On the dash, miles vs battery %

I've had my Leaf only two weeks, and I am on the steep part of the learning curve. The information on the dash is important, but I'm confused as to how to correlate some of it. For instance, with a 100% charge and 82 miles registering, I drove to an elevation of 5000'. When I arrived, the charge was about 50% and the miles registered at 24. When it came time to return home, the downhill adventure put about 30 miles back on the dash, but the battery only registered about 40%. So which do I believe? What is the correlation between the % battery charge and the miles available?

The stupid guess-o-meter on the right that allegedly tells you the # of miles remaining is mostly worthless. It's based upon recent driving history that may or may not have anything to do w/your future driving.

It's generally not worth looking at: http://mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=11777&p=271853&hilit=chasing+tail+award#p271853.

I've driven up a steep hill for about 10 miles and the GOM went down by 40. I've had the GOM at 80 miles, driven 8 miles (slowly) and the GOM went up to 88 miles.

cwerdna said:

The stupid guess-o-meter on the right that allegedly tells you the # of miles remaining is mostly worthless. It's based upon recent driving history that may or may not have anything to do w/your future driving.

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With my 2017 Leaf, I found that turning on cruise control greatly improved the accuracy of the GOM. With cruise control on, it appeared to calculate the range based on my current driving, and not some optimistic formula.

The "guess-o-meter" seems to use only the last few minutes of miles-per-kwh data to come up with its estimate, so it varies wildly. It is only accurate if the remainder of your drive will be exactly the same as what you've recently driven. I suppose it's also fair to say that the fewer miles you have left, the more accurate it probably is, in terms of absolute miles.

After you've had your Leaf for a while and especially after you've done some longer drives, you'll learn what your particular car's range is. For example, I recently did my longest drive ever and can confidently say that my 100%-to-empty range is 90 miles at 60mph (60 verified by gps, 62 on speedometer), using cruise control, on a flat, dry freeway at 50 - 85 degrees F. Given this info, it is relatively easy to estimate my miles-to-empty at any other %.

I just bought mine used as well about 2 weeks ago. I cleared the energy usage data from the previous owner, you may want to do that as well.

That being said, I have a question regarding the miles/kwh display in the center of the installment cluster.

Since taking ownership I've managed 4.7 miles/kwh. Is it fair to assume that that's a better gauge to use when it comes to determining range?

I'm no stranger to hypermiling, I basically drive my Leaf like I drive my Prius with a couple of exceptions. I don't do pulse and glide of course, accelerating rather gently instead of briskly as one would in a Prius for hypermiling. Otherwise I do a lot of coasting to stops, trying to get myself as much space as possible in Phoenix traffic to plan ahead.

Wolfstar said:

That being said, I have a question regarding the miles/kwh display in the center of the installment cluster.

Since taking ownership I've managed 4.7 miles/kwh. Is it fair to assume that that's a better gauge to use when it comes to determining range?

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Yes. You have a certain amount of capacity available in kWh (instead of gallons of gas) and you want to achieve high miles/kWh (like high miles per gallon).

Range charts at http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?t=4295 may help along with Leaf Spy for its smarter GOM and also so that you have visibility if the % SoC display turns to ---%, which it can from a whole number like 6% to ---%. I've been there, before having Leaf Spy.

(A gallon of gasoline has about 33.7 kWh of energy content.)

As for the GOM keep in mind a Nissan mile is only 4,000 feet