New to EV's & the Leaf

[ACDCPhilip]

Firstly, thanks for letting me join the MyNissanLeaf forum.
I've already read through a few Leaf posts on here & there seems to be a lot of well informed content.

I bought my first EV/ Leaf a week ago, it's a used 2016 30KwhTekna with 23k miles under it's wheels.

Had to drive it almost 200 miles home after purchase which was a bit daunting & range anxiety certainly reigned its head in my head.
I had the Zap App here in the UK to find charging points that accepted CC payments & have the CHAdeMO connector.
Unfortunately the first 4 BP charging points wouldn't take any of my 3 different Credit Cards. Luckily the next charger, Instavolt at McDonald's worked perfectly first time & I made it home with one further trouble free fast charge & 78 miles to go.
I will normally charge from 240v at home.

I have owned all Diesel cars for the last 35 years, & still have a Skoda 2l Superb Estate for longer journeys & where carrying capacity is required.
I love the Diesel like torque of the Leaf & it's frugal running costs.

I like to know how things work.
I'm pretty au fait with Diesel engines, but very green when it comes to EV's.
I am now retired & used to work in Telecoms, so do have an electrical knowledge background which hopefully should help.
Hoping to learn loads from the knowledgeable contributors on this forum

I have a VCDS diagnostic cable that works with my laptop for the VW/ Skoda vehicle.
It looks like I will need a Leaf Spy for the new car.

Looking forward to being able to contribute to this forum once my EV knowledge improves.

Best regards to all, Philip.

 

[OldManCan]

Congratulations on the new car! Welcome to the forum. I am also a new EV owner and have found this forum to be immensely valuable with the wealth of knowledge accumulated here as well as the ongoing stream of willing contributions from the much more senior EV owners.

 

[goldbrick]

Welcome. I don't think the VCDS cable will work with LeafSpy but you can buy an OBDII Bluetooth adapter for $20 or so that will work. LeafSpyPro is $10 for the app and well worth it IMHO.

I'm not sure what features the Tekna comes with since that model isn't sold in the US but there is also a lot of information available on the dash on the higher-featured models.

The good/bad news about EV's is that they just go. There isn't much to maintain or work on. The battery capacity is the biggest factor and that just slowly (hopefully) declines over time.

If you want to see some fun mods and such, check out Dala the Great, who goes by the user name Dala here on the forum.

 

[ACDCPhilip]

Thanks very much for the welcome's.

I'll certainly look into LeafSpyPro.
I use a laptop with the VCDS programme.
I know it's a bit old hat but I prefer the larger screen.
I'll have to see if it can run on my Windows laptop.

The Tekna is top of the range in the UK.
It has LED headlamps, leather heated seats front & back, heated steering wheel, satnag etc.

The battery seems in fair condition, still has 12 bars & showed 116 mile range after charging slowly to 100% overnight.

I've watched some of Dala's video's on YouTube, he obviously knows what he is doing & must be a great source of knowledge on the forum.

Looking forward to being able contributing once I know more about how this car works.

 

[jlv]

The battery seems in fair condition, still has 12 bars & showed 116 mile range after charging slowly to 100% overnight.

Just note that the range display on the LEAF dashboard (the GOM or Guess-O-Meter) is notoriously badly in how it overestimates the range available. You should never believe it.

The best way to know your real range is to use LeafSpyPro to read the remaining battery charge in kWh and then tell it what your current efficiency is (mi/kWh), to let it compute the range.

If the Tekna has the steering wheel button that shows the range map (button "a" in the picture here: https://mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?t=14016), then the lower of the two ranges it will display is also a much better estimate of your real remaining range than the one shown in the GOM.

 

[goldbrick]

I also use a laptop with VCDS. :mrgreen: I haven't tried to use it for LeafSpyPro since it seems like a non-starter given the differences involved. The amount of data and options displayed by LeafSpy is small compared to VCDS. There's some scrolling required to access everything on LeafSpy with a phone but nothing like the level of menus in VCDS.

I'm not saying it can't be done but LeafSpy was developed primarily as an app and AFAIK only runs on Android or iOS. If you had a laptop that ran one of those operating systems you might be able to use that but I've never heard of anyone doing it.

 

[ACDCPhilip]

I have found the GOM to be pretty accurate so far.
On my way home from collecting the Leaf I topped up on the motorway to 93% which gave me a certain GOM range.
The journey home from top up ( about 77 miles ) deducted exactly that from the range.
I was cruising between 55 & 60 MPH, which would probably have been a true 51 to 56 I guess.
Managed to build 3 xmas trees on the economy meter LOL.

I do have the "a" button on the steering wheel so will try that out on the next long journey.

Regarding LeafSpy on windows, I did find this site on the net which says it's possible :-
https://ideasforpc.com/leaf-spy-pro-for-pc/#Is_Leaf_Spy_Pro_for_PC_completely_free

Now software hacks isn't my forte, so i'll run it past my son when he is next over to see if he thinks it's worth trying out.

 

[LeftieBiker]

What determines the GOM's accuracy for a given driver is how closely the last few minutes of driving efficiency before they arrive home matches an average of their typical trip efficiency.