Nissan Engineering Team Visit Dec. 3rd: Recap

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All: Just a short reminder that tomorrow's meeting is full, and attendance is limited to those who are confirmed to be registered. If you received an email from me, you are confirmed. If you did not receive an email but did preregister, please PM or email me and I will validate your registration.

If you just show up at the meeting and did not register, you will not be admitted. This is so that we do not exceed the room's capacity. We will be enforcing this strictly. We regret having to turn people away, but we cannot impose any liability on our hosts by exceeding the room capacity.

The SF BayLEAFs appreciate your cooperation.
 
gascant said:
tbleakne said:
If you folks could use an extra SOC meter to allow a few more folks to try it in their cars, I would be glad to bring mine.
Might be a good idea--if squirrelmeat brings his, we'll have at least 3. That way, the Nissan Engineers can split up and see it in different vehicles. Thanks for the suggestion!
I have become concerned that there a chance some clueless TSA person might possibly give me grief if he/she sees my SOC meter in my carry-on bag, so I regret to say I am not bringing it unless someone here can give me very good assurance that my concerns are groundless. Hopefully you will have several SOC meters without mine. Of course I will be glad to discuss how truly wonderful it is to anyone who is interested.
 
Legitimate concern, but it's no different from a laptop or any other portable electronics. If they have a problem, they can always "sniff it". Might show up a few minutes early ;)
 
I provide test drives to a class of students today. Afterward, I went to in Palo Alto, put the LEAF on the Bryant Street charger, walked to Stanford Theater and watched a double-feature films. ChargePoint text me (while I was watching movie) and told me that my LEAF was drawing very little current. That usually means the car stopped charging. (perhaps the host, i.e. Palo Alto, set the charger to only allow charging for 3 hours?).

I tried to re-start the charge using the LEAF's iPhone apps. It didn't work. Does anyone have any success in using the LEAF's iPhone apps to charge the LEAF? I would like to add this item to the list (for Nissan Engrs) if others have the same problem.
 
For any folks that did not make it onto the attendee list, there is another option. Howard will give a summary report the next weekend at this meeting:

Meeting : South Bay EV Holiday Gathering
(SJEAA, EAASV, BayLEAFs and everyone interested)

Meeting Date: December 10th
Time: 10am-12pm meeting
Location:911 Capitol Expressway Auto Mall, San Jose 95136, Del Grande Dealer Group

Charging: L1 access (limited to several plugs around the various DGDG dealership buildings)
240V plugs (limited to only one plug that will be operating from portable generator)
J1772 (limited to only 1x that is located at the Chevy dealership)

Agenda:
9:30-45 am Arrival - EV parking in display area (parking layout to be sent later)
10 am Meeting starts - pick up Sandwiches and Drinks as you arrive - complements DGDG
5 min - Welcome & Introduction to EV groups & the DGEV team - Don
SJEAA, EAASV, BayLEAFs
Social Media Director - Tiki Tsakiris
EV Director - John Stringer
5 min - Overview of DGEV - Don
15 min - Summary of the CAFE electric flight - Jerry

20 min - Summary Report on Dec 3rd meeting with Nissan Engineering Team - Howard

remaining time - open forum for attendee to discuss topics of general interest (charge infrastructure, projects, issues....)
Noon - adjourn to parking lot for Horn clinic (Howard and Gary)

We need to have a count for the food and charging. This is the form to report your attending.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/embeddedform?formkey=dEwyanFlRzBLc0t6OGVzSVgxbEVYTVE6MQ" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
 
waidy said:
I tried to re-start the charge using the LEAF's iPhone apps. It didn't work. Does anyone have any success in using the LEAF's iPhone apps to charge the LEAF? I would like to add this item to the list (for Nissan Engrs) if others have the same problem.
Just last night I used this. My weekend timer is set for 80% but I wanted 100% today. Instead of changing the timer, I just started charging manually from my IPhone app before I went to bed. No problem.
 
BTW, Your personal Chargepoint card will not operate on Google campus. Hopefully our hosts have a card with access.

Update;
One final footnote on the charging. I will make a sweep through all the L2 charger areas about 10 min before the meeting to make sure that all the chargers are activated. Howard, would you mind sending a last minute reminder to folks that have asked for charging to make sure they leave their charge port door open even if they can't activate the charger? I'll make sure they get plugged in. I don't want to have anyone stressing out because they can't get the charger to work.
 
