Newbie from Minneapolis

Hi everyone,

We just bought a 2016 LEAF SV last Friday. We already love it! The range is not as severely impacted by the winter weather as I had been led to expect so that's a nice happy surprise.

I'm sure I'll have lots of questions going forward but just wanted to introduce myself. Now I'll go have a look around.

DavidGreene said:

Hi everyone,

We just bought a 2016 LEAF SV last Friday. We already love it! The range is not as severely impacted by the winter weather as I had been led to expect so that's a nice happy surprise.

I'm sure I'll have lots of questions going forward but just wanted to introduce myself. Now I'll go have a look around.

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Congratulations and welcome to the forums. You may want to update your location in your profile as it comes in handy for people answering area related questions.

DavidGreene said:

Hi everyone,

We just bought a 2016 LEAF SV last Friday. We already love it! The range is not as severely impacted by the winter weather as I had been led to expect so that's a nice happy surprise.

I'm sure I'll have lots of questions going forward but just wanted to introduce myself. Now I'll go have a look around.

Click to expand...

Welcome, also from MSP area. Yes the Leaf is a great little car if you can live with it's range. I think you'll find out when it gets real cold(+10 to below zero F) the range does drop off quite a bit. In the summer I generally show ~80 miles of range, unfortunately when the temp nears zero that it almost halved Luckily my longest commute is 60 miles(Burnsville to Plymouth RT) which I generally only have to do once/week and I'm able to plug in a 20a level 2 charger in for a hour or two which gets me back. When it gets that cold I generally try and avoid doing the trip until it gets above zero(preferably +10F) where I can get about 60 miles and then I don't sweat it so much.
I have a '13 with mileage in the mid teens full bars, your '16 might give you a bit longer range. As you know in the winter we basically have to have our heater on 100% of the time, to keep the windows from fogging/freezing up. I like to set my fan to 1, temp to 76(more for effect :lol: ) and split the air between floor and windshield. If I know I'll just be doing short trips I bump the fan up to whatever I feel like. I basically never turn the seat nor steering wheel heater off in the winter :lol:

Have you purchased a 240v EVSE(charger yet?) if not I'd really suggest it. I got by for ~6 months mainly in the summer with only the stock charger but it was a real hassle with the slow charge rate. First I purchased a Juicebox charger(now sold on Amazon) which are about as cheap as chargers come but are build very well. The upgraded one I got(~$600 at the time) allows me to adjust charging rate from 8a(I believe the lowest our Leafs go) to 60a(but our Leafs only go to 27.5a) and it works on 120v as well as 240v. It's kind of heavy so not long after finding this site I send my OEM EVSE into iEngineer to have it upgraded to 240v 20a(still works on 120v but only up to 14a same as stock charger). I basically use this charger all the time because it's so easy to transport and move around, especially in the sub zero temps where the cable still stays flexible, unfortunately my Juicebox cable is very thick and almost worthless when the temps get cold(it's a vinyl cable as apposed to the stock rubber cable). I still carry my Juicebox in my car 100% of the time but more for emergencies since it's so flexible as to where I plug it in, I have adapters to plug it into basically any outlet 120v or 240v. When going to Plymouth I simply throw my upgraded EVSE into the trunk and use it, again it's so much easier to work with.
If you don't already have 240v in your garage(assuming you have one) I'd suggest wiring it for 60a and using 14-50r for the outlet, if you decide to upgrade your OEM EVSE by iEngineer then maybe a L6-30r would suffice, in that case a 30a circuit should be fine.

Another reason to go 240v, the morning preheat works so much better. On 120v it barely warms the car, at 240v 20a it's toasty warm when you leave.

DavidGreene said:

Hi everyone,

We just bought a 2016 LEAF SV last Friday. We already love it! The range is not as severely impacted by the winter weather as I had been led to expect so that's a nice happy surprise.

I'm sure I'll have lots of questions going forward but just wanted to introduce myself. Now I'll go have a look around.

Click to expand...

Hi I'm from Wayzata and considering a 2016 SV Leaf myself. The bigger 30kwh battery will help a lot with cold Minnesota winters which is why I don't want a 2015 model. I know you haven't had it that long but can you tell me roughly how many miles you are getting per charge so far?

rcm4453 said:

Hi I'm from Wayzata and considering a 2016 SV Leaf myself. The bigger 30kwh battery will help a lot with cold Minnesota winters which is why I don't want a 2015 model. I know you haven't had it that long but can you tell me roughly how many miles you are getting per charge so far?

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Longest drive we did yet was from Uptown Minneapolis out to Cottage Grove, driving a bit around there and heading back. Mostly freeway miles which really sucks up the battery. We had the heater on probably half the whole trip and pulled into the garage with 15 mi left on the display. Total distance was probably 55-60 miles. I think this likely represents the worst-case drive for the car (cold weather, freeway, etc.).

