miles after the "---" was shown. These 5 miles are uphill! The point is that the LEAF need to reduce its power to conserve energy. Without Turtle mode, the LEAF did not reduce its power in my case.

 

[Jimmydreams]

• NO TURTLE LIGHT: Turtle light never turns on, even after driving 5 miles after the dash board indicated there was -- mile left. We charged it afterward and found it took 23.899kWh to refill. We were in danger of running out of juice. Since the turtle mode did not kick on, my LEAF did not reduce its power.

I wouldn't be so sure your turtle mode isn't working. There are losses in the charging of your car.....so putting 23.899kWh into your car probably translates to 22.5kWh actually getting into your packs. IOW, you weren't as close to Turtle Mode as you thought. Unless your car went from "---" miles available to completely shutting off, you haven't yet reached Turtle Mode. IIRC, you'll get the "---" display after hitting 9ish miles remaining....so it goes from 9 miles remaining to "---". If you drove 5 more, you'd still have 4+ miles left. Turtle Mode probably kicks in around 2 miles left.

YMMV.

If you were to look at Board index » Leaf Ownership » Range / Efficiency / Carwings Topic My Experiments With Turtle you will see other LEAFers has turtle as early as 11 miles left or as late as 7 miles left. I have "---" + 5 miles after the "---" was shown. These 5 miles are uphill! The point is that the LEAF need to reduce its power to conserve energy. Without Turtle mode, the LEAF did not reduce its power in my case.

I was to originator of the "My Experiments With Turtle Mode" as I was the first person to hit it (I was just playing around, trying to get it to activate). I'm not an expert, but my opinion remains the same: you were CLOSE to turtle, but not quite there. Unless your car stopped dead without showing turtle mode, you don't know that it's not working, nor do you know how much range you had left. Without knowing the losses in your charger setup, you cannot use the 23.899kWh value as an accurate indicator of exactly how much SOC you had remaining in your pack.

After all:

I wish the number of miles left can be switched off. The number of miles left is really dependent on your driving habits. An experienced EV driver can do that better than what the LEAF calculates. It creates confusion.

So you yourself know that indicator isn't accurate. Personally, I think hitting Turtle Mode (unless deliberate) is pushing the car too much and asking for a tow or worse. JMO, though.

 

[waidy]

I have just submitted the following comments/inputs to Nissan USA. I can't find a button to attached the two reports. If you would like to see and compare the two reports, please tell me how.
-----------emailed to nissan-usa.com
Please accept our inputs below, after taking delivery of the LEAF for two weeks and driving over 600 fossil fuel free miles.

• NO TURTLE LIGHT: Turtle light never turns on, even after driving 5 miles after the dash board indicated there was -- mile left. We charged it afterward and found it took 23.899kWh to refill. We were in danger of running out of juice. Since the turtle mode did not kick on, my LEAF did not reduce its power.

• BAD VISIBILITY: The back seat headrests block 1/3 of the rear window. What is worst is that the visibility on the right rear back window (aka blind spot) is so bad that you cannot be sure whether there is a car coming on your right lane, hence it make changing to right lane very difficult and unsafe.

• I wish the number of miles left can be switched off. The number of miles left is really dependent on your driving habits. An experienced EV driver can do that better than what the LEAF calculates. It creates confusion.

• I wish there are heated seats available.

• I wish there is a 6.6kW on board charger upgrade.

• I wish Voltage can be displayed.

• I wish the SOC indicator is ON when changing. The 3 flashing lights is useful but having seeing the SOC indicator is much, much better.

• I wish information on the CARWINGS can be interactive (i.e. I don't need to do "update", it will update every N minutes when the LEAF is in operation)

• I wish the "Check Local Traffic" displays the "mph" information on the list. Currently, it has "ABC street - congestion..", my wish would be "ABC street - 25mph congestion"

• Battery Health Report is too simplistic. it does not contain any actual/specific data. Attached are two files. One of them is the battery health report I requested from Nissan Service Department for a print out. The other one is the battery health report for my RAV4-EV. As you see from the RAV4-EV battery report, it really shows the health for individual cell.

