Speedometer calibration ?

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Hegain said:
My 2016 S speedometer displays 65mph while GPS showing 60mph.

I have taken my 2016_S to two different dealers and one said they tested and agreed that it was off by 3mph. The other said it was the abs actuator and is not adjustable. The General manager drove me in his care to check my GPS and his GPS to his Rogue. Both GPS's were exact with the Rogue speedometer.

Too many of use are having this problem with our Leafs (my other cars are accurate). We should stop trying to re-engineer or making complex theories or equations about why. The "Why" is why is Nissan turning a blind eye to us. The "What" is Nissan Leaf speedometer is flawed. The "How" is how do we get Nissan to fix the problem.

Unlike Gas cars, our range is super important since we cannot stop on any given corner for a charge.

Your thoughts?

You can adjust the speedometer by % increments in one of the panels of the diagnostic mode: https://mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?t=9622

edit: this apparently only works if you have an SV/SL with the map radio?
 
My leaf s plus reads 3 mph faster than actual mph . verified by police radar at 30mph and 50mph. (actual is 27mph and 47 mph) odometer is off 2% ie. when i reach 100miles on odometer i will have traveled 98 actual miles. nissan consumer affairs says to get out my TScard and they'll punch it for me..(means to bad for you). they offer no solution or compensation for a problem they have designed into the vehicle . they should perhaps only offer 17" tires in lieu of the 16" tires that come on the s series .. has anyone considered a class action suit to force a fix. this issue is common experience it seems. love the car hate the deception. thanks for reading i just needed to vent. K
 
You can fairly easily correct the speedometer by upsizing your next set of tires a bit.

This calculator helps...

https://tiresize.com/converter/
 
My S+ speedometer is off 2% but my odometer per google appears to be right on. My SV+ odometer under reports by a couple percent though. I have run the cars on the same route to verify the discrepancy.
 
A 2 m.p.h. error is very good, my 2014 Leaf has a 10% (approximately) error, that is true 30 m.p.h. is 34 speedo reading, 40 m.p.h. is 44 speedo, and so on.
Come to think of it my previous car, an ICE VW had much the same level of error, but both of these were marvels of accuracy compared to most of the BMW motorcycles I owned in the past.
 
So a couple of years has gone by with no activity on this thread, which probably means nobody cares.

But I do.

I live in France, so it's kilometers for me. And my Leaf has a dreadfully over reading speedo. It is staggering that Nissan can write the electric motor timing algorithms to give pretty perfect 3-phase AC motor control, but couldn't write one to multiply wheel speed by wheel circumference...

It is really unbelievable that they couldn't do that.

In fact it is unbelievable.

Which makes me think they knew exactly what they were doing. They designed into the Leaf a way of tricking us into thinking that we're getting the range they told us we would. It's very clever. No electric car really gets the announced range (because highways are often not in laboratories). But by making us all drive (in my case it is just over 10%) slower than we think, then we save energy and can potentially get near to what we should be getting at a proper speed. Then we don't complain (as much as we should)

So that's clever. But it's also bloody dangerous. I quite often pass Leafs going the other way, and they almost always have a line of traffic stuck up their asses. Probably because most Leaf drivers are responsible citizens and are respecting the speed limit, by using their totally inaccurate speedometers. This must create stress and has probably led to an accident somewhere in the world.

It really pisses me off that when driving using Google maps on a French motorway (130kph limit) I have to show nearly 150 on the dashboard to get to 130 on Google gps. I don't drive at that speed as my old 30kwh wouldn't last half an hour! But even at the new highway speed limit of 80kph I have to display 90 to keep Google at 80!! It is just complicated and tiring and dangerous. I would like to look out the windscreen from time to time, you know, looking for kids crossing, or cars turning, I think it used to be called driving. But I have to spend most of my time calculating and comparing speed readings! I have had the car for over two years, two sets of wheels and tyres (17 originals and 16 winter) and it is always like this. Not due to pressure or wrong diameter tyres, any half imagined law or regulation or anything other than false information from Nissan.

So it filled me with pleasure when we went to a Nissan/MG shared dealership and ordered a new MG ZS electric 😆

It is embarrassing.

I'm thinking of fitting 205/60/17 tyres on my Leaf rims place of the 215/50/17 originals. This should correct by just under 5%... Unless the car is actually automatically calibrating the speedo to this inaccuracy using its GPS, in which case I think it would be court worthy.

Any thoughts?
 
