patrick0101 said:
Thanks Evoforce. These are great suggestions. Some apply to me and others don't. Rather than saving my responses for a write up in May, I'll share my initial thoughts/replies here.
I have a 4.5 year old leaf with 46K miles. I'll add my comments to this.
patrick0101 said:
Evoforce said:
The issue of continued rapid degradation of the Traction Battery in hotter climates.
Fortunately for me, I have not experienced the rapid degradation problem (I live in Oregon). The weather here is great for batteries. Each year we have very few days over 100 degrees F and few under freezing. I'm still at 11 of 12 bars, but the range degradation is becoming an issue.
I have 9 of 12 bars left and I haven't noticed any loss of range. I have to admit that I never check range either. Once in a while I drive it a few miles on city streets (35mph speed limit) past the very low battery warning. Charging to 100% from this point has always taken just under 5 hours and still takes just under 5 hours.
patrick0101 said:
Evoforce said:
The problem of available QC.
QC in Oregon was great. Our state DOT had an EV Chief Officer. She rolled out the West Coast Electric Highway allowing N/S border to border travel and she worked with Travel Oregon to electrify excursions and scenic routes. So I cannot complain about that one.
This is not an issue for me. I don't have the QC port. I have not opportunity charged very many times: twice at a friend's house using the L1 adapter that came with the car and twice at public L2 charging stations.
patrick0101 said:
Evoforce said:
The lack of available range...the as of yet non offering of a much longer range Nissan traction battery
When I bought it I knew it was EPA rated at 73 miles and I knew the range would degrade over time. I still bought it (rather than lease). It would be nice if there was an upgrade option for older Leafs when the new longer range packs come out.
I don't go outside the range of my car very often and usually farther than even a 50% upgrade would allow. I rent a car for this.
patrick0101 said:
Evoforce said:
lack of dealerships knowing the leaf well enough
The dealership that I went to, Tonkin of Wilsonville, was really cool. They invited our EV club to come to the dealership as a group. We had a long back and forth Q&A about 3 months before the cars came out. They learned a lot about EVs and EV drivers. I've read many of the horror stories. I'm glad I didn't have to deal with such ignorance.
I arranged the entire sale over the internet and only went to the dealer to pick up the car. I have taken it in for "service" a few times. Every time I took my Honda EVPlus in for service it came back with the tires at 32PSI rather than 44PSI. Nissan service has never adjusted tire pressure.
patrick0101 said:
Evoforce said:
Would like the wireless to continue to work.
I agree. If/when AT&T shuts down the 2G that the car uses, they need to have some plan to upgrade the wireless modem. The fact that they have know this was coming for years and have not detailed a plan is ridiculous.
I have never signed up for or used this feature. I just hit the "decline" button as part of my initialization procedure.
patrick0101 said:
Evoforce said:
Would like the brakes a little less touchy.
Agreed. There was one firmware update that made it a little better, but it is still an issue.
Yeah, I can see how this can be annoying. I find that letting my foot completely off the break pedal and back on resets the sensitivity.
patrick0101 said:
Evoforce said:
I am concerned about the failure of the 12V battery as it relates to brake failure issues (scared me bad once).
I have been lucky and not ran into this one personally.
I have not had this problem either.
patrick0101 said:
Evoforce said:
Paint is deteriorating around the solar panel
I'll double check the paint (especially there).
This is not a problem for me either.
patrick0101 said:
Evoforce said:
I would like to see the car give information like we get from Leafspy.
That would be cool, but I think the Leaf already offers a lot of data compared to most cars and the data that we enthusiasts get into would overwhelm most people.
I don't know that I need all that information while I'm driving the car. I would like the "bar" gauge to be linear. At least it is monotonically decreasing. I go about the same distance on the top eight bars as I do on the bottom four. I don't like that it "drops" a bar each time the car is power cycled. At least it eventually recovers from this by giving longer distance on the next bar or two.
The guess-o-meter "miles remaining" number is just silly. The best thing that can be said about it is that it is inaccurate. One number is not enough to information for this function. I care about how far I could go driving the way I am right now, and how far I could go driving as efficiently as possible. This gauge provides neither value. These two numbers provide all the information to make the proper choices. Honda certainly did this right with the EVPlus. They had a horizontal bar graph that presented these numbers simultaneously with a green bar and a yellow bar.
patrick0101 said:
Evoforce said:
A more rapid onboard charger.
Agreed. I am not sure why they had a 3.3kW charger in the early years. The EVs from the 90s had 6.6kW. Was this for cost, weight, safety... who knows. They need to go to 7.2kW or higher in the next model year, IMHO.
I sleep about eight hours every night. As long as the car charges in that amount of time (which it does), I'm happy.
I have had to replace the windshield twice. It's hard to say this is really a problem with the car, but over the previous 40 years, I have never had to replace a windshield.
One of the license plate lights popped out once. I put it back and it hasn't popped out since.
I got a flat tire once (third time in my life). This is certainly not a problem with the car, but having a spare tire would have been nice.
I like that in the 2011 model the pedestrian alert noise maker can be disabled. I live in a townhouse community and I'm sure my neighbors would be upset if my car was "beeping" underneath their bedroom windows when I back out of my garage at 5:30 in the morning. I use it in parking lots, but I'm not sure it really matters.
I like the backup camera with the graphic overlay. I would prefer two more cameras on the front corners of the car with their video images presented in the top right and left corners of the screen while I'm backing up.
I would prefer stronger regenerative braking. It would be nice to only have to use the "brake" pedal for emergencies. The go pedal should be a sort of variable cruise control: hold the pedal at 45mph, and the car will go 45mph -- up hill, down hill, and on the level. The difference between the current speed and the desired speed should set the acceleration/deceleration rate.
I like the controls on the steering wheel. It is nice to have real buttons/switches rather than virtual buttons/switches on a video screen. I can manipulate them without looking at them.
