Pls give us START time in "charging timer" - 2013 Leaf S

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BestPal

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 3, 2013
Messages
90
Location
San Diego, CA
Dear Nissan, would you be so kind to provide us with a START time in the charging timer settings on the 2013 S model (no carwings, no GPS model). You made an assumption that we only need a TO setting because we ALWAYS want to leave fully charged. That is not always the case. + TOU utility company options, + free options to top up at work etc. etc... Please don't let me go into all the inconvenience of not having a start time in the "charging timer". So please, pretty please with some sugar on top, can you come up with a software update and give us that feature? I'll drive to the dealership to get the update any day. While you're at it, give us a flexible %-tage to charge to, not just 80 or 100. Please and thank you!
Other than that, I just clicked over 500 miles on my LEAF and I absolutely love it. THANK YOU for creating the Leaf.
 
BestPal said:
Dear Nissan, would you be so kind to provide us with a START time in the charging timer settings on the 2013 S model (no carwings, no GPS model). You made an assumption that we only need a TO setting because we ALWAYS want to leave fully charged. That is not always the case. + TOU utility company options, + free options to top up at work etc. etc...
I don't understand your point. I have TOU metering, normally charge to 80%, and only use end time, although I have both start and end time available on my 2011. What extra function would you hope to get from a start time?

Now, I can see an argument for allowing you to have two separate timers on the same day. But no LEAF (be it 2100, 2012, 2013, SV, or SL) supports that.

Ray
 
OK, Ray from Morgan Hill, CA. I was hoping I wouldn't have to write this all out but it seems like there's no way around it.
If some experienced and intelligent people don't get it, there is a good chance Nissan doesn't understand the need for the "Start" time and a flexible %-tage of charge either.
I'll go through the explanation to make it easy to understand why, but first I have to show you how confusing it is NOT to have those options.

Lets say you have an option of free L1 at work and want to utilize it fully (get as much of free juice every day as you can). OK?
Lets say in 9+ hours of free L1 at work you can add 55% charge to the battery and want to leave work fully charged every day. So you need to arrive at work with 45% charge. Easy, right? Good. Say you know it takes you 25% battery charge to get to work. So you have to leave the house with 70% (and you're not a control freak and OK with a few % either way, but 70 is your ballpark).
Here is where it gets confusing:
Say you got home with 27% charge (I did last night).
Now, how do you set your charging timer to leave in the morning with 70% with only "TO" option? - it is doable and I do it every day, but it is cumbersome and just plain dumb.

Here is how you do it:
1. Dismiss Leaf's guess-ometer of charging time left to 80% or 100% - we know it always gets it wrong.
2. Know your own numbers - in my case imperical evidence suggests that I can get 5-6% added to the battery charge every hour of charging at L1.
3. Now 70% (where you want to be when leaving for work) less 27% (what you have now) = 43%. Divided by 6 you get ABOUT 7 hours of charging needed (I ballpark it all in my head while pulling up to my garage - so the figure is not exact but close enough for me).
Your're leaving for work at 8:30am, need to charge for 7 hours so start charging at 1:30am. Done! Right?
NOPE!!!!!!!!! Not with the S model - no "start" in your timer. Now we have to jump through some more hoops and loops:

4. We already have dismissed the gues-ometer charging times. So let's figure out how long it will actually take to charge to 100%. 100-27=73, now 73% divided by 5-6%/per hour and let's say in our head we come to 12.5 hours of charging (again, close enough)
5. So if we know that our actual NEEDED start charging time is 1:30am now we add 12.5 hours to that and come to the number for "TO" in our charging timer of 2pm
6. Program our stupid charging timer "TO" function to finally figured out 2pm
7. Get in the house and get a beer 'cuz you're now almost getting a headache form you charging timer.
8. Grab another beer and sit down to write up explanation why the charging timer is stupid.

Every day you get home with different numbers left on your charge and every day you have to go thru all that. Is that not draining your personal batteries?

HOW easy would it be to just do it all in 1 step:

Set up your timer to "START at" 12am (your cheapest TOU start time) and Charge to 70% ????


Every day - same thing and NO messing with all the numbers above - as much as I love mental stimulation - THAT gets old.
All can be acheived with an easy software update.
Thus my question to you is why don't you understand that we should have that in our ALREADY BUILT IN charging timers?

Thanks
 
BestPal said:
... I was hoping I wouldn't have to write this all out but it seems like there's no way around it....Lets say you have an option of free L1 at work and want to utilize it fully (get as much of free juice every day as you can). OK? ...
I suspect you actually didn't want to explain because it was so petty and embarrassing.

It's guys like you that ruin perqs like this. If your employer is kind enough to provide free charging, you should have the decency to use it prudently. Limiting your home charging just to make sure you grab as many kWh as possible is the best way I know how to keep other employers from EVER following suit.
 
Wow, after that long write up now MY head is spinning.. This is a lot of mental energy over 10% charge..
If you really want to charge to 70% rather than 80% then set the TO timer to a time AFTER your departure and just unplug it during charge.

