Phoenix Range Test Sept 15, 2012 planning!

[Nubo]

:idea: Test car owners... don't forget to pump your tire pressures back up for max range. We need every mile we can get! 44psi cold is good. Don't worry, even if 44psi results in uneven tread wear, our Phoenix cars won't live long enough to even wear through the tires. :lol:

inflating to max tire pressure printed on the sidewall is recommended for BEST tire life and for even wear and for best control on uneven road surfaces.

for your safety and tire tread longevity, its 44. DO NOT use Nissan's recommended tire pressures!

I tend to agree. I've tried various pressures between the recommended, and 44 psi. 44 gives significantly better handling in my estimation. Also, at 36 the edges were showing excessive wear.

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

OMG, another tire pressure discussion.

hopefully this ends that here. "you" can be right because this is not the place

 

[TonyWilliams]

But you did not, of course, eliminate the variable between test conditions and the claim of "awful" results at higher temperatures, which I was commenting on:

Ok, yes that would be a different. I agree that the cars would likely drive further at 120F than 80F for two reasons: the battery would have more effective stored energy at the higher temperature, and the air density would decrease appreciably from 92%, to 86%, thus decreasing aerodynamic drag on the vehicle.

 

[TonyWilliams]

Which car had highest GID count? Tony's, at 250?

Yes, 250, or about 89% of the new car measurements of 280. My car performed very closely to its calculated performance of 74.76 miles (89% of 84 miles calculated for a like-new LEAF) with an actual performance of 76 miles to Turtle.

My car, from California, that in it's entire short life (manufactured 4/2012, in service 5/27/12, with many weeks of sitting stored at 50% SOC) has never been exposed to ambient temperatures much above 90F/32C, except on one day in San Jose, California (June 15, 2012) at about 104F/40C. In addition, the car is only charged to 80% most days in its San Diego insulated garage. Of note, however, were the few dozen DC quick charges that the car received during the BC2BC trip and return rally, June 12 - July 4, however these charges were conducted in moderate temperatures of 60F/15C to 77F/25C.

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

wondering if the heat generated by the initial QC affected the final GID count. bit shocked to hear 250. that is way too low.

also ambient temps when charging are less important than pack temps and multiple QCs that drive you into the 8,9 and 10 TB range are not good. this is another unknown quantity that will be much harder to pin down.

 

[opossum]

At least two of the cars did not use the fast charger until after the test (and even then, at least one of those cars didn't use the fast charger). Tony may have that noted when he has time to post everything. If not, we can highlight those cars.

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

At least two of the cars did not use the fast charger until after the test (and even then, at least one of those cars didn't use the fast charger). Tony may have that noted when he has time to post everything. If not, we can highlight those cars.

even better. see if any of the ones that did fast charge have a significantly different GID reading than they were normally seeing when just charging up at home.

either way, the more data the better. until Nissan can get their software together, we are pretty much on our own!

 

[opossum]

Actually, the ranges from this test would almost certainly have been longer if the LEAFS were both charged and driven in higher temperatures, unless The LEAF BMS is very significantly restricting charge level at the higher garage temperatures.

Yeah, I guess what I'm thinking is that many of us don't make a habit of driving the cars quite this dead. Andrea just cracked open the owner's manual. Per the manual (page 2-9), we should be hitting a charger shortly after LBW and preferably before VLBW. So the ranges we got during this test say nothing for what sort of range we "should" have on a day to day basis without crossing what the manual wants us to do. Fortunately, the cars will be anonymous in the test data.

 

[vegastar]

The test speed was 62mph from the dash or 62mph from the GPS? If from the GPS, what was the speed in the LEAF's speedometer?

And confratulations to all involved, especially for Tony. The (LEAF) world is watching.

 

[opossum]

64 mph from the dash... verified to be ~100.0 kph using the car's nav test screen at the start of the freeway driving (this was one of many seat-of-the-pants changes to the test that were made as the day/night/day dragged on.

 

[edatoakrun]

Which car had highest GID count? Tony's, at 250?

="TonyWilliams"

Yes, 250, or about 89% of the new car measurements of 280. My car performed very closely to its calculated performance of 74.76 miles (89% of 84 miles calculated for a like-new LEAF) with an actual performance of 76 miles to Turtle...

At what temp and at what rate did you charge to get that 250 gid reading?

What was you last gid count in San Diego before the test and the next one after, at San Diego temperatures?

Gid count Wh content might vary with current temperature, long term temperature exposure, or with both those and/or multiple other factors, IMO.

