Estimated Remaining Range

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el4

Member
Joined
Dec 2, 2012
Messages
17
I drive a '12 Leaf which has been driven 12000 miles. When I start it after charging fully overnight in my garage, it reads between 70 and 80 miles range. After travelling 10 miles, it reads 50 to 58 miles remaining. The most I will drive is 52 miles, being fearful of running out of juice on the road. When I pull into the garage it reads between 5 and 9 miles left. Obviously the gauge is off. I don't know if I can safely drive further, because of the inaccuracy of the readout, and is there more or less available range when it drops down to 50 and 58 miles. I was told by Nissan that because I haven't lost the required number of bars, they can't help me, although it is apparent that the battery is quickly going bad. Fortunately, I have less than a year remaining on my lease so I can walk away and get a reliable car. I don't think Nissan is really trying to stay in the EV business. I would just like to know how to get a true read on how far I can drive on a charge.
 
el4 said:
I drive a '12 Leaf which has been driven 12000 miles. When I start it after charging fully overnight in my garage, it reads between 70 and 80 miles range. After travelling 10 miles, it reads 50 to 58 miles remaining. The most I will drive is 52 miles, being fearful of running out of juice on the road. When I pull into the garage it reads between 5 and 9 miles left. Obviously the gauge is off. I don't know if I can safely drive further, because of the inaccuracy of the readout, and is there more or less available range when it drops down to 50 and 58 miles. I was told by Nissan that because I haven't lost the required number of bars, they can't help me, although it is apparent that the battery is quickly going bad. Fortunately, I have less than a year remaining on my lease so I can walk away and get a reliable car. I don't think Nissan is really trying to stay in the EV business. I would just like to know how to get a true read on how far I can drive on a charge.

Do a search for "Guess-O-Meter," or GOM, LeafSpy, LeafDD. This has been covered in great depth in these forums and it is a very good idea if you research and learn.

TL:DR; the range remaining is a WILD guess and varies based on many factors, it is best to use a percent of battery remaining vs miles you have travelled to determine range, you may need an app and adapter to be able to do this.

To be fair this is a combination of less than optimal range algorithm (apparently even worse in 11/12 models) combined with impact of driving style, temperature and terrain which is IMPOSSIBLE to predict. BTW you have been experiencing the same thing in gas cars, you just haven't cared as much because you pull into the gas station faster.
 
el4 said:
...although it is apparent that the battery is quickly going bad.
There's not enough information to know that for sure yet.
el4 said:
I would just like to know how to get a true read on how far I can drive on a charge.
Get a bluetooth ODB2 adapter (I paid under $10 on ebay) and the Android app Leaf Spy.

It will give you much more accurate information on your batteries health.
There are lots of threads about Leaf Spy and how to get valuable info from it..

Good luck!

desiv
 
My range meter varies greatly due to incline. Even at a slight 5% grade my range will deplete 2-3X times faster then driving flats. After a while you will get accustom to the variations.
 
el4 said:
I would just like to know how to get a true read on how far I can drive on a charge.
Drive it until the 1st LBW, then continue another 5-50 mi (depending upon speed, temps, wind, rain, snow, A/C use, etc.) until the next VLBW, then continue another 5-15 mi to the Turtle. At this point pull over since you have less than 1/2 mi at 25 mph and get a tow home (or plug in). Hopefully, you were smart enough to do this around your house or a series of charging stations so you could get there relatively easy. I've found that I can get 10 mi between LBW and VLBW, and 10 mi after VLBW (mostly at city speeds 35 mph, but some freeway up to 60 mph). One time, I gave up after 20 mi after VLBW driving around in circles around my house (25 mph streets). The car is not "unreliable", it's just that you have not experienced the bottom end of the battery and you are uncomfortable in this area. That's not bad, but if you leave 20 mi of range for a "buffer", then your EPA 75 mi range when new (60 mi at 80% when used) is now only 40-55 mi.