As for enforcing a start time (say midnight for example), try a mechanical timer on your EVSE.
I've got an old hot water heater mechanical timer on the 240V to my EVSE (installed by Edison in 1997 for the EV1). With my first Leaf I disabled it and tried to come up with a plan to program all the fancy timers on the Leaf even though it meant remembering to disable the whole mess when I was charging away from home. (side note: couldn't they use GPS for this? if you have GPS that is... I mean the NAV system on the SL lets you select a chime noise when you reach a destination(!) Not sure what the point of that is other than to mute my music every time I reach said programmed destination... but wouldn't it be nice to say "Only use the charge timer when I'm at HOME!"?!?!? Just sayin')

Now I don't use any of the Leaf charge timers.. My old hot water heater timer turns on the EVSE at 5am and I usually leave for work at 7:30 so that's about 100 Gids (35%) or so.. Similarly at work I plug in to a 240V EVSE a few hours before departure. My Leaf spends most of its life between 30% and 70%.
 
Wow! Well we must all be inexperienced dummies, because no one reading the OP's first post understood his quandary. ;)

But, that happens a lot here - doesn't it? Often folks do not present clear and complete situations or assume others know what they are thinking.
 
ebill3 said:
Wow! Well we must all be inexperienced dummies, because no one reading the OP's first post understood his quandary. ;)

But, that happens a lot here - doesn't it? Often folks do not present clear and complete situations or assume others know what they are thinking.

I didn't want to start any wars here. I apologize if that sounded harsh but just because Ray said he didn't understand the need for those feature, doesn't mean that there is none. And asking for the existing software to accommodate such simple features (that from my understanding were there in 2011-2012 models) is not outrageous. Is it?
 
davewill said:
BestPal said:
... I was hoping I wouldn't have to write this all out but it seems like there's no way around it....Lets say you have an option of free L1 at work and want to utilize it fully (get as much of free juice every day as you can). OK? ...
I suspect you actually didn't want to explain because it was so petty and embarrassing.

What was embarrassing, the fact that I want to optimize efficiency of transportation and out of pocket expenses as much as possible? If you didn't you'd be driving a Ford F-350, not a Leaf. I'm not embarrassed.. Sorry if you are.

davewill said:
It's guys like you that ruin perqs like this. If your employer is kind enough to provide free charging, you should have the decency to use it prudently. Limiting your home charging just to make sure you grab as many kWh as possible is the best way I know how to keep other employers from EVER following suit.

That's very presumptuous of you. Director of facilities at my company offered L1 charging to me and suggested to use it to max and he wants an electric car and he is not happy that he didn't get a free L2 charger approved to be installed like some other companies have (6 of them at Pechanga casino). If anything we might push for a free L2 in the future and set another example for the companies to follow. What did you say I'm ruining? I couldn't quite hear you.
 
BestPal said:
I didn't want to start any wars here. I apologize if that sounded harsh but just because Ray said he didn't understand the need for those feature, doesn't mean that there is none. And asking for the existing software to accommodate such simple features (that from my understanding were there in 2011-2012 models) is not outrageous. Is it?
The base S model is missing a lot of features of the SV and SL models, both 2011/2012 and 2013. That's why it costs much less. One feature missing is the more sophisticated charge timer. That's what happens with "stripper" models: the car is functional but is missing some nice-to-have features of the more expensive models.

Your concerns seem a bit like "buyer's remorse". Suggesting that Nissan add back features to the base S model, via software updates, is unrealistic, IMHO.
 
In fact, I offered to keep the log and pay back every kwh that I'm using because large companies are able to negotiate much better rate than residential rate. $0.11 vs $0.15 per kwh in my case. According to some that must be pretty embarrassing too and should look bad on a company trying to save 4 cents. I was told no need to keep a log or pay back for used kwh. Aghhhh, I need to stop, getting sick of this...
 
dgpcolorado said:
BestPal said:
I didn't want to start any wars here. I apologize if that sounded harsh but just because Ray said he didn't understand the need for those feature, doesn't mean that there is none. And asking for the existing software to accommodate such simple features (that from my understanding were there in 2011-2012 models) is not outrageous. Is it?
The base S model is missing a lot of features of the SV and SL models, both 2011/2012 and 2013. That's why it costs much less. One feature missing is the more sophisticated charge timer. That's what happens with "stripper" models: the car is functional but is missing some nice-to-have features of the more expensive models.

Your concerns seem a bit like "buyer's remorse". Suggesting that Nissan add back features to the base S model, via software updates, is unrealistic, IMHO.

I agree that to bring the price down some actual "nicies" are taken out, such as carwings, and GPS, and a large screen, and alloy wheels etc. That's logical and I'm fine with that. But it doesn't mean that software needs to be purposely "dumbed down" - there is no cost savings in doing that.
 