And, IMO it is also seems likely that much of your lower gid count, could instead have been the effect your LEAFs BMS lowering the actual kWh charge, as your driving range test results (so close to gid-predicted) seem to show.

If the BMS was limiting (due to temperature?) the battery capacity of your 250 gid charge, and this charge was of at warmer than (your) normal temperatures, I would then expect both your available battery capacity (and range) and your gid count gid to bounce back up, at some future time, by charging at lower battery temperatures.

Comparing the accuracy of your gid-predicted-range and kWh capacity with that from the test cars from the hotter climate, and/or lower gid counts and lost capacity bars, will give some idea of what the variable gid counts actually mean.

 

[vegastar]

A 2mph error. In my European Leaf the error is around 6km/h at 100km/h GPS speed.

My question was about the expected range at 100km/h. I believe Tony's chart speeds are dash speeds and not true GPS speeds, so the expected range should be closer to the 65mph than the 60mph value.

 

[TonyWilliams]

At what temp and at what rate did you charge to get that 250 gid reading?

Temps are listed in one of the previous posts ^^^ up there. All charges were topped off with a Blink L2, however, some/many were started with the DC charger. My car arrived with about 60% in the battery from San Diego, and we DC charged it to some value higher than 60% (it didn't take long), then topped off with L2. All cars were parked outside in the same ambient air. All cars had a minimum of 4 hours between the end of charge and the test drive.

What was you last gid count in San Diego before the test and the next one after, at San Diego temperatures?

Temperatures in Phoenix were similar and typical of daytime temperatures in the summer (I arrived about 7pm Friday), about in the 80F's to middle 70F's. The Gid count is similar to a recent San Diego measurement. Crossing the political border didn't affect it (much) and the temperatures were similar.

Gid count Wh content might vary with current temperature, long term temperature exposure, or with both those and/or multiple other factors, IMO.

Or just poor quality. The numbers really were that "all over the place".

And, IMO it is also seems likely that much of your lower gid count, could instead have been the effect your LEAFs BMS lowering the actual kWh charge, as your driving range test results (so close to gid-predicted) seem to show.

I don't share the sentiment of some that there is some software contrived error as the root cause for loss of range. Whatever the Gid count, my car drove 89% of what it could do 3 months ago. I think the battery cells are losing the capacity to store energy, pure and simple. Are there other problems? Of that, I am certain. This model of car did not go through the normal car design/test/build cycle, with a 2009 announcement to a Dec 2010 first delivery.

If the BMS was limiting (due to temperature?) the battery capacity of your 250 gid charge, and this charge was of at warmer than (your) normal temperatures, I would then expect both your available battery capacity (and range) and your gid count gid to bounce back up, at some future time, by charging at lower battery temperatures.

You're wrong on the temps. That's part of the reason that I brought MY CAR, specifically to counter the PHX bad, cooler areas like San Diego good dogma. Cooler just slows the inevitable, in my opinion. All the battery cells, hardware and software is the same.

Comparing the accuracy of your gid-predicted-range and kWh capacity with that from the test cars from the hotter climate, and/or lower gid counts and lost capacity bars, will give some idea of what the variable gid counts actually mean.

Good luck getting that from the data!!! One of the cars was manufactured the same month as mine (4/2011) with less than half the miles, but lived this summer in Phoenix. How do you think it did?

 

[TonyWilliams]

A 2mph error. In my European Leaf the error is around 6km/h at 100km/h GPS speed.

My question was about the expected range at 100km/h. I believe Tony's chart speeds are dash speeds and not true GPS speeds, so the expected range should be closer to the 65mph than the 60mph value.

Yes, that's right, with some caveats. 62.13mph, or 100kmh was the target ground speed. We used the LEAF's GPS (that has a readout in tenths of kmh) to confirm that 64mph indicated on each car's dash equaled a value very close to "Vgps=1000" ground speed on the LEAF's GPS readout.

So, each car was 2mph fast, but all quite consistent. Since speed and mileage displays in cars actually have U.S. regulations to enforce their accuracy, I guess this isn't surprising. I used 4 miles/6.437km per kWh as our target energy usage, but found even that to be significantly variable on the LEAF's dash display. Just another not-so-accurate LEAF gauge.

The 65mph dashboard indicated speed on the range chart is 3.6miles/5.8km per kWh, and is purposely slightly low for the masses.

