My Nissan Leaf Forum

thats right im not an official owner yet... but a brand new SV is sitting in my driveway until next Wednesday anyway. I drove it from the dealership to my house, a 15 mile drive. I already love the way it sounds from outside when approaching at slow speed! very sci-fi imho. Inside the leaf seems well built, not premium quality but very good. its easy to drive although i feel the power steering might be a bit overboosted. The breaks are very good. The fun part is the go however... pulls like a diesel locpmotive! I arrived home with 66 miles left. (was showing 97 range when left the dealership). so i used 30 miles to do 15. Cant draw any conclusion from a single drive. We will see how this goes over the week. Average was 3.3 m/kWh)... is that good, average or poor? temperature was 50F and my drive home was 50/50 mix highway and city on relatively level ground... when i plugged it in ising the on board coard, it said 4hr on 240V or 7:30 on 120V. My commute every day is 20 miles so it should be logistically feasible to recharche overnight.
so first impressions very good. Not ready to pull the trigger yet ( a sub $200 leaae would do it!) bit it might grow on me over the week.

The very first thing you need to learn about the LEAF is to ignore the "Distance to Empty" meter. Here at MNL it is called the "Guess-o-meter" (GOM) because it doesn't accurately predict range. (How could it know whether you are going to be driving faster, slower, uphill, downhill, in wind, etc.?) Instead you need to learn how many fuel bars it takes you to make various destinations under various driving conditions. To get an idea of how far you can go at a given speed check out Tony Williams' Range Chart. Be sure to consider the footnotes about temperature adjustments and the like. (And if your typical trips don't stretch the range of the LEAF, just ignore it all and enjoy the ride.) 3.3 miles/kWh is fairly poor at that speed and temperature. But, did you reset the meter before making the trip? If not, it may include some low efficiency driving prior to your trip. I suggest resetting one of the two meters—you have two, one on the dash and one on the console—before leaving home each day so that you can see how you are doing on a daily basis.With a 20 mile commute you can easily recharge at 120 V overnight. A lot of people here with short commutes use only 120 V charging. If you haven't already done so, set your charge timer to 80% since there is no need for 100% charging unless you are going to make a long trip. And if you do charge to 100%, never leave the car at that level for more than a few hours. Even though you plan to lease, if you actually decide to do so there is no reason to abuse the battery.

this was my first guess... thank you for your advise!

I hadnt reset it. this was probably over the 846 miles it did since new. I just reset it before I went back out to pick up my daughter. Over 12 miles I did 4.0... still learning how to drive it and all. This model is a 2011 Maybe I can get a way better deal than the one they initially offered me... I'll post more about that on my other thread

I need to understand that as I was not aware and I was always under the impression a battery needed to be stored at 100. Do you have any links handy to share ?
thank you again for all your help. I 'm liking it a bit more with each mile...

No, never leave Li-ion batteries at 100%, they are completely different from the lead-acid batteries cars have been using for years; that's why I mentioned it! If you check the owner's manual it suggests charging to 80%; I think it calls this the "long-life mode". The business about best battery practices has been so much discussed here that I don't think I could find one or a few threads specific to it. But, be aware that Li-ion batteries do NOT do well when left at 100% or at low charge, say below 20%. They will likely hold up better if kept between 20% and 60% or so. And they do not like heat. Cold reduces capacity but doesn't hurt the battery. Heat kills them.

If you need to charge to 100% go ahead and do so, just use an "end-time-only" charge timer to finish the charge right before you leave. A few hours at 100% is no big deal, leaving it at 100% for days will cause premature degradation. Don't do that.

If you want to charge to 80% every time you plug-in so that you don't have to fuss with it, I suggest setting one of the charge timers to 80% with the same start time and end time, say 1 PM. Then set it for all seven days of the week. That way when you plug-in, the car will charge to 80% no matter what time of day. If you leave the charge timers off the car will charge to 100% every time you plug-in. That's why I mentioned it: lots of people don't read the manual and don't set the timers.

A more sophisticated way to set a charge timer is to use an end-time-only, perhaps the time of day when you leave for work. Then the car will finish charging before you leave—it always finishes a bit early—and it won't sit at a high state of charge for very long. If you have the car charged to 80% and want more charge for a longer trip, you can just hit the override button to the left of the steering wheel and it will keep charging until you unplug or it gets to 100%. That is sometimes easier than setting a timer to 100% or turning the timers off. Be aware that if you unplug after override, it defaults back to your timer setting when replugged.

I realize that all this is a lot to absorb, so I'll leave it there. I suggest reading the manual and then asking questions about things that aren't clear.

thank you for taking the time to write your post ! unfortunately there is no manual in the vehicle...

Check this post for manual links:

viewtopic.php?f=38&t=11049

Also, imho, when evaluating your range requirements, don't look at only today, look at the range you'll need at the end of the loan/lease. If your range requirements are in the 60-70 mile range you may be disappointed long term. If you're closer to 40-50 miles then you should be golden.

A 2011 LEAF is definitely not "brand new". Even if it has never been sold and has only a couple hundred miles on it, the battery has degraded significantly from the passage of time--more so if it was stored at a high state of charge (> 80%).

oh wow... any way to check the extend of the damage? FWIW I had it charge back to 100% overnight and this morning was 27'F but all 12 bars were lit and the range showed 96 to go in D and 119 in ECO...

Update your Profile's Location, and we can better advise you.
Yes, weather and terrain are important factors to consider.

However, I love my Maple LEAF.
So, a premature "Welcome" to the LEAF family.

All 12 bars lit is a good sign (assuming you are talking about capacity bars, not fuel bars):

wiki/index.php?title=Battery_Capacity_Loss#Symptoms

The best way we have currently is to measure Gids at a 100% charge. This is a unit of energy in the battery named after our own Gary Giddings, who designed, built and sells a "Gid Meter" that some of us have. Borrowing one of these meters to check the battery capacity is the best current measure of remaining battery capacity.