Surprisingly (to me), a 15 hour charge with 110v EVSE got it back up to about 90% charged. The charge estimates to 100% were almost double that. Part of that is because that last 10% takes a lot longer but I wonder too if the cold weather helps charging speed since the battery doesn't get as warm.

The next day we drove into downtown Minneapolis and back, a total of about 3 miles for us. It barely knocked off a mile from the range estimate. It was a nice demonstration of how the battery performs much better on slower local roads with regenerative braking.

All that said, this is the perfect car for us. It gets us around the region just fine and we can use the old Yaris for longer trips when needed.

jjeff said:

Have you purchased a 240v EVSE(charger yet?) if not I'd really suggest it. I got by for ~6 months mainly in the summer with only the stock charger but it was a real hassle with the slow charge rate. First I purchased a Juicebox charger(now sold on Amazon) which are about as cheap as chargers come but are build very well. The upgraded one I got(~$600 at the time) allows me to adjust charging rate from 8a(I believe the lowest our Leafs go) to 60a(but our Leafs only go to 27.5a) and it works on 120v as well as 240v. It's kind of heavy so not long after finding this site I send my OEM EVSE into iEngineer to have it upgraded to 240v 20a(still works on 120v but only up to 14a same as stock charger). I basically use this charger all the time because it's so easy to transport and move around, especially in the sub zero temps where the cable still stays flexible, unfortunately my Juicebox cable is very thick and almost worthless when the temps get cold(it's a vinyl cable as apposed to the stock rubber cable). I still carry my Juicebox in my car 100% of the time but more for emergencies since it's so flexible as to where I plug it in, I have adapters to plug it into basically any outlet 120v or 240v. When going to Plymouth I simply throw my upgraded EVSE into the trunk and use it, again it's so much easier to work with.
If you don't already have 240v in your garage(assuming you have one) I'd suggest wiring it for 60a and using 14-50r for the outlet, if you decide to upgrade your OEM EVSE by iEngineer then maybe a L6-30r would suffice, in that case a 30a circuit should be fine.

Another reason to go 240v, the morning preheat works so much better. On 120v it barely warms the car, at 240v 20a it's toasty warm when you leave.

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Thank you for the information! We are going to put in an L2 charger but we need to run 240v to the detached garage. We're going to put solar on the garage as well so we'll need to trench anyway. That will most likely happen sometime this spring.

I didn't know one could upgrade the EVSE. I can see how that would be incredibly useful. I was going to get a portable L2 but maybe it's better to upgrade the EVSE and have more options in a single portable unit.

60a to the garage should be no problem. We have 200a to the house, which is unusual in the area (house built in 1905).

I haven't fully explored the forums yet but are there L2 chargers that can work around the lack of "stop at 80% charged" functionality in the newer LEAFs?

DavidGreene said:

I haven't fully explored the forums yet but are there L2 chargers that can work around the lack of "stop at 80% charged" functionality in the newer LEAFs?

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Nope. There are some timer hacks and things like that, but no EVSE can do that.

Now, if you read your 2015 users' manual, it says to just keep the car plugged in, even after short trips. On Chapter-10 "Charging" (page 61 of the PDF):

"Nissan recommends that you connect the normal charge cable when getting out of the vehicle, even if it is not going to be used. By doing this, you can get the most out of the remote climate control (models with navigation system) and Climate Ctrl. Timer functions the next time you use the vehicle."

This notably changed from previous model years. Apparently with the 2015 they're not concerned about charging to 100% (which likely is 90-95% capacity).

Longest drive we did yet was from Uptown Minneapolis out to Cottage Grove, driving a bit around there and heading back. Mostly freeway miles which really sucks up the battery. We had the heater on probably half the whole trip and pulled into the garage with 15 mi left on the display. Total distance was probably 55-60 miles. I think this likely represents the worst-case drive for the car (cold weather, freeway, etc.).

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How fast were you going on the freeway? I assume the car is aerodynamically identical to the previous (2013-2015) generation, and going faster than 55-60mph really hurts range because of the car's drag at speed.

DavidGreene said:

I didn't know one could upgrade the EVSE. I can see how that would be incredibly useful. I was going to get a portable L2 but maybe it's better to upgrade the EVSE and have more options in a single portable unit.

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If you plan on keeping the Leaf for the long run I'd strongly suggest upgrading your factory EVSE(assuming it can be done for your model). It makes the factory EVSE much more flexible. You can plug it into 120v or 240v and can adjust the charging current down from the factory 12a 120v if you want or 8a-22a?? 240v for much faster charge times. I generally leave mine set at 18a 240v and rarely use 120v but it's still an option if thats all you have. I still like my Juicebox because of it's maximum charge current(27.5a for our Leafs) and the one I have has a very long charge cable but on the downside it's kind of unwieldy for daily use.