 

[cwerdna]

A few of us talked at the event about collecting donations. Depending on how things go, it might not be just donations to reimburse Tony, but also to help people with the damage to the Leafs. It would suck if they had to hit up their insurance policies to fix damage, when they were already contributing so much to the cause by volunteering their cars and time to support the testing. Note that in some cases, people allowed relative strangers to drive their cars, also. There was talk that Scott and Tony purchased insurance with the tow dollies. We will hope that they're able to get the cars repaired under those insurance policies. If not, I'd like to ensure that the owners of the damaged cars are also compensated in the event that they don't want to put claims on their insurance records. Tony, unfortunately, got the double whammy of travel/test expenses *and* car damage! But hey, that Suburban was pretty sweet to drive!

I was thinking the same thing too. Since I haven't seen the damage and don't know the nature of it, I wonder about its severity and whether it's something that would need to be repaired for those leasing and/or how much impact it'd have on the value of a Leaf, if it were sold in the near future.

 

[tbleakne]

wondering if the heat generated by the initial QC affected the final GID count. bit shocked to hear 250. that is way too low.

also ambient temps when charging are less important than pack temps and multiple QCs that drive you into the 8,9 and 10 TB range are not good. this is another unknown quantity that will be much harder to pin down.

Which car had highest GID count? Tony's, at 250?

="TonyWilliams"
Yes, 250, or about 89% of the new car measurements of 280. My car performed very closely to its calculated performance of 74.76 miles (89% of 84 miles calculated for a like-new LEAF) with an actual performance of 76 miles to Turtle...

At what temp and at what rate did you charge to get that 250 gid reading?
What was you last gid count in San Diego before the test and the next one after, at San Diego temperatures?

Gid count Wh content might vary with current temperature, long term temperature exposure, or with both those and/or multiple other factors, IMO.

And, IMO it is also seems likely that much of your lower gid count, could instead have been the effect your LEAFs BMS lowering the actual kWh charge, as your driving range test results (so close to gid-predicted) seem to show.

If the BMS was limiting (due to temperature?) the battery capacity of your 250 gid charge, and this charge was of at warmer than (your) normal temperatures, I would then expect both your available battery capacity (and range) and your gid count gid to bounce back up, at some future time, by charging at lower battery temperatures.

Comparing the accuracy of your gid-predicted-range and kWh capacity with that from the test cars from the hotter climate, and/or lower gid counts and lost capacity bars, will give some idea of what the variable gid counts actually mean.

On pg 34 of this thread Tony posted temperatures of about 79 F during what I believe was the period of his final charge and test, using a correction from UTC to AZ summer time of -7 hours, if AZ still does not do Daylight Savings. My understanding is that 79 F is less than 10 F warmer than typical temperatures Tony sees in SD.

The heating from the final L2 charge is minimal, and his test protocol provides for a substantial period for the battery pack to reach ambient temperature after completion of all charging.

Do you have data of substantial bounce-back of Gid count after return to cooler temperatures ? My climate is somewhat warmer than Tony's, with warmer daytime garage temperatures. I have had occasional cool-down periods of 8-10 degree F this summer and I have seen no more than 1 or 2 Gids of bounce-back, less than 1%.

It is unfortunate that we didn't have a control car with less capacity loss.

While the Gid meter is not official, its readings were acknowledged by the Leaf Chief Engineer at the Dec 1011 Google meeting of BayLeafs, where he confirmed that one Gid is calculated to be 80 Wh. If the car that went 11 miles over its predicted range is one of the ones with the most capacity loss, this would suggest that we (or Nissan, if we can trust them) can develop some kind of modest correction to the Gid count, but it is NOT going to explain ALL the capacity loss at high temperatures. The Chief Engineer alluded to the difficulty of computing an accurate Gid count, and that was without considering battery capacity loss.

 

[surfingslovak]

While the Gid meter is not official, its readings were acknowledged by the Leaf Chief Engineer at the Dec 1011 Google meeting of BayLeafs, where he confirmed that one Gid is calculated to be 80 Wh. If the car that went 11 miles over its predicted range is one of the ones with the most capacity loss, this would suggest that we (or Nissan, if we can trust them) can develop some kind of modest correction to the Gid count, but it is NOT going to explain ALL the capacity loss at high temperatures. The Chief Engineer alluded to the difficulty of computing an accurate Gid count, and that was without considering battery capacity loss.

Well said, Tom! I measured the underbody on several cars with an infrared thermometer gun before the test early in the morning. It was a nearly perfect 80F on all of them. The temperature gauge was at six bars, in all the vehicles I have looked at, of course.

