ECO mode = less range?

I have had my leaf for over 2 months now and have an extremely predictable route to and from work (one way is 27 miles). The route covers city driving, highway driving, and some hilly driving (not massive hills but some..its texas). Most days I drive in on Drive mode because I enjoy the fun of driving the car. My route is extremely predicatble, I get to work with 8 bars remaining and about 65 miles on the range-o-meter (plus or minus 3 miles, which is very little play in the end). This never changes unless there is an accident or something else. I always try and challenge myself on when the bar will drop from 9 to 8 by how close I can get to work before it drops (it usually drops at the tail end of the last highway section to exit to work). My drive home is just as predictable, I get home with 3 bars left (my total trip is ~4.5 bars one way) with an average of 20 miles of range (plus or minus 2 miles).

But when I drive in eco (about once a week) I always get predictable results using 5 bars there and 4-5 bars home (I guess I am just on the edge between the last two bars). My range meter when I get to work is always 58 (plus or minus 2), and always at 7 bars total. Why is eco mode using an extra half bar of range or more? My guess-o-meter always comes at a difference of ~8 miles less, ALWAYS. Is there something having to do with a harder regen is less effiecence than me coasting more in drive in some areas? I usually come out even on the trip home (compared to drive mode) since the AC is running harder and eco reduces the AC usage, which, I am guessing compensates for the extra power I am using driving.

I am really confused with these results (and dissapointed). Again this is predictable every time. I have never used eco mode to and from work and gotten the same results (or better!) than compared driving in Drive mode, and its ALWAYS worse. Any ideas?

It would strongly depend on the terrain; for instance, if your motion downhill happens on the highway, the extra regeneration would not work because you still have to accelerate to keep up with the traffic, also if you go uphill immediately after going downhill, the regen might not help because instead of using the energy to reach a higher point on the hill, you are regenerating, and that carries losses.

If you are gentle on the throttle and don't blast the AC, both driving modes are very similar, but eco is better in city drive where your approach to red lights, stops at hill bottoms and slower speeds without hindering traffic will add up little by little.

Lifting your foot on eco mode on the highway will, likely, always result in net losses as you are not intending to slow down, just adjusting to traffic speed.

Pipcecil said:

Is there something having to do with a harder regen is less effiecence than me coasting more in drive in some areas?

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Yes, I think that's it. Some people are able to pay enough attention to the bubble meter or have a very good feel for the car, and are able to get great results in ECO all the time, even on the highway. Others like me prefer D on the highway, and just keep a light foot on the accelerator.

This brings me to a question... is it possible to coast on N as you would do with a ICE car :?:

walterbays said:

Others like me prefer D on the highway, and just keep a light foot on the accelerator.

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I think that's where ECO can really help until you get use to the car. One of the main difference I find driving the Leaf is the lack of feedback (shifting sensation) from the automatic transmission that an ICE provides. Before you know it, you are flying down the freeway at 70. You really have to watch the bubble and your speed.

amtoro said:

This brings me to a question... is it possible to coast on N as you would do with a ICE car :?:

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No need. Just get it to one bubble with your foot. Easier to do in D than in ECO.

amtoro said:

This brings me to a question... is it possible to coast on N as you would do with a ICE car :?:

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Yes, you can shift into N and coast or, by controlling the accelerator, keep the energy meter in the NAV window on 0.

amtoro said:

This brings me to a question... is it possible to coast on N as you would do with a ICE car :?:

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I have about 1.5 miles downhill on a freeway. I tried neutral a couple times, just wanted to see if the Leaf picks up speed. And it does from 55 mph to 65 mph. My pickup truck just maintains the speed.

EDIT: By neutral I mean pushing the shifter to the left and holding it there until D(ECO) changes to N. Make sure you go to D not R at 65mph! Anybody tried going to R while still moving forward (not at 65mph)?

from what I've gathered, hypermilers can do better in D mode than eco in the Leaf. At some point I will probably play with D mode more, but for now I've decided to stick with Eco mode because I'd rather just enjoy the experience of driving without constantly splitting hairs. I do switch to D mode on occasion for fun and when crossing heavy traffic. I think it comes down to what combination of paying attention and responsiveness you enjoy more.

oh, and wondering if others experience this: now that the car has 5K on it, it seems that eco mode has a lot less drag than when it was new... wondering if that's from breaking the car in?
g

My experience suggests that all ECO mode does - helps you get more regen on coasting, without touching brake pedal. Trick there - when you do touch brake pedal even lightly - sometimes brakes actuate, i can feel it by temperature of rotors. When no braking was done - rotors are cold.

So ECO mode helps to slow down car faster while coasting

GaslessInSeattle said:

from what I've gathered, hypermilers can do better in D mode than eco in the Leaf.