Unfortunately, the GOM is overly optimistic when "full" before starting the drive, pessimistic during the driving (to keep Nissan from having to pay to tow people), and hides a significant number of miles at the bottom end. Until you test it, you won't know it's full potential. Heck, on Monday I had a 35 mi drive at 25-30 F with my 2011 Leaf. Normally, I would charge to at least 80% for such a drive so that I can enjoy the heater and not worry about distance or speed. Unfortunately, this time I forgot to charge the car and it was at 5/12 bars and the GOM said 39 mi. I knew I could make it at slower speeds, but this drive had to be at 65-70 mph getting there (I was late). I did the first half without heat and higher speed, then for the return trip with only 9 mi left on the GOM and 17-18 mi to go, I just slowed down. By the time I had gone 10 mi, the GOM said 11 mi left. I then cranked the heater to 90F and arrived home with "5 mi" (below LBW, but not below VLBW). All of this was possible because I have tested the area around my home and know that I can make it home even after reaching VLBW on the freeway.
 
The algorithm appears to be an unholy combination of marketing and conservative engineering/lawyering.

At the top end they seed their efficiency estimate with something close to 6 mi/kWh to assure eye popping range is displayed at the showroom. Realistically most folks will get closer to 4 mi/kWh, so the averaging algorithm starts dropping the estimated efficiency as soon as you start driving and you can lose easily 3-4 miles of estimated range per mile driven simply by driving normally.

At the bottom end either lawyers, accountants, and/or engineers set things up to reserve a couple kWh to minimize the people getting stranded by surprise. Gas cars often have a good 20% of their tank left when you hit "E", so this is nothing new.

The result is an algorithm that really maximizes range anxiety rather than being a useful gauge. In fact almost every gauge on the cluster has been mangled or cartoonified needlessly compared to other cars I have driven.

It would have been far better if they had simply used a fixed 4 mi/kWh efficiency so that there would be a smoothly dropping range to reserve estimate rather than a wildly fluxuating one. 2013 and later added a state of charge readout which is a major improvement, but then you have to mentally keep track of how degraded your battery is to properly estimate your remaining range.
 
My drive to work is fairly flat and 6.5 miles each way
Starting with 100% charge & 90 miles estimate(GOM), I will get to work with 90% charge & 79 Miles (lost 11 miles on a 6 mile drive)
On the drive home, its not unusual to to get home after driving 6.5 miles with 89% charge & 79 miles showing 0 miles used & 1% charge used to drive 6 miles.
On occasion, after the drive home I get home with a HIGHER charge% and 2-3 miles MORE than when I left work
So in the end, a round trip to/from work ends up using about 12% charge & 12-13 miles - so its "fairly" accurate, just not in a linear fashion.
In fact, you will see the top 20 miles drop really fast (may only drive 6-10 miles). Then the estimated miles will start dropping slower, untill around 45 left where they will drop fairly close to what is driven. At the LOWER miles/charge (say - 35% & less) you start to see more distance traveled per kw.

So yes, it is hard to use the Estimated Range -
BEST thing to do is test it - drive it to to TURTLE (staying close to home or a charger) driving at 40 mph, noting the miles between LOW & VERY LOW & TURTLE. This will give you great info and confidence when driving on longer trips that take you below the 15% charge level. But you will NEED an OBD2 adaptor as the Leaf will go to "- - -" after 10%. But you ca use Trip or Odometer to track miles (I get about 12miles after LOW, and 10miles after VERY LOW and I have gone .7 miles in Turtle.

I use the Charge % primarily as an indicator of how far I can go regardless of Range Miles.

ODB wifi & Leaf stat/Pro like others posted is a MUST HAVE

You will notice right away that the % charge sown on the Dash is LESS than what the car actually has - as reported by Leaf Stat/Spy

So if you are out driving and get to 20% charge, I open up Leaf Spy & put my iPhone up in the Dash and just read that instead
I have gotten home before with 5 Gids & 2% battery as reported by LEaf Spy - while the LEaf Dash has been reporting "- - -" and Low & Very Low warnings for the last 25 miles.
 
I think board longtimers/frequent contributors overestimate the user friendliness of search, especially using either overly generic terms like range display or insider jargon like guess-o-meter. There is no way a beginner using general terms could quickly find anything specific and useful. So questions like this from time to time are both understandable and helpful to newer or less frequent visitors.