Thanks you so much. I look forward for a fix on item 1 soon, and Nissan's comments on the rest of the items.
Best,
Waidy Lee

I just email Nissan-USA to add one more item to the above 10 items. Here is the item I added

11. One should not need to turn on the electric motor to change/add/activate timer (timer for charging)

 

[Jimmydreams]

11. One should not need to turn on the electric motor to change/add/activate timer (timer for charging)

You don't have to. Press the ON button WITHOUT hitting the brake to turn on ACC mode (without the motor being engaged):

When the power switch is pushed without depressing the brake pedal, the power switch position will change as follows.
. Push once to change to ACC.
. Push two times to change to ON.
. Push three times to change to OFF.
. Push four times to return to ACC.
. Open or close any door to return to LOCK while in the OFF position.

(manual, p5-8) With ACC ON, you can access/change the timer settings.

 

[waidy]

The reason I was quoting mile indicator in the email is because the Nissan folks want to talk "mile indicator", not "kWh".

I think it is better that the LEAF goes to power saving mode before it hits the end of 24kWh or before the battery is fully drained. This is better for the driver and the battery pack. I had 101W left and it is getting too late to conserve energy and have enough range to get to a charging station.

We did not deliberate to drain the battery. The round trip between our home to SF is 80 miles in hilly freeway. I shall also add that this was driven in a very good driving behavior with ECO mode all the way and no climate control, no radio. We tried to use EV as much as possible. After driving twice round trips to SF, we stop taking the LEAF because we don't want to stress the battery pack and we don't want to take the risk of having it stalls.

 

[waidy]

11. One should not need to turn on the electric motor to change/add/activate timer (timer for charging)

You don't have to. Press the ON button WITHOUT hitting the brake to turn on ACC mode (without the motor being engaged):

When the power switch is pushed without depressing the brake pedal, the power switch position will change as follows.
. Push once to change to ACC.
. Push two times to change to ON.
. Push three times to change to OFF.
. Push four times to return to ACC.
. Open or close any door to return to LOCK while in the OFF position.

(manual, p5-8) With ACC ON, you can access/change the timer settings.

I did tried it in ACC mode but cannot set timer (screen is blank and nothing happen when hitting the blue carwings button). Were you able to program timer in ACC mode? I wonder if I got the pre-production LEAF

 

[planet4ever]

I had 101W left and it is getting too late to conserve energy and have enough range to get to a charging station.

I'm sure that you had a lot more than 101 watt hours left. The Coulomb charging dock is reporting electricity at the wall, not at the battery. Jimmy knows what he is talking about; when he saw turtle mode he then used 25.6 kWh of electricity, as measured at the wall, to recharge it.

Ray

 

[Herm]

Perhaps Leaf should learn from driver's behaviors and adapt itself to higher and higher battery SOC settings before it goes into turtle mode.. after all none of us want to see Leafs stranded on the side of the hwy, and Nissan would have to pay for the tow job after all.

 

[Jimmydreams]

I did tried it in ACC mode but cannot set timer (screen is blank and nothing happen when hitting the blue carwings button). Were you able to program timer in ACC mode? I wonder if I got the pre-production LEAF

My screen works just fine in ACC mode and I can program the timer as well.

Are you certain you haven't turned the display completely off? In ACC mode, the screen should work normally, as does everything else in the car EXCEPT the ability to put the car in "D".

 

[Jimmydreams]

Perhaps Leaf should learn from driver's behaviors and adapt itself to higher and higher battery SOC settings before it goes into turtle mode.. after all none of us want to see Leafs stranded on the side of the hwy, and Nissan would have to pay for the tow job after all.

Yes and no. There has to be a cut-off point where Nissan throws up their hands and says "We TRIED to tell you!!"

First, the "Low Battery Warning", both visible and audible. You get that somewhere around 17 miles. That's a LOT of time to safely get off the road and to a charging station or at least park it safely. Then, you get a VERY Low Battery warning, again, visible and audible. That's your last warning as your remaining miles show "---". The next warning you get will be Turtle Mode, reduced power, and that warning means you're about to shut completely off in very short order....perhaps as soon as 1 mile, but possibly more.

On an ICE, you get the 'low gas' warning light and then what? A dead engine.

Nissan gives 3 warnings before you go dead-in-the-water. I think that's plenty.