As best I remember, changing tire and/or wheel size will correct the speedo error, if calculated carefully. Our Leafs read 2MPH high consistently, and it just isn't an issue for us.
 
Hello Leftie,

Sure I'd take 2mph 3km happily. Today I drove on the highway with a 90kph limit, showing 103 on the dashboard, the automatic speed camera warning screen at the side of the road lit up in green with my speed; 89kph. And it was consistent, I was in the trigger zone for enough time for it to refresh and it showed the exact same speed twice. Now I don't know how accurate it is, but that's nearly 16% out. To correct that with wheels and tyres I'd have to cut out the wheel arches!! Well, at least limit the steering rack, but I'd need anything from 210/75/17 to 215/55/20" 😱. It would certainly look interesting, but that's not really the aim of the game in a Leaf.

Plus, in France it won't pass an MOT (biannual car safety check) if it doesn't have a wheel and tyre combination that is featured on the OEM label inside the door opening.

I thought I'd get away with my 205/60/17 mod because the controller probably wouldn't bother checking as they would look normal, but if I fit Tesla rims it might raise an eyebrow 😆
 
On the highway, my 2013 reports 110 kph but the GPS on my phone shows 102 kph. So, not very accurate.

This isn't exactly on par with VW's diesel gate though :)

I always figure that cops give you 10% leeway anyways, so I drive 10 - 15 kph over the limit when on the highway, which really means I end up doing close to the speed limit if I forget about the inaccurate speedometer :)

Saves on speeding tickets, so I can't be bothered to seek out a fix! Maybe next time I buy tires, I'll go slightly oversized.
 
Here in France we get 5kph leeway... Which is more than 10% if you're in a 30 zone... But a whole lot less than 10% if you're on a 130kph motorway!

I have had three speeding tickets since living here (20 years) each one has been 96kph in a 90. Infuriating.

What distance measurement do they use over in Nissanland? I know they drive on the correct side of the road (said as an Englishman 😀), but I guess they have to be metric... So you'd have thought they might have noticed if it was widespread.
 
As a test, I switched the dash display to metric and compared displayed speed to actual speed measured by GPS:
GPS (mi/hr) -- Dash (km/hr)
31 -- 50
45 -- 71
55 -- 86
60 -- 95

Therefore, my car goes slightly faster than the displayed speed and it does not matter which mode is selected for the dash display. The accuracy of the speed display did not change on either 2015 SL or 2019 SL Plus when changing from 215/50 R17 to 215/55 R17 tires even though the odometer registers fewer miles with the larger tires. I believe the navigation system sends speed calibration signals to the dash along with clock time.
 
Yes, display is just slightly under actual speed. Display and GPS typically match within 1 mi/hr when dash is set for mph, but resolution is a little higher in km/hr mode so you can see a little more difference. The analog display matches GPS as close as I can tell looking at either scale with my normal seating position. Digital speedometer in 2015 SL also matched GPS regardless of tire size and inflation pressure.
 
I've noticed the same thing with my 2018. I had it looked into when I took it in for the recent safety recall software update. The tech told my service writer (whom I've known since he was in diapers) to feel free to research it further for me, but this thread pretty much settles it: my GPS navigator is right, my speedometer reads a tad high, but within acceptable margins, and I quite agree that it's better for the speedometer to read slightly high than slightly low.
 
I have driven the 2019 enough to confirm its speedometer (both analog and digital displays) is also accurate vs. my GPS regardless of tire pressures in the range of 36 to 44 psi. Therefore, it appears the GPS in the navigation system is providing signals to set the clock and calibrate the speedometer like the 2015 did. The odometer registers between 2% and 3% fewer miles than actually driven with OEM tires inflated to 44 psi so I will get a few extra miles of warranty coverage.
You're lucky, my 2019 is not accurate (neither analog or digital displays) Traveling at 65mph, mine will read 69, and as most have posted the difference is incremental. Am I to understand this is not a warranty thing? It's not excluded on my vehicle service coverage, just asking.
 
You're lucky, my 2019 is not accurate (neither analog or digital displays) Traveling at 65mph, mine will read 69, and as most have posted the difference is incremental. Am I to understand this is not a warranty thing? It's not excluded on my vehicle service coverage, just asking.
FWIW, mine was out by 10%. I've gained 5% of it back by changing to larger wheels and tyres and I'll get the other 5% next time I buy new tyres because I'll buy a larger profile again (since I now know there is room). Read about it here if you wish:

Correction of speedometer through change of rolling ratio
 
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