KeiJidosha said:
Howard, would you mind sending a last minute reminder to folks that have asked for charging to make sure they leave their charge port door open even if they can't activate the charger? I'll make sure they get plugged in.

Probably too late to mention additionally now, but they should also turn off their charging timers.
 
Thanks Bay Area for a great meeting. 16 people from Nissan, including UK, USA and Japan. I'm absolutely humbled by what a well run and organized meeting we had. Over 100 LEAFs, bunches of them being charged. Good information exchange.

Thanks again, guys and gals, and you are ALL honorary members of San Diego LEAFers !!!

Tony
 
The biggest amount of activity revolved around the suggestion for a built-in SOC meter.
Clearly they have debated what to do to improve range projection readouts, and weren't initially convinced that an SOC meter would be the right improvement with broad appeal, but plenty with a loud voice made sure their desire to have one was well heard by the right people.

By the way, the GOM/Guess-O-Meter seems to be known primarily as the DTE (Distance To Empty) within Nissan engineering, so if we want to talk about that we might want to use that acronym instead of GOM to be more clear.

They ended up being rather revealing about how the GOM works, and brought home the point that it is extremely difficult to make an accurate range estimator... Even with more driving history available, and better predictive algorithms, they will always lack the the important piece of information in the driver's head of "how I intend to drive this car in the future."

----

Even if they had you enter a planned destination, and they pulled GPS coordinates to model elevation changes they still don't know things like traffic patterns, future temperature, and such. On top of all that, figuring out how the battery will behave isn't a completely exact science. Too many variables going on inside those cells without the ability to monitor everything that is going on. Even the SOC values are somewhat approximated.
 
Apparently the count of LEAFs on site was over 100 !

I didn't spend much time taking pictures, but here are a couple:
leafmeet1-1.jpg

leafmeet2-1.jpg


Phil never ceases to amaze. He is working on a propane micro-turbine combo mobile fast charge / mobile range extender.
capgen.jpg
 
Great meeting and a definitive no answer regarding an upgrade for a 6.6kw leaf charger on existing LEAFs. But we knew that:)
 
Great meeting today!

Unfortunately, I sat in the very back corner and the chief stepped away from the mic when doing some of his SOC explanation so I had hard time hearing. I also didn't have as much context since I don't own a Leaf yet (but have experience w/DTE indicators on 2 ICE Nissans.)

I was a bit surprised by the statement at the beginning that there would be no proceedings from this. I do understand (and agree with) having a more open discussion by disallowing recording devices.

Is it frowned upon/prohibited if we share what we learned? I don't think Nissan would tell us anything that people wouldn't eventually find/figure out anyway. If it's ok, maybe we should have a new thread about what we learned today? There were a lot of conversations w/many different Nissan folks and it was impossible for one person to be involved/listening to them all.

Posting any pics (if any were taken) of slides that said Nissan confidential or esp. the ones that said Nissan strictly confidential might be bad idea though.
 
I am in Arizona and could not attend - but wish I could. What was the tone of the meeting? Any big announcements? I know very many questions were asked and suggestions made for improving our favorite car. Were any answers forthcoming? Are you now more or less optimistic for the future? :?:
 
cwerdna said:
Great meeting today!

I was a bit surprised by the statement at the beginning that there would be no proceedings from this. I do understand (and agree with) having a more open discussion by disallowing recording devices.

Is it frowned upon/prohibited if we share what we learned? I don't think Nissan would tell us anything that people wouldn't eventually find/figure out anyway. If it's ok, maybe we should have a new thread about what we learned today? There were a lot of conversations w/many different Nissan folks and it was impossible for one person to be involved/listening to them all.

Posting any pics (if any were taken) of slides that said Nissan confidential or esp. the ones that said Nissan strictly confidential might be bad idea though.

I was curious if anyone would post notes/highlights from the meeting. I had seriously contemplated getting a last minute flight from TN and taking a few vacation days to come to the meeting but figured the cheaper route was to wait for a re-cap of the event.

So no recording devices, but is anyone planning on posting notes? If not publicly, perhaps in a PM?

Ive read a few comments about the meeting in other threads, (comment about L1 charging and L3 charging) but it'd be nice to have that information in one place.
 