That said I can add little except metoos. The range is a woefully wild and overreactive display that assumes you will continue indefinitely your very recent driving. Any range display that routinely goes UP by quite a large percentage when you leave an uphill highway and go onto level side streets is certainly not likely to be discretely useful. The things to remember for anybody who doesn't want to make temselves a battery live data guru are:

Look at range bars more than numbers
Get a baseline on your general commute and conditions and see how many bars you consume
Keep a mile/KWh display and average in front of you and use it to extrapolate range assumptions over time
Remember that LBW is not zero, or even close to it
Remember that even VLBW and _ _ miles remaining is not zero (but is close to it!). A good confidence builder is driving around your neighborhood between these two points - you'll be surrprised how long it takes.
Braver folks will try to run to turtle mode. That is the only way to demostrate your real range. Do it very close to home if you feel the need.
Above all ignore the fluctuations in the range number. I haven't gone as far as taping over it like some, but I only ever bother to look at it in relative mental calculations.
 
There are four small buttons on the left side of the dash. You can push the upper left button a few times and change the center dashboard display to % charge remaining. That will be the most helpful display position. Although "20% remaining" isn't telling you how many miles you have left, it is much more useful than the wild guess display that you're reading (aka: guess-o-meter).

By the way, if you get the battery below 6-8%, the guess-o-meter will display ---. Right when you really, really need to know how many miles you have left, it goes stupid. Sigh.

Bob
 
Bob said:
There are four small buttons on the left side of the dash. You can push the upper left button a few times and change the center dashboard display to % charge remaining.
Not on an 11/12 Leaf... At least not mine..
We don't have the % Charge Remaining.
(At least I don't, but I get that from Leaf Spy Pro)

desiv
 
remind me, please, of how i can judge the kwh in the battery based on the capacity bars?

I am down to 10 bars at 43k miles on a 2011.

I typically watch how many mile I get on a bar during a trip then multiply that times remaining bars to estimate remaining range.
I would like to have a better idea of how many KwH i get per capacity bar, so I can multiply that times the contemporaneous miles/KwH display.

any help on this issue or the other technique of noting range per bar?
 
Well, if you want to do it really off-the-cuff, 10/12 capacity bars is about 80%, as I understand it. So, your max capacity is, at most, 24*0.80 = ~19kWh
So, your 12 charge bars then represent about 8% each of 19kWh, so probably around 1.5kWh per bar. (That's probably a bit generous in some of the calculations and overly conservative in others, but you get the idea.)
Probably better to charge it to 100% and find out via Leaf Spy what your max Gids are, and go from there. As I recall, one Gid is right around 80Wh, so take that number, divide it by 12.5, and that's your max kWh, and then divide that by 12 to find out how much (conservatively) each of your 12 bars is worth.
 
^Not quite. The usable portion of a new LEAF battery is about 22.5 kWh.

If the first CB is -15% and the subsequent ones are -6.25% then being down 2 capacity bars would be somewhere between 72.5% and 78.75%. That, in turn suggests a usable battery capacity of somewhere between ~16.3 kWh to ~17.7 kWh. (It might be slightly more than that if the "unusable" portion of the battery is similarly shrinking.)

One wrinkle to be aware of: the Low Battery Warning (LBW) and the Very Low Battery Warning (VLBW) remain at fixed charge levels. That means that the percentage of the capacity below LBW or VLBW increases as the overall battery capacity declines. That can make the range seem lower than it actually is unless one is willing to regularly drive to VLBW.

FWIW.
 
desiv said:
Bob said:
There are four small buttons on the left side of the dash. You can push the upper left button a few times and change the center dashboard display to % charge remaining.
Not on an 11/12 Leaf... At least not mine..
We don't have the % Charge Remaining.
Correct. % SoC display did NOT exist on ’11 and ’12. It was a new feature that began on the ’13. It was something that Leafers pleaded for at a meeting w/Nissan at Google in December 2011 (Kadota-san (Leaf's Chief Vehicle Engineer), Mark Perry, some Nissan execs and engineers from Japan were present). Fortunately, the message got through and Nissan did implement some things that were requested, as well.

All the ’11 and ’12 have are the crappy GOM, the 12 fuel bars (and 12 capacity bars), and the estimated times to charge.

This is why '11 and '12 owners have had to resort to tools/gauges to read battery gids as a proxy for % SoC and for something more granular than the 12 fuel bars.
 
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