Nissan Leaf

[gasstingy]

This is exactly why I wanted to ask you about range. I live in North AL and the terrain I drive to work and back is rolling hills. I currently drive a 2010 Prius back and forth to work and can't match your 63.x mpg, not even if I were basing the number off the more optimistic dashboard figure instead of comparing the pump reading to the trip odometer. I'm usually in the 52.x to 54.x by calculating the figure myself.

I am presently sitting on the sidelines of driving an EV, itching to make the leap as soon as the Prius is paid for {this fall}.

[dhanson865]

Originally Posted by gasstingy

This is exactly why I wanted to ask you about range. I live in North AL and the terrain I drive to work and back is rolling hills. I currently drive a 2010 Prius back and forth to work and can't match your 63.x mpg, not even if I were basing the number off the more optimistic dashboard figure instead of comparing the pump reading to the trip odometer. I'm usually in the 52.x to 54.x by calculating the figure myself.

I am presently sitting on the sidelines of driving an EV, itching to make the leap as soon as the Prius is paid for {this fall}.

Well my Prius is grill blocked, running 100% gas, Energy Saver A/S with PSI near sidewall max. Essentially every thing you can do short of aero mods and extreme hypermiling techniques.

So maybe some of the difference is Prius to Prius. The rest is the fact that I have a large portion of 20-35 mph zones at both ends of the 15 mile commute. The high speed portion is only about 9 miles long.

I'm paying about 10c per kWh at home and charging for free at work. Unfortunately the work connection is a 120v outlet with the EVSE pulling 12 amps so only 1.2KW and I often only get to charge 4 hours a day.

Even if you can't charge anywhere free, if you can match or be close to my 10c per kWh you'll be paying something like 2 to 3 cents a mile for the electricity.

My thoughts are like this. Say the dash says 4.5 miles per kWh but is optimistic. I'll use 4 miles per kWh for easy math. At 10 cents per kwh that is 2.5 cents per mile.

If you are used to 50 mpg you can compare the cost of a gallon of gas in your area to the cost of 12.5 kWh. I'm pretty sure you'll find it cheaper to drive the electric per mile but you'll have that $9000 up front cost of grabbing a newer car and you'll have to pay a bit for

1. a 240v outlet in your garage if you want to charge at a decent rate
2. an EVSE that will do 240v

In my case I spent about $700 for the new dedicated circuit. I paid extra to make it a 50 amp circuit (to allow 40a continuous) so I would be good to go if I bought a second EV. I also have my main breakers at the wrong end of the house so my run is longer than average. You could keep that cost lower if you settle for a 30 amp circuit to allow for 24a continuous charging and/or if you run is shorter than mine, and/or you do your own electrical work.

I grabbed an openevse for about $300 to allow me to charge from the 14-50 socket I have and be a robust enough evse for any car I might buy in the next few years (Tesla is the only company that seems to provide a 40 amp capable evse with the car, all the rest stick you with a dinky 12a evse).

I'd stick with either a 14-30 or 14-50 based EVSE. The nice thing is that the EVSE doesn't use the neutral pin so you can remove that and have a universal plug that works on either 14-30 or 14-50 and the 14-50 sockets are more common.

Assuming you can charge it quick enough, it isn't a problem with a used leaf to do a 60+ miles a day in the summer time. I can charge mine once every day and a half right now doing 35 miles a day. The question is what kind of range will I get this winter?

It'd be hard to recommend a leaf with 80% battery capacity (which is what I'd expect for a $9000 leaf at end of 2015) to someone that has to use the entire battery pack to make the daily commute because the range will shrink temporarily by a large amount in the winter and permanently by a smaller amount in the summer / year round (assuming you live far enough south, and Alabama/Georgia is in that category).

So if you have the ability to charge at both ends of the trip while parked and unattended then cool it'll work.

L0 = Not being able to charge is 0 miles an hour
L1 charging is good for 4 to 5 miles an hour
L2 charging is good for 10 or so miles an hour (on a 2011/2012)
L2 charging can be good for 20 miles an hour on a 2013 or newer with 6.x KW charger

L3 (ChaDemo) is faster than you need to drive assuming your destination is only half a charge away.

If you can charge L2 at work and L2 at home you can commute much longer each way.

If either place is limited to L1 or no charging at all your commute range just shrank by 25-50%.

How quick you can charge and how reliable your charging method is will be more important to you than what the absolute max range from 100% charge is.