Given how much handwringing this test has caused even before any results were published, I'm nearly certain everything will be dissected and questioned. That's to be expected on this forum, but please step back for a moment and consider how much time, effort and goodwill this undertaking required. That's of course in addition to any problem with the car (real or imagined as OrientExpress put it).

 

[evnow]

This model of car did not go through the normal car design/test/build cycle, with a 2009 announcement to a Dec 2010 first delivery.

Your assumption seems to be that 2009 was when the design started. See this post for the actual timeline. Ghosn ordered high volume EVs to be built in 2006. In Jan 2007, Ghosn, Agassi & Peres met and agreed to a EV infrastructure plan for Israel.

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=575" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

 

[edatoakrun]

wondering if the heat generated by the initial QC affected the final GID count. bit shocked to hear 250. that is way too low.

also ambient temps when charging are less important than pack temps and multiple QCs that drive you into the 8,9 and 10 TB range are not good. this is another unknown quantity that will be much harder to pin down.

Which car had highest GID count? Tony's, at 250?

="TonyWilliams"
Yes, 250, or about 89% of the new car measurements of 280. My car performed very closely to its calculated performance of 74.76 miles (89% of 84 miles calculated for a like-new LEAF) with an actual performance of 76 miles to Turtle...

At what temp and at what rate did you charge to get that 250 gid reading?
What was you last gid count in San Diego before the test and the next one after, at San Diego temperatures?

Gid count Wh content might vary with current temperature, long term temperature exposure, or with both those and/or multiple other factors, IMO.

And, IMO it is also seems likely that much of your lower gid count, could instead have been the effect your LEAFs BMS lowering the actual kWh charge, as your driving range test results (so close to gid-predicted) seem to show.

If the BMS was limiting (due to temperature?) the battery capacity of your 250 gid charge, and this charge was of at warmer than (your) normal temperatures, I would then expect both your available battery capacity (and range) and your gid count gid to bounce back up, at some future time, by charging at lower battery temperatures.

Comparing the accuracy of your gid-predicted-range and kWh capacity with that from the test cars from the hotter climate, and/or lower gid counts and lost capacity bars, will give some idea of what the variable gid counts actually mean.

On pg 34 of this thread Tony posted temperatures of about 79 F during what I believe was the period of his final charge and test, using a correction from UTC to AZ summer time of -7 hours, if AZ still does not do Daylight Savings. My understanding is that 79 F is less than 10 F warmer than typical temperatures Tony sees in SD.

The heating from the final L2 charge is minimal, and his test protocol provides for a substantial period for the battery pack to reach ambient temperature after completion of all charging.

Do you have data of substantial bounce-back of Gid count after return to cooler temperatures ?...

See TickTock's impressive report:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0An7gtcYL2Oy0dHNwVmRkNkFnaEVOQTVENW5mOTZlb0E&pli=1#gid=3" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

"tbleakne"
...My climate is somewhat warmer than Tony's, with warmer daytime garage temperatures. I have had occasional cool-down periods of 8-10 degree F this summer and I have seen no more than 1 or 2 Gids of bounce-back, less than 1%.

It is unfortunate that we didn't have a control car with less capacity loss.

While the Gid meter is not official, its readings were acknowledged by the Leaf Chief Engineer at the Dec 1011 Google meeting of BayLeafs, where he confirmed that one Gid is calculated to be 80 Wh. If the car that went 11 miles over its predicted range is one of the ones with the most capacity loss, this would suggest that we (or Nissan, if we can trust them) can develop some kind of modest correction to the Gid count, but it is NOT going to explain ALL the capacity loss at high temperatures. The Chief Engineer alluded to the difficulty of computing an accurate Gid count, and that was without considering battery capacity loss.

Of course every LEAF has capacity loss.

And the those with lowest gid counts and fewer capacity bars, almost certainly have the greatest capacity loss, and it is almost certainly at least the 15% Nissan reported from the Casa Grande cars, and by this time probably more, and maybe much more, as the test results (when actually reported) should show.

The problem is, it sounds like these test results may show that the only way to find the actual loss of available capacity, is by either a range test or a charge capacity test referenced to a "new" battery, ideally your own, to eliminate variations in capacity between individual battery packs.

And even after you run these tests, you really won't know if the reduced capacity (if any) is a simple function of reduced total battery capacity, or if there are other factors in the BMS operation, either intended by design or the result of some error, reducing the allowable kWh charge.

So, unfortunately, until Nissan is more forthcoming, we may not have definitive answers.

 

[garygid]

But, was the actual design and implementation of the delivered LEAF
"finalized" before or after the first LEAF was delivered?