What SOC% does each bar on Leaf dash represent ?

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LEAFfan said:
TonyWilliams said:
The displayed miles/kWh from the center console reads about two tenths higher.

Mine used to show .2 higher too until lately. Now, I've seen it the same and sometimes only .1 higher. For some reason, it never goes .2 higher anymore.
Mine got real accurate after the CW TSP update
 
planet4ever said:
However, you have overlooked a couple of important points:
  1. Your 3.12 is wall to wheels and the 21 is battery. There is a significant loss in getting electricity from the wall to the battery, perhaps 15% when using L2 charging.


  1. Good point, I had indeed looked over that. Wow 15% loss is quite a bit. As you pointed out later I kinda lucked into a decent set of range numbers.

    FYI the dash reads 3.9 Miles/kWh, which with 21kWh capacity indicates 81 or 65 miles range. It seems optimistic to me. My wife took a 52 mile journey last weekend, left with approx 90% charge, which according to the dash would yield 71 miles. She got home after consuming part of the second bar, I don't believe she could have got another 19 miles out of the vehicle.

    I always try to avoid using the two bottom bars of power. So far we've only dipped into it 3 times in the first 6 weeks of ownership, and have never totally depleted or got any low battery warnings. So far only 3 trips had to be done with the ICE car due to being out of range.

    As for modifying driving to get better mileage. I am working on better braking form. The energy info on the dash shows I am braking harder than the 30Kw regeneration capability the car has, so gentler/longer braking and/or coasting should help some.

    As for accelerating and speed. Not sure I'll do much behavior modification there :)
 
JPWhite said:
I always try to avoid using the two bottom bars of power. So far we've only dipped into it 3 times in the first 6 weeks of ownership, and have never totally depleted or got any low battery warnings.
If you are going to avoid using the four bottom bars - the two you can see and the two below that you can't see - then you are limiting yourself to not using the bottom 30% of the battery, rather than the bottom 15% as I had suggested.

I usually try to keep my battery between 20% and 80% charged, which really means between ½ bar (looks like 1) and 9½ bars (looks like 10). If I need more than that I charge to 100% and have no concerns about dipping a bit into the second (very low battery) warning.

Ray
 
JPWhite said:
FYI the dash reads 3.9 Miles/kWh, which with 21kWh capacity indicates 81 or 65 miles range. It seems optimistic to me. My wife took a 52 mile journey last weekend, left with approx 90% charge, which according to the dash would yield 71 miles. She got home after consuming part of the second bar, I don't believe she could have got another 19 miles out of the vehicle.

Honestly, if you're trying to correlate the dash "guess" with reality, you're just wasting your time. That 71 miles number you saw could have been 100 miles just as easily on the Guess-O-Meter. I recommend not using it at all.

Yes, your 3.9 miles/kWh (from the dash gauge) will, in fact, take you that 81 miles, if, and only if, the terrain if mostly flat, no significant heat or cooling, no elevation changes, etc.

She absolutely could have gotten 19 more miles out of that car, and when there was only one bar remaining, about 15 miles, and then about 12 miles when the first Low Battery Warning came on, and then about 5 miles when Very Low Battery comes on.

Again, within the context stated above. I've reproduced those numbers with my car many, many times.
 
JPWhite said:
FYI the dash reads 3.9 Miles/kWh, which with 21kWh capacity indicates 81 or 65 miles range. It seems optimistic to me. My wife took a 52 mile journey last weekend, left with approx 90% charge, which according to the dash would yield 71 miles. She got home after consuming part of the second bar, I don't believe she could have got another 19 miles out of the vehicle.

3.9 X 21 (100% charge) = 81-82 mile range. Where are you getting 65? Remember, there are two invisible bars left after zero visible bars so she should have been able to go the 71 miles @ 3.9m/kW h.
 
TonyWilliams said:
JPWhite said:
FYI the dash reads 3.9 Miles/kWh, which with 21kWh capacity indicates 81 or 65 miles range. It seems optimistic to me. My wife took a 52 mile journey last weekend, left with approx 90% charge, which according to the dash would yield 71 miles. She got home after consuming part of the second bar, I don't believe she could have got another 19 miles out of the vehicle.
Honestly, if you're trying to correlate the dash "guess" with reality, you're just wasting your time. That 71 miles number you saw could have been 100 miles just as easily on the Guess-O-Meter. I recommend not using it at all.
No, he wasn't using that, Tony. He was calculating 3.9 * 21 * 90%.

TonyWilliams said:
She absolutely could have gotten 19 more miles out of that car
I agree. Using your chart, she was at about 28% to 30% when she got home. That meant she got 52 miles out of maybe 62%, so she could have gone about 17 more miles before she got Very Low Battery at 8.5%, and 5 miles beyond that before Turtle. And that is without modifying her driving, such as slowing down.

Ray
 
planet4ever said:
JPWhite said:
I always try to avoid using the two bottom bars of power. So far we've only dipped into it 3 times in the first 6 weeks of ownership, and have never totally depleted or got any low battery warnings.
If you are going to avoid using the four bottom bars - the two you can see and the two below that you can't see - then you are limiting yourself to not using the bottom 30% of the battery, rather than the bottom 15% as I had suggested.

I usually try to keep my battery between 20% and 80% charged, which really means between ½ bar (looks like 1) and 9½ bars (looks like 10). If I need more than that I charge to 100% and have no concerns about dipping a bit into the second (very low battery) warning.

Ray

OK I knew to keep it between 20-80% charge if at all possible. Sounds like I am being too conservative with the 'red bars' thinking they were my danger zone :) Red means stop where I come from :)

That's good to know I've got quite a bit extra if I run it low on the gauge.