DavidGreene said:

I haven't fully explored the forums yet but are there L2 chargers that can work around the lack of "stop at 80% charged" functionality in the newer LEAFs?

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As LeftieBiker said no chargers can tell when the car is at 80%(a feature I use all the time if I know I won't need the range) but you can with some guesswork simulate it, if you know when you'll next be needing the car. Say you know you'll be leaving at 9am, you can plug the car in at night with the charging timer on and tell it you'll be leaving at 11am. When you leave at 9am it won't be fully charged because the car was expecting you to leave at 11am. Now figuring out what time to set the timer will take some trial and error but can be done to a degree.
Another option I've never really explored is I believe my Juicebox can be programmed to start and stop charging at whatever time you want, note I'm not at all familiar how to do this but I'm pretty sure it can, I don't believe this feature is very common for EVSEs.

DavidGreene said:

rcm4453 said:

Hi I'm from Wayzata and considering a 2016 SV Leaf myself. The bigger 30kwh battery will help a lot with cold Minnesota winters which is why I don't want a 2015 model. I know you haven't had it that long but can you tell me roughly how many miles you are getting per charge so far?

Click to expand...

Longest drive we did yet was from Uptown Minneapolis out to Cottage Grove, driving a bit around there and heading back. Mostly freeway miles which really sucks up the battery. We had the heater on probably half the whole trip and pulled into the garage with 15 mi left on the display. Total distance was probably 55-60 miles. I think this likely represents the worst-case drive for the car (cold weather, freeway, etc.).

Surprisingly (to me), a 15 hour charge with 110v EVSE got it back up to about 90% charged. The charge estimates to 100% were almost double that. Part of that is because that last 10% takes a lot longer but I wonder too if the cold weather helps charging speed since the battery doesn't get as warm.

The next day we drove into downtown Minneapolis and back, a total of about 3 miles for us. It barely knocked off a mile from the range estimate. It was a nice demonstration of how the battery performs much better on slower local roads with regenerative braking.

All that said, this is the perfect car for us. It gets us around the region just fine and we can use the old Yaris for longer trips when needed.

Click to expand...

This is plenty of winter range for my needs as well, thank you for sharing. Also, if you do the factory EVSE upgrade you will get the benefit of 120V 16 amp charging, which is a third faster then what you're charging at now on 120V. This should help until you get 240V in your garage.

rcm4453 said:

Also, if you do the factory EVSE upgrade you will get the benefit of 120V 16 amp charging, which is a third faster then what you're charging at now on 120V. This should help until you get 240V in your garage.

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That is of course if the OP has a 120 volt, 20 amp circuit in his garage to plug into.

RonDawg said:

rcm4453 said:

Also, if you do the factory EVSE upgrade you will get the benefit of 120V 16 amp charging, which is a third faster then what you're charging at now on 120V. This should help until you get 240V in your garage.

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That is of course if the OP has a 120 volt, 20 amp circuit in his garage to plug into.

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And you've purchased the optional $34(shipped) adapter, otherwise it's just 12a @ 120v, same as the stock charger.
Note I believe if you purchase the adapter at the same time as you have your charger upgraded you may not be hit with the $8.95 shipping, otherwise if you made the mistake like I did and planned on using an existing adapter you'll be SOL which is why my upgraded EVSE is only 12a. I guess not a big deal as I rarely use 120v and if I need more than the 12a I just use my Juicebox that goes to 27.5a @ 120v(of course assuming your circuit/outlet is rated for that). I occasionally have access to a TT30 RV outlet but generally limit it to 24a(the 80% rule for a 30a circuit).

Update: just checked the EVSE Upgrade site and it looks like with a '15-'16 Leaf the max charge with a upgraded EVSE is 16a @240v, my upgraded '13 would go to 20a@240V, the OPs being a '16 would be limited to 16a, something I personally wouldn't care for as I use 19a all the time, but it is what it is, there must be a limitation with the newer chargers.

Another newbie from Minneapolis here. Just picked up a 2015 SL last week - I'm loving it. I've only seen 3 other LEAFs in that time, but one was where I work. I installed the 6-30 outlet today at work (old industrial building), now I just need to send in my EVSE for upgrading.

Anyone up for a Mpls. LEAF meeting in the summer?

Welcome all you fellow TC-ers!

Praddle said:

Another newbie from Minneapolis here. Just picked up a 2015 SL last week - I'm loving it. I've only seen 3 other LEAFs in that time, but one was where I work. I installed the 6-30 outlet today at work (old industrial building), now I just need to send in my EVSE for upgrading.