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You can get exactly the same results in ECO or D--just depends on using them properly. The only difference with ECO is that there is more regen and the accelerator pedal is a lot less sensitive (=finer control). To use ECO mode to its fullest benefit, you have to put the Energy screen up on the NAV and pay close attention to it. When you want to go slower in ECO mode, usually you just back off the accelerator pedal enough that you slow down WITHOUT going into regen unless absolutely necessary. Otherwise you exchanging momentum for regen, but regen wastes 70% of your kinetic energy.

I prefer to drive in ECO mode, as the slower acceleration/finer control is very useful in city driving, plus all you have to do for most of your slowing is to adjust the position of the accelerator pedal. YMMV.

GaslessInSeattle said:

from what I've gathered, hypermilers can do better in D mode than eco in the Leaf. At some point I will probably play with D mode more, but for now I've decided to stick with Eco mode because I'd rather just enjoy the experience of driving without constantly splitting hairs. I do switch to D mode on occasion for fun and when crossing heavy traffic. I think it comes down to what combination of paying attention and responsiveness you enjoy more.

oh, and wondering if others experience this: now that the car has 5K on it, it seems that eco mode has a lot less drag than when it was new... wondering if that's from breaking the car in?
g

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This is false. This is a complete misconception that gets repeated by hybrid drivers, ECO mode for 90% of drivers will always be more efficient because one can still "coast" and in any instance when one needs to stop more on a hill or suddenly they will get more regen in ECO. This nonsense is spread by hyper milers that usually have no EV experience or are so convinced it is the only way to drive. The LEAF has such mild regen even in ECO that using neutral is just comical. The vast number of people just don't understand the drive system well enough to get more efficiency or lack the driving skills. Far too much energy is expended on this ECO/D/N issue. If you don't understand all this in great detail and want more efficiency put the car in ECO and forget about it.

Pipcecil said:

Again this is predictable every time. I have never used eco mode to and from work and gotten the same results (or better!) than compared driving in Drive mode, and its ALWAYS worse. Any ideas?

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To really know whether you are getting different efficiency you cannot rely on the estimated range at the completion of each type of trip. What you have to do is measure the electricity being put back into the car after each commute to restore it to the same charge level. If you are using a Leaf timer to recharge, and are receiving charge complete emails, the average end time of your recharges will tell you something (but...probably more informative when charging to 80% than to 100%, since the tapering off of the charge rate when going to 100, and therefore the time it takes, is perhaps affected by ambient temperature). If you have a Blink, you can see exactly how many kWh are required after otherwise identical commutes in each drive mode. There _may_ be something to what you think you are seeing depending on the terrain of your route and your technique...if you are wasting momentum with higher regen in eco and having to accelerate to get back up to speed, vs. "just coasting" in D...but even if that's a valid difference it can't be happening all the time, and your overall range would not be greatly affected. The energy required to move your car from point A to point B and back again at a given speed, in the same wind/air conditions does not change.

Measure the recharges and you'll know for sure.

wsbca said:

Measure the recharges and you'll know for sure.

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Or datalog the actual battery info using Gary's SOC meter. Real time data!

EVDRIVER said:

This is false. This is a complete misconception that gets repeated by hybrid drivers, ECO mode for 90% of drivers will always be more efficient because one can still "coast" and in any instance when one needs to stop more on a hill or suddenly they will get more regen in ECO. This nonsense is spread by hyper milers that usually have no EV experience or are so convinced it is the only way to drive. The LEAF has such mild regen even in ECO that using neutral is just comical. The vast number of people just don't understand the drive system well enough to get more efficiency or lack the driving skills. Far too much energy is expended on this ECO/D/N issue. If you don't understand all this in great detail and want more efficiency put the car in ECO and forget about it.

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+1! Now this is the first serious thing you've written in a while. I will guarantee you that people who drive in 'D' will be replacing their brake pads MUCH sooner than 'ECO' drivers. I rarely have to use my brakes and mine will last the life of the car!

TonyWilliams said:

wsbca said:

Measure the recharges and you'll know for sure.

Click to expand...

Or datalog the actual battery info using Gary's SOC meter. Real time data!

Click to expand...

Not accurate enough.

wsbca said:

Pipcecil said:

Again this is predictable every time. I have never used eco mode to and from work and gotten the same results (or better!) than compared driving in Drive mode, and its ALWAYS worse. Any ideas?

Click to expand...

