Silverfish said:
So what does the GID number mean?
Sorry for the history lesson, hopefully I'm accurate on gid history as I didn't have a Leaf until July 2013 but had test driven as far back Nov 2010, before they went on sale.
'11 and '12 Leaf never had a % state of charge display. It only had the crappy GOM and 12 fuel bars. Then (AFAIK), the user garygid discovered a value (http://www.electricvehiclewiki.com/Glossary) that others named in his honor: gid. It was discovered that a new 24 kWh Leaf fully charged had about 281 gids (http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=5582) and the value went down as the battery discharged. People used this as a proxy for % state of charge since it's FAR more granular than the 12 fuel bars and is a lot better than the black box algorithm GOM that sucks.
The original gid meter (SOC meter) was http://www.wwwsite.com/puzzles/socmeter/. You can see what they look like at https://saxton.org/tom_saxton/2012/01/leaf-soc-meter-build.html. I've seen them myself. Garygid is mentioned at https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/automobiles/nissan-leafs-true-believers-wont-leave-well-enough-alone.html.
At a meeting in late 2011 at Google (I was in attendence) where the gen 1 Leaf's Chief Vehicle Engineer (Kadota-san) + Mark Perry + Nissan's quality guy + some engineers from Japan (see recap starting from http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=155461#p155461) were present, folks implored Nissan to add % SoC display, besides showing them some other mods (e.g. gid meter, turbine engine tow generator, etc.) and making some other requests.
Nissan listened on a bunch of the asks. % SoC display got added to '13 Leafs.
Other devices to read gids + other info also came along (e.g. LeafDD: https://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=12561, WattsLeft: http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=8527).
Gids were also helpful to use with Tony's range charts (esp. on aforementioned '11 and '12 Leafs w/crap instrumentation): http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?t=4295.
The default in Leaf Spy settings is 77.5 watt-hours per gid. See http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=523862#p523862 for caveats, including straight from Leaf Spy author himself, Turbo3.
Also, as the battery degrades, the # of max gids on a 100% charge (per dash display and when car stops when full) goes down. My 11 bar Leaf only gets up to mid to high 230s or low 240s gids on a full charge.
Nissan has AFAIK never released any documentation on nor publicly acknowledged any of the values that Leaf Spy can render. We have no idea of their accuracy, caveats, conditions which are required for them to be accurate (if that exists), etc. I've posted my thoughts on values that people commonly look at in Leaf Spy at http://mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=510091#p510091.