Anyone up for a Mpls. LEAF meeting in the summer?

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Come chat with some other PEV owners at the auto show.
We will be in the Electric Car room

Zythryn said:

Praddle said:

Another newbie from Minneapolis here. Just picked up a 2015 SL last week - I'm loving it. I've only seen 3 other LEAFs in that time, but one was where I work. I installed the 6-30 outlet today at work (old industrial building), now I just need to send in my EVSE for upgrading.

Anyone up for a Mpls. LEAF meeting in the summer?

Click to expand...

Come chat with some other PEV owners at the auto show.
We will be in the Electric Car room

Click to expand...

See you guys there
I'll be looking into the Pacifica plug-in and hopefully any info they can provide on a eNV-200, love my Leaf but really need something with more storage room and it would be nice to have more rear seat room too.
I'd prefer an all electric but would consider a PHEV as long as it had a minimum of 30 miles all electric as well as ability to run all electric even if the temps are low(near 0F).

Zythryn said:

Praddle said:

Another newbie from Minneapolis here. Just picked up a 2015 SL last week - I'm loving it. I've only seen 3 other LEAFs in that time, but one was where I work. I installed the 6-30 outlet today at work (old industrial building), now I just need to send in my EVSE for upgrading.

Anyone up for a Mpls. LEAF meeting in the summer?

Click to expand...

Come chat with some other PEV owners at the auto show.
We will be in the Electric Car room

Click to expand...

Which auto show? When and where?

^^^ GMADA's 43rd annual Twin Cities Auto Show, March 12-20th in the Mpls. Convention Center.
I generally go if I'm in the market for a new car, it costs $12 to get in or $10 with a discount coupon available at all Twin Cities new car dealers. Plan for many hours as they have almost all new vehicles on display and open to sit in. There are sales people around but you generally have to hunt one down if you want, I like to just sit in the various vehicles to eliminate ones I don't like or put ones on a test drive later list if I like it. You can't purchase a car at the show or test drive a vehicle, it's just for looking at and sitting in the vehicles, oh and getting brochures, although thats just about dead as most cars don't have a printed brochure anymore
They have a larger room with only electrics and hybrid models, and local enthusiasts to talk about the benefits.

jjeff said:

^^^ GMADA's 43rd annual Twin Cities Auto Show, March 12-20th in the Mpls. Convention Center.
I generally go if I'm in the market for a new car, it costs $12 to get in or $10 with a discount coupon available at all Twin Cities new car dealers. Plan for many hours as they have almost all new vehicles on display and open to sit in. There are sales people around but you generally have to hunt one down if you want, I like to just sit in the various vehicles to eliminate ones I don't like or put ones on a test drive later list if I like it. You can't purchase a car at the show or test drive a vehicle, it's just for looking at and sitting in the vehicles, oh and getting brochures, although thats just about dead as most cars don't have a printed brochure anymore
They have a larger room with only electrics and hybrid models, and local enthusiasts to talk about the benefits.

Click to expand...

Just a clarification. Most vehicles are not available for test drives. However, they have had a few vehicles available for test drives. This just started last year.
Last year the BMW i3 was one of the vehicles available for test drives. It was also the most popular of the three/four cars.

I don't believe there will be any cars in the electric vehicle room that don't have a plug this year.

Zythryn said:

jjeff said:

^^^ GMADA's 43rd annual Twin Cities Auto Show, March 12-20th in the Mpls. Convention Center.
I generally go if I'm in the market for a new car, it costs $12 to get in or $10 with a discount coupon available at all Twin Cities new car dealers. Plan for many hours as they have almost all new vehicles on display and open to sit in. There are sales people around but you generally have to hunt one down if you want, I like to just sit in the various vehicles to eliminate ones I don't like or put ones on a test drive later list if I like it. You can't purchase a car at the show or test drive a vehicle, it's just for looking at and sitting in the vehicles, oh and getting brochures, although thats just about dead as most cars don't have a printed brochure anymore
They have a larger room with only electrics and hybrid models, and local enthusiasts to talk about the benefits.

Click to expand...

Just a clarification. Most vehicles are not available for test drives. However, they have had a few vehicles available for test drives. This just started last year.
Last year the BMW i3 was one of the vehicles available for test drives. It was also the most popular of the three/four cars.

I don't believe there will be any cars in the electric vehicle room that don't have a plug this year.

Click to expand...

Yes, by test drive later I was talking about at a dealership
As to your last point, cool, when I was thinking about just hybrid(non plug in) models I was thinking about the Honda Insight, I bet that was the year before last, I don't think I made it last year.