JP
 
The only red bars on the right side of the dash are the battery capacity bars at the outer edge of the display. When you get down to them your battery has degraded to no more than 28% of the capacity it was originally shipped with. No one is going to want to drive the car that long without replacing the battery cells.

Ray
 
Just to show the worthlessness of the Guess-o-meter...I had an appointment yesterday, 18 miles away, plus ten home while all I had was barely three bars, GOM at 21. I called ahead and the folks there agreed to let me plug in, so I decided to "chance it". I arrived there approx 2 miles into "Low battery", with one bar, reading 5 miles on the GOM. I plugged in (L1) for an hour and a quarter, left still with one bar, but now 8 miles on the GOM. Ten miles and 400 feet down and back up, and I arrive at home, reading 4 miles on the GOM, and the last bar had either just gone or was gone when I updated the Android app, I don't remember which. I was expecting "Very Low Battery" any moment.
 
davewill said:
I arrived there approx 2 miles into "Low battery"

So, you had, generally, 10-13 miles left...


I plugged in (L1) for an hour and a quarter... Ten miles and 400 feet down and back up, and I arrive at home.... I was expecting "Very Low Battery" any moment.

The L1 might have gotten you an additional 7-8 miles on top of the 10-13 you had, for 17-21 miles total. Then you drove 10. You had plenty of reserve !
 
TonyWilliams said:
The L1 might have gotten you an additional 7-8 miles on top of the 10-13 you had, for 17-21 miles total. Then you drove 10. You had plenty of reserve !
Yeah, I was never actually concerned, although I prefer to save the part below VLB as a "oops" reserve rather than depend on it at the start of a trip. I told the story to mainly show that the GOM gave me little useful information to help me do the trip.
 
surfingslovak said:
Interesting! Would you happen to know what the trip energy economy (miles/kWh) was?
Sorry, I didn't reset the mpk for that sequence. 80% of the trip was spent going up and down hills anyway, so regen might have made quite a hash of the whole battery calculation. I assumed something around 4 mpk when figuring if I could make it, and assumed I could add 4-5 miles by plugging in. It was all surface streets, and I possibly did better.
 
surfingslovak said:
TonyWilliams said:
My numbers are right in line with yours, and I've taken this car down to turtle 4 times to verify them. I use 81 miles of range estimate at 60mph, and 72 miles at 80% on my latest chart. The super important numbers (to me, anyway) are when you're down to below both any fuel bars and (thankfully) Guess-O-Meter numbers, and only have the Battery warnings to judge distance. I'm very confident, now, what distance I can go.
Tony, I took some liberty with your chart. It's speculative, but I think plausible. Have a look:

LeafRangeChartRevision3.jpg
Interesting.. On my car which only gets to 272# on a"full" charge, just today I saw the 12th bar go away at 250#, the 11th at 230# and the 10th at 214#... so I guess the "bars" are not absolutes..
 
GregH said:
Interesting.. On my car which only gets to 272# on a"full" charge, just today I saw the 12th bar go away at 250#, the 11th at 230# and the 10th at 214#... so I guess the "bars" are not absolutes..


Your car shouldn't get the same SOC number all the time. Do you ALWAYS get 272 on a full charge?

As more folks get SOC meters, hopefully we'll be able to correlate results and determine why. Thanks for posting your data.
 
TonyWilliams said:
Your car shouldn't get the same SOC number all the time. Do you ALWAYS get 272 on a full charge?
Ha! No! You're absolutely right.. I even started a separate thread... I want my 281! Lately the lowest I've seen is 271# and the highest 274#. The all time highest I've seen on my car was 280# but that was a while ago... The car is nearing 2000 miles and 3 months and rarely spends much time over 80% (or 225#) or under 20% (or ~50#)
 
GregH said:
Ha! No! You're absolutely right.. I even started a separate thread... I want my 281! Lately the lowest I've seen is 271# and the highest 274#. The all time highest I've seen on my car was 280# but that was a while ago... The car is nearing 2000 miles and 3 months and rarely spends much time over 80% (or 225#) or under 20% (or ~50#)

Batteries all deteriorate over time. LiIon deteriorates very rapidly at first but the rate of deterioration decreases greatly over time. The first year should be pretty noticeable, but after that much more stable. With 2,000 miles on it I would expect to see some deterioration -- this is no longer a brand new battery. It sounds like your battery "capacity level" is between 96.4% and 97.5% based on the numbers you posted. That is not bad at all. Most people will not be able to see their battery "capacity level" drop in such a granular manner because we only have the "capacity level" gauge just to the right of the SOC gauge (see owner's manual). I'm guessing it will be a year or two before anyone starts to see that gauge move off of 12 bars.
 
kovalb said:
Most people will not be able to see their battery "capacity level" drop in such a granular manner because we only have the "capacity level" gauge just to the right of the SOC gauge (see owner's manual). I'm guessing it will be a year or two before anyone starts to see that gauge move off of 12 bars.
I do hope it will be longer than that, since the service manual says segment 12 turns off at 85% capacity.

Ray
 
Stoaty said:
planet4ever said:
I do hope it will be longer than that, since the service manual says segment 12 turns off at 85% capacity.
When do the other bars turn off as capacity is reduced?
Code:
bar turns off at
11  78.75%
10  72.5%
 9   66.25% 
 8   60% 
 7   53.75% 
 6   47.5% 
 5   41.25% 
 4   35% 
 3   28.75% 
 2   22.5% 
 1   16.25%
In other words, 6.25% per bar except the first one and "bar 0".

Ray
 
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