To really know whether you are getting different efficiency you cannot rely on the estimated range at the completion of each type of trip. What you have to do is measure the electricity being put back into the car after each commute to restore it to the same charge level. If you are using a Leaf timer to recharge, and are receiving charge complete emails, the average end time of your recharges will tell you something (but...probably more informative when charging to 80% than to 100%, since the tapering off of the charge rate when going to 100, and therefore the time it takes, is perhaps affected by ambient temperature). If you have a Blink, you can see exactly how many kWh are required after otherwise identical commutes in each drive mode. There _may_ be something to what you think you are seeing depending on the terrain of your route and your technique...if you are wasting momentum with higher regen in eco and having to accelerate to get back up to speed, vs. "just coasting" in D...but even if that's a valid difference it can't be happening all the time, and your overall range would not be greatly affected. The energy required to move your car from point A to point B and back again at a given speed, in the same wind/air conditions does not change.

Measure the recharges and you'll know for sure.

Click to expand...

The FACTS are not debatable. ECO does not make the car use more energy, that is a given. It does OFFER opportunities where one can get more energy over D and it still does not ever create a situation where it restricts efficiency over D, this is all driver dictated. There is a lack of understanding as to how these systems work and quite a bit of unscientific perceptions and testing criteria on efficiency.

I know its bad to use the "guess-o-meter" as a gauge but when I get consistant results (plus or minus 3 miles) every trip, its given a consistant readout for me for this one type of trip and I feel I can use this number as a guide. When I average 8 miles less on the guess-o-meter, and one bar less as well on the guage, I am using more energy in eco versus drive (for a single trip, not round trip). I could be my driving habits have formed to Drive mode and counteract the benefits of ECO mode? I pulled my AV charger data (I have the RS+ that gives data like Blink) and I average over 15+ kWh charged in drive mode per day, on eco it was 17+ kwh charged (some as high as 18). So I have three independent sources stating the additional energy usage.

Am I just unlucky? Do all of my eco days have higher wind and less traffic (i.e. not much regen) to skew my results? I would think with 8 eco trials I would have weeded out any outliers in my data. All my eco runs have been varried days of the week, during school, during summer, etc. I tried to exclude any potential variable to skew the results...

Pipcecil said:

I know its bad to use the "guess-o-meter" as a gauge but when I get consistant results (plus or minus 3 miles) every trip, its given a consistant readout for me for this one type of trip and I feel I can use this number as a guide. When I average 8 miles less on the guess-o-meter, and one bar less as well on the guage, I am using more energy in eco versus drive (for a single trip, not round trip). I could be my driving habits have formed to Drive mode and counteract the benefits of ECO mode? I pulled my AV charger data (I have the RS+ that gives data like Blink) and I average over 15+ kWh charged in drive mode per day, on eco it was 17+ kwh charged (some as high as 18). So I have three independent sources stating the additional energy usage.

Am I just unlucky? Do all of my eco days have higher wind and less traffic (i.e. not much regen) to skew my results? I would think with 8 eco trials I would have weeded out any outliers in my data. All my eco runs have been varried days of the week, during school, during summer, etc. I tried to exclude any potential variable to skew the results...

Click to expand...

You are likely driving more conservatively.

EVDRIVER said:

GaslessInSeattle said:

from what I've gathered, hypermilers can do better in D mode than eco in the Leaf. At some point I will probably play with D mode more, but for now I've decided to stick with Eco mode because I'd rather just enjoy the experience of driving without constantly splitting hairs. I do switch to D mode on occasion for fun and when crossing heavy traffic. I think it comes down to what combination of paying attention and responsiveness you enjoy more.

oh, and wondering if others experience this: now that the car has 5K on it, it seems that eco mode has a lot less drag than when it was new... wondering if that's from breaking the car in?
g

Click to expand...

This is false. This is a complete misconception that gets repeated by hybrid drivers, ECO mode for 90% of drivers will always be more efficient because one can still "coast" and in any instance when one needs to stop more on a hill or suddenly they will get more regen in ECO. This nonsense is spread by hyper milers that usually have no EV experience or are so convinced it is the only way to drive. The LEAF has such mild regen even in ECO that using neutral is just comical. The vast number of people just don't understand the drive system well enough to get more efficiency or lack the driving skills. Far too much energy is expended on this ECO/D/N issue. If you don't understand all this in great detail and want more efficiency put the car in ECO and forget about it.

Click to expand...

The folks I hear making the claims are Leaf owners, not hybrid owners, but they do seem in the minority. It is hard for me to make sense of it for the reason's you state. This last month I've been getting 4.6 MkWh in Eco with lots of hills. I don't see how it would be possible to do better in D mode, but there are folks out there like the OP who seem pretty convincing in their opposite conclusion based on their experience. I'm tempted it may be more true for folks who do not do a lot of elevation change. Maybe I should make September a D month and see how it compares, though assuring that I drive in a way that truly compares apples to apples will be next to impossible.