Carwings Charge Station Map Update...

[TangoKilo]

Does anybody know what distance (radius) the charge station map is updated when selecting a location through a Carwings update?

 

[rwherrick]

Does anybody know what distance (radius) the charge station map is updated when selecting a location through a Carwings update?

Sorry, unless someone has some inside info from Nissan, this might be a tough question to answer with certainty. It is not specified what "near" means in the Navigation system manual (pages 2-6 & 2-7). You can update near your home address or near a destination. What you would expect it to do is update within the current driving radius, or within, say 70-100 miles. But I believe I have got it to add charging stations 40 miles away by forcing it to update near the area of interest, so it may be a smaller radius than I had expected it to be. Perhaps others have had first hand experience with this and can answer better than I.
However, be aware that unless you live in the LA area (where the Leaf demo maps were populated for advertising purposes), the Charge station maps appear to only include 5-10% of available chargers, and Nissan doesn't appear to be in any hurry to fix it. So if you're wondering why chargers aren't showing up, it probably isn't because the radius it's using for updates is too small. It's because Nissan hasn't spent the money (or empowered this community) to update its charger maps.

- Bob

 

[garygid]

I suspect that the "near" is more like 10 to 20 miles, the distance one might go when actually wanting to charge.

Near Home and Destination are available, but "near" any selected map location is also available.

 

[TangoKilo]

Thanks for the insight. I usually update the charge locations by picking spots on the map along my intended route, every 15 miles or so (3 or 4 times). This seems to cover my drive with the latest charge station info (according to Nissan)...

 

[rwherrick]

Thanks for the insight. I usually update the charge locations by picking spots on the map along my intended route, every 15 miles or so (3 or 4 times). This seems to cover my drive with the latest charge station info (according to Nissan)...

If you really want to know where the charging stations are, I recommend spending some time doing Google searches on the subject. For example, I am aware of 7 locations of chargers in Santa Cruz County. The Nissan maps did not list any of them as of the last time I checked a couple of weeks ago. The only thing to be careful of is not to count on anything that doesn't tell you what kind of charger it is. For example, we have a number of really old chargers for GM EV1 cars that have not been updated with the J1772 charger that you need for modern EV's.


- Bob

 

[TangoKilo]

Like everyone here, I already have a battery of charge stations sources (pun intended). I haven't been impressed with Google's search feature so far. The purpose of this thread was to answer a question I had about the Carwings programing....

 

[bigdogldr]

As we have learned the hard way, the Carwings map is almost worthless since Nissan has elected not to have the maps updated only on a quarterly basis. You need to find the stations as you travel. There is also a website called chargepointnetwork.com that shows where this company's charging stations are located and lets you reserve them. With 3 different suppliers of charging stations now (Blink, Charge Point & Nissan's recommended supplier), none of these get consolidated into one file.

One of the biggest problems with being an "early adopter" for this car is the lack of infrastructure compounded by the fact that Nissan's stupid decision to only update Carwings on a quarterly basis puts us in a position to search out charging locations.

Case in point: today my wife & son were driving from Laguna Beach to San Diego (62 total miles). Left the house with a range of 102 miles so they thought they could easily reach the known charging stations located inside Balboa Park. At Oceanside (approx 30 miles from the house), the Leaf was showing only 18 miles left. They had to divert to a local Nissan dealership to recharge and wait an hour & half before the trip could go on.

I don't know why I paid for the optional quick charge port on the car when I have been told not to expect to see any of these for at least another year at the earliest.

I'd love to hear or read a response from someone at Nissan!

 

[davewill]

...Case in point: today my wife & son were driving from Laguna Beach to San Diego (62 total miles). Left the house with a range of 102 miles so they thought they could easily reach the known charging stations located inside Balboa Park. At Oceanside (approx 30 miles from the house), the Leaf was showing only 18 miles left. They had to divert to a local Nissan dealership to recharge and wait an hour & half before the trip could go on...

Laguna Beach to Balboa Park is much farther than 62 miles, 88 by Google maps. Laguna to Oceanside is 40 miles. Given the actual distances and assuming a speed of 65+mph, those results would be just about right. All the points about Carwings being the next thing to useless are absolutely right, however.

 

[rwherrick]

As we have learned the hard way, the Carwings map is almost worthless since Nissan has elected not to have the maps updated only on a quarterly basis. You need to find the stations as you travel. There is also a website called chargepointnetwork.com that shows where this company's charging stations are located and lets you reserve them. With 3 different suppliers of charging stations now (Blink, Charge Point & Nissan's recommended supplier), none of these get consolidated into one file.
<Snip>
Case in point: today my wife & son were driving from Laguna Beach to San Diego (62 total miles). Left the house with a range of 102 miles so they thought they could easily reach the known charging stations located inside Balboa Park. At Oceanside (approx 30 miles from the house), the Leaf was showing only 18 miles left. They had to divert to a local Nissan dealership to recharge and wait an hour & half before the trip could go on.

I'd love to hear or read a response from someone at Nissan!

I'm pretty sure the charge station updates are much more frequent than quarterly. I see the car connecting to Carwings at least once a week. If Nissan was bothering to license other charger maps, you probably wouldn't have to wait long to see far more chargers than are presently listed.

It looks like you've also learned something the hard way: the range is NOT 100 miles when you're driving at highway speeds. While I could get 120 miles range on city streets (5 mi/kWh), I only get a little better than 3 mi/kWh at highway speeds, or 70 miles of range. It helps if you drive in the slow lane, not that it's much fun. Until they start installing Level 3 chargers, this really isn't the right car for a road trip.

