So a couple of years has gone by with no activity on this thread, which probably means nobody cares.
But I do.
I live in France, so it's kilometers for me. And my Leaf has a dreadfully over reading speedo. It is staggering that Nissan can write the electric motor timing algorithms to give pretty perfect 3-phase AC motor control, but couldn't write one to multiply wheel speed by wheel circumference...
It is really unbelievable that they couldn't do that.
In fact it is unbelievable.
Which makes me think they knew exactly what they were doing. They designed into the Leaf a way of tricking us into thinking that we're getting the range they told us we would. It's very clever. No electric car really gets the announced range (because highways are often not in laboratories). But by making us all drive (in my case it is just over 10%) slower than we think, then we save energy and can potentially get near to what we should be getting at a proper speed. Then we don't complain (as much as we should)
So that's clever. But it's also bloody dangerous. I quite often pass Leafs going the other way, and they almost always have a line of traffic stuck up their asses. Probably because most Leaf drivers are responsible citizens and are respecting the speed limit, by using their totally inaccurate speedometers. This must create stress and has probably led to an accident somewhere in the world.
It really pisses me off that when driving using Google maps on a French motorway (130kph limit) I have to show nearly 150 on the dashboard to get to 130 on Google gps. I don't drive at that speed as my old 30kwh wouldn't last half an hour! But even at the new highway speed limit of 80kph I have to display 90 to keep Google at 80!! It is just complicated and tiring and dangerous. I would like to look out the windscreen from time to time, you know, looking for kids crossing, or cars turning, I think it used to be called driving. But I have to spend most of my time calculating and comparing speed readings! I have had the car for over two years, two sets of wheels and tyres (17 originals and 16 winter) and it is always like this. Not due to pressure or wrong diameter tyres, any half imagined law or regulation or anything other than false information from Nissan.
So it filled me with pleasure when we went to a Nissan/MG shared dealership and ordered a new MG ZS electric
It is embarrassing.
I'm thinking of fitting 205/60/17 tyres on my Leaf rims place of the 215/50/17 originals. This should correct by just under 5%... Unless the car is actually automatically calibrating the speedo to this inaccuracy using its GPS, in which case I think it would be court worthy.
Any thoughts?