BestPal said:
I agree that to bring the price down some actual "nicies" are taken out, such as carwings, and GPS, and a large screen, and alloy wheels etc. That's logical and I'm fine with that. But it doesn't mean that software needs to be purposely "dumbed down" - there is no cost savings in doing that.
Please understand that the charging timers on the SV/SL models are part of the that Carwings/Nav system that was deleted in the S model. The charge timer in the S model is new. My guess—and that's all it is—is that Nissan tried to make it simple and basic for those who don't want to fuss with things on the simple, basic S model. You plug it in, it charges. You want to charge in time for a trip, set the end-time charge timer. You want to charge now, regardless of timer setting, push the override button. For most people that's plenty of complexity as it is.

Many of us use end-time-only charge timer settings because it has several advantages, among them simplicity. I think Nissan was wise to use this in their new simple S model timer algorithm. Your very complex preferred charging scheme is something of an outlier. You might be surprised at the number of people who don't set any charge timers on their older LEAF models: they just plug it in and let it charge to 100% and give it no other thought. That's the other extreme!
 
BestPal said:
What was embarrassing, the fact that I want to optimize efficiency of transportation and out of pocket expenses as much as possible?
It should be pointed out that in the big picture, L1 charging is not very efficient...
 
GregH said:
BestPal said:
What was embarrassing, the fact that I want to optimize efficiency of transportation and out of pocket expenses as much as possible?
It should be pointed out that in the big picture, L1 charging is not very efficient...

Didn't know that. What's the loss from wall to battery in % on L1 vs L2? Not having the facts, I've so far just assumed a 10% loss. Would love to see the exact numbers.
 
The most efficient way to use the power grid is to charge at night when the load is light. Charging during the day just adds to the peak load on the grid. Not a good thing to do.
 
GregH said:
Wow, after that long write up now MY head is spinning.. This is a lot of mental energy over 10% charge..
If you really want to charge to 70% rather than 80% then set the TO timer to a time AFTER your departure and just unplug it during charge.

As for enforcing a start time (say midnight for example), try a mechanical timer on your EVSE.
I've got an old hot water heater mechanical timer on the 240V to my EVSE (installed by Edison in 1997 for the EV1). With my first Leaf I disabled it and tried to come up with a plan to program all the fancy timers on the Leaf even though it meant remembering to disable the whole mess when I was charging away from home. (side note: couldn't they use GPS for this? if you have GPS that is... I mean the NAV system on the SL lets you select a chime noise when you reach a destination(!) Not sure what the point of that is other than to mute my music every time I reach said programmed destination... but wouldn't it be nice to say "Only use the charge timer when I'm at HOME!"?!?!? Just sayin')

Now I don't use any of the Leaf charge timers.. My old hot water heater timer turns on the EVSE at 5am and I usually leave for work at 7:30 so that's about 100 Gids (35%) or so.. Similarly at work I plug in to a 240V EVSE a few hours before departure. My Leaf spends most of its life between 30% and 70%.

Brilliant, I love your elegant solution to charge to my exactly needed percentage every time without doing all that messy math. Thank you! And a mechanical timer - I will look into that too. Those are really really good suggestions. Notwithstanding that nissan could've given us a fully functional timer, especially when a salesman at the dealership specifically told me that there is one in the S model BEFORE I bought it. He just failed to mention it's not a fully functional one. As I found out later - he didn't even know. Neither did his manager. Neither did the owner of the dealership... none of them knew about limited charging timer on the S model. Oh.. well. Now they do.
 
I'm pulling this out of my (rather poor) memory.. someone else will surely have better numbers. But I seem to recall 3.3kW L2 charging being close to 90% efficient whereas 1kW L1 charging was somewhere in the 75%-80% range.. (?)

And yes, it boggles the mind how they can spend all that money to make a new crippled version of the software in order to justify to the customer selling them a vehicle at a lower price... I mean leaving out hardware is one thing, but re-writing software is far different. Don't even get me started on the excluded cruise control. An EV (or hybrid or any by-wire vehicle) without cruise control is criminal.
 
GregH said:
I'm pulling this out of my (rather poor) memory.. someone else will surely have better numbers. But I seem to recall 3.3kW L2 charging being close to 90% efficient whereas 1kW L1 charging was somewhere in the 75%-80% range.. (?)

And yes, it boggles the mind how they can spend all that money to make a new crippled version of the software in order to justify to the customer selling them a vehicle at a lower price... I mean leaving out hardware is one thing, but re-writing software is far different. Don't even get me started on the excluded cruise control. An EV (or hybrid or any by-wire vehicle) without cruise control is criminal.

Gzzzz THANK YOU. Someone could hear me.
 
BestPal said:
That's very presumptuous of you. Director of facilities at my company offered L1 charging to me and suggested to use it to max and he wants an electric car and he is not happy that he didn't get a free L2 charger approved to be installed like some other companies have (6 of them at Pechanga casino). If anything we might push for a free L2 in the future and set another example for the companies to follow. What did you say I'm ruining? I couldn't quite hear you.
So? That just means you AND the Dir. of Facilities are taking advantage of the company. I'm glad you won't personally run into any problems, but it still seems pretty picayune to try and shave that tiny bit off your home charging.
 
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