Yes, I think it starts to become a bit of gray area when they start to give out some bits of possibly proprietary info.
Still, with the number of attendees, and no NDA involved, I gather it is just up to us to decide what is an appropriate level of dissemination. I took the request for "no recording devices" inside as to mean no pictures of the actual meeting, but clearly some people didn't hear or ignored that request. I think it would be wrong to call it a "private" meeting and not discuss important things that were learned there, but I also think we have to be careful not to discourage Nissan from more sharing.

One thing to keep in mind - Nissan knows a lot more about their products than we ever will, and they are well underway on their next generation of products while we are focused on what we can get now. I heard a lot of post meeting questions along the lines of "Can you retrofit my 2011 LEAF with requested feature X ?"
For the most part, any suggestions or feedback we give to them might help sway some future product directions, but I wouldn't think you should expect them to come back and make many changes to cars already sold.

For those not there, they did throw out a few disclaimers just to make sure we were all on the same page. Along the lines of:
#1: No one should give them any ideas if they expect some compensation for them. We are all there to give free owner feedback and learn what they are willing to tell us about their products that we don't already know.
#2: They cannot encourage any modifications to their vehicles. There are safety, legal, liability and warranty issues to consider. Even some simple things someone might think to change on their car could have ramifications.

As would be expected, they have plenty of their own data on how their products are doing and plenty of internal resources to come up with new ideas, so the chances of these owner's gatherings having a huge impact are perhaps a little slim, but even if one little idea shows merit and makes it through to a better product, it is all worth it.

At the end of the day it is just a social gathering for those who have a particular interest in the LEAF product.
 
kovalb said:
What was the tone of the meeting?

This was not a typical BayLEAFs meeting - the tone was trying hard to be organized and respectful where the usual meetings tend to be a bit less organized and a bit more chaotic (but still highly functional.)
Congrats / kudos to the local organizers who "pulled it off" keeping things on schedule and on track.
We had a large room full of passionate people with various ideas they wanted to share, and questions they wanted to ask, so the presenters had to exert a little effort to keep things moving along in a controlled fashion.
Clearly they couldn't cover every topic of interest in one meeting like that, so there is hope that maybe something like this could happen again someday. I would say the overall tone was "professional", even though most (if not all?) of the people weren't being paid to be there, and many of the organizers have limited experience doing this sort of thing.

kovalb said:
Any big announcements? I know very many questions were asked and suggestions made for improving our favorite car. :?:

No big announcements. This wasn't a press event. The SF bay area has a lot of engineering and technical talent, and a good portion of the audience viewed this as a chance to meet the lead engineer of the LEAF and share a bit of our enthusiasm, questions and comments. From my perspective, the meeting focused primarily on two technical areas:
#1: Improvements to the DTE and better battery monitoring.
#2: Improvements to charging (both vehicle components, and infrastructure roll-out.)

The message was clearly delivered and received that some owners want an SOC meter.
I would characterize the response as "OK, we hear you, and we are working on improvements in this area."
(In other words, no specific commitments, but it is clear that they know it is an area where we want them to make it better.)

The message was also clearly delivered that some owners want a more flexible portable EVSE. The aftermarket upgrade product available now fills a need, but even they (EVSEupgrade) would like to see Nissan offer a factory USA 240V EVSE with adapters to things like dryer plugs, and campground / RV plugs as I don't think they want to be in the business of hand modifying these things at huge volumes. ( Hopefully future models will include a portable EVSE that could do 6.6kW from a NEMA 14-50. )

I think it is likely that the 2013 Model year LEAF will likely have some improvements.
Some things I would expect to see would include:
6.6kW charger standard on-board. A different design that could NOT be retrofitted to older cars.
Improvements to the dashboard and NAV system operations.
Improvements to the climate control system.
I suspect that there are many others, but those are the only ones I think are likely / semi-confirmed.
Also, I think they probably have prototypes of 2013 models under test right now.

Something else I took away - the LEAF is just the first product of a whole line of electric vehicles that will be coming out. So the NISSAN staff that was there are thinking above and way beyond just the LEAF itself.
 
kovalb said:
Are you now more or less optimistic for the future? :?:

...More... They took the time and effort to interact with the LEAF community in a positive way.
They are clearly committed to the product and will be improving it in the future.

They have a commitment to making a wider variety of electric models in large volumes.

The word commitment is key here. They are committed to doing this, not just projecting, targeting, or planning.
This is a NISSAN corporate direction from the top down. No hesitation.
 
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