- Bob

 

[nathan]

I asked for an update of nearby stations while in Wilsonville, OR hoping to get the WTC charger in downtown Portland, OR that is 13.9 miles away. It did not show up. I had to force it with an update of "chargers near destination". So I think that tightens the range that is updated substantially (unless it is somehow dependent upon SOC).

 

[mwalsh]

Case in point: today my wife & son were driving from Laguna Beach to San Diego (62 total miles). Left the house with a range of 102 miles so they thought they could easily reach the known charging stations located inside Balboa Park. At Oceanside (approx 30 miles from the house), the Leaf was showing only 18 miles left. They had to divert to a local Nissan dealership to recharge and wait an hour & half before the trip could go on.

I'd love to hear or read a response from someone at Nissan!

It looks like you've also learned something the hard way: the range is NOT 100 miles when you're driving at highway speeds. While I could get 120 miles range on city streets (5 mi/kWh), I only get a little better than 3 mi/kWh at highway speeds, or 70 miles of range. It helps if you drive in the slow lane, not that it's much fun. Until they start installing Level 3 chargers, this really isn't the right car for a road trip.

Yeah, if she'd checked with us before she left, any one of us could have told her that chances were she wasn't going to make it. I'm not one to tell you where you live, but 62 miles is more like this side of San Clemente (Ave Vista Hermosa) to Balboa Park. Downtown Laguna is more like 75 miles (via Highway 1 to the 5), and it would have taken VERY careful driving at highway speeds to make that, what with the changes in elevation through San Clemente and assuming some use of the A/C. Keeping the speeds at or slightly below 65mph would have been mandatory. Using ECO might have helped too.

 

[popak]

The LEAF Owner portal FAQ link has some interesting information (some of which, we already knew about):

• Charging stations automatically update every 3 months.
• Automatic charging station update covers an area of 100 mile by 100 mile square centered at your home location.
• Manual charging station update covers an area of 18.75 mile by 18.75 mile centered at your current location.
• When battery goes down to 4kWh (~20%), charging stations are updated automatically for an area of 18.75 mile by 18.75 mile square centered at your current location.
• We can report missing charge stations directly to NAVTEQ (like the ChargePoint, Blink, et cetera, stations). Theoretically, these would be included in future map updates?

 

[KevinSharpe]

We can report missing charge stations directly to NAVTEQ

I understand that one of the OpenChargeMap developers is working with NAVTEQ and therefore it might be possible to speed up the update process by feeding the Charging Station data directly into the OCM database;

http://openchargemap.org/

 

[garygid]

So, a manual-update radius of approximately 10 miles.
That matches my experience, so I do manual updates "frequently".

 

[johnr]

[*]We can report missing charge stations directly to NAVTEQ

That's a real joke, unfortunately. I've had three Nissan reps try to walk me through this, but unfortunately they don't really know much about it either! In addition, the NAVTEQ link doesn't even show existing charging locations. I pointed that out to them, asking if maybe the charging station data is provided from a separate source, perhaps internal to Nissan. They agreed that may well be the case, as they don't really know where the charging data comes from either!

 

[bigdogldr]

It is becoming increasing clear that Nissan appears to be as clueless about getting the infrastructure in place as the idiots in Washington are about the debt issues. After talking to 4 different departments within Nissan, I got 4 different answers about how to update charging stations, etc. As was previously noted, the Carwings only get updated quarterly. The website leafcharging stations.com is attempting to provide the most current information but, this site has inaccuracies; specifically, Southern California Costco's that have the old EV charging stations installed have not been converted yet. There has been a lot conversations that these units would be the first ones to be converted but that is not the case. In talking with the local Costco manager, they have no idea when this will happen and/or who the vendor will be to make the switch over, i.e. Blink, ChargePoint, etc.

Bottomline: the Nissan Leaf has to remain in a 30 mile radius of your home and even closer if you drive on the freeway at speeds in excess of 60 mph.

 

[popak]

Down here in SoCal, I reported the Seal Beach, Fashion Island, and South Coast Plaza locations to NAVTEQ. Let's see how long it takes for them to actually show up.

And yeah, it would be a lot nicer if NAVTEQ just got this information from ChargePoint, Blink, and other networks directly.

 

[jcesare]

...specifically, Southern California Costco's that have the old EV charging stations installed have not been converted yet. There has been a lot conversations that these units would be the first ones to be converted but that is not the case. In talking with the local Costco manager, they have no idea when this will happen and/or who the vendor will be to make the switch over, i.e. Blink, ChargePoint, etc.

I thought Costco announced they are pulling out all the old EVSEs and WILL NOT be installing new ones.

 

[bigdogldr]

Not according to Nissan and their dealership personnel. When we took delivery, they made a point of telling us that Costco was going to be on line with new chargers sooner than other locations because they only had to convert the old units over. We were also told that Starbucks was going to have stations installed at any store that was within one mile of the freeway which would be a great idea but they would be cost for the charge. Great opportunity to get a cup of their overpriced coffee, get on the internet and get the car charged.

 

[jcesare]

Not according to Nissan and their dealership personnel. When we took delivery, they made a point of telling us that Costco was going to be on line with new chargers sooner than other locations because they only had to convert the old units over.

Not according to this thread:
http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=5062