Oh and if you forget a wallet or ID card at home and don't realize it until you get to work you don't have a choice to drive back to get it unless there is a Chademo plug along your route. You are stuck at one end or the other of that commute until you L2 up enough to make the extra two unexpected legs of the journey.

[dhanson865]

To give you another example of range and charging issues. I bought the car in Hickory, NC

https://evtripplanner.com/planner/2-5/?id=cc61 shows the path I took home.

I did the 60 or so miles from Hickory to Black mountain doing about 45 mph with 99% of the route uphill and rolled into the town with 3 miles on the GOM. I spent an hour charging here. I might have been able to limp to my next charging destination but I'm glad I didn't because

13 miles later when I got to Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College I couldn't charge there. I didn't have a chargepoint fob and the guy that answered the 800# couldn't start it remotely.

So I drove north to the next closest Chademo with little reserve left, and was greeted with a perfectly friendly Greenlots Chademo. I downloaded the app, gave it my credit card and charged 13.7 kWh for 34 minutes and $6.81

I drove west to Haywood college and tested their free L2 then south to Waynesville to Chademo again. Got another 9.0 kWh in 25 minutes for $5.15

Then I drove back to Haywood college to top off for free before going over the mountains. Nothing exiting but it was L2 so I was there longer for a top off than the entire fill on a Chademo.

I then drove west to TN. No more Chademo between there and my house so I drove 84 miles of the scariest driving I've ever done. Not fun to be doing 40 mph at midnight to 2am and have 18 wheelers running up your rear while you turn on the flashers and hope they don't rear end you.

Nothing but mountains and concrete barriers on either side. No turn offs, no shoulder, no where to go but faster if someone is coming. I did have to floor it once as a Rig came for me doing 70 or so vs my 40. It cost me 5 miles range just to get out of his way (had to accelerate up hill because other rigs were beside me).

I finally got tired of that and stopped for a L2 at a hotel that charged me way too much per 30 seconds (so I didn't stay for much charge), then crept home the rest of the way. I drove into my neighborhood with --- flashing instead of miles and never saw turtle.

I never ran out of juice and never got in an accident but it wasn't fun at all and the entire thing would have a been a 60+ mph fun ride had there been another ChaDemo between the NC border and Knoxville.

My entire trip from Knoxville to Hickory and back to Knoxville again took me from 7am to 2am or so. Easily 18 hours including meal breaks, car buying, car charging, and driving.

On a long range trip with L2 as the only option it's faster to get to the destination if you slow down instead of stopping to charge. 84 miles at 40 mph would have been 100+ miles at 35 mph. If I could have safely driven that slow it would have gotten me home faster than stopping to charge at 10 rated mph.

So in the end it isn't how far I can go on a charge that decided when I got home. It was how fast can I charge that decided it. In an L2 wasteland I could only charge 10 mph (3 KW per hour).

[dhanson865]

Not seeing a big change with the speedometer adjustment. The dash reads higher than the GPS app no matter if I set it for -2.5% or +2.5% and I don't notice a definitive change between the extremes. I'm leaving it at -2.5% for now.

Next step is to replace the rims/tires to get better efficiency (lighter rims, lighter tires, lower RR tires) and somewhat correct the speedometer with the change in RPM (revs per mile).

[NeilBlanchard]

My daily commute is 13.0 miles each way, and the elevation at work is only a bit lower than at home. ~225 feet at work vs ~250 feet here at home. There are several ups and downs in there.

In my Scion xA it was roughly 8.5¢ / mile for gasoline alone (more if you include regular maintenance), and even at very high electric rates (we are paying 23.7¢ / kWh at the moment) that is about 5-5.5¢ / mile in our EV's.

[dhanson865]

For those discussing kWh from the dash, vs from the wall, vs what you pay in electricity:

1. There is a common effect in electronics that the higher the voltage of the source the more efficient the device works. I've seen this in computer power supply reviews at SPCR and other sites.

2. The efficiency of my cars charger was tested thoroughly at 120V and 208V but not at 240V in this report http://avt.inel.gov/pdf/fsev/SteadyS...on2012Leaf.pdf

You'll notice a huge jump in efficiency from 120V to 208V, I expect there is a smaller but still noticeable jump in efficiency at 240V.

I'm also assuming that the curve for efficiency drops off above 3KW if we had the data for 240V.

For rough untested math I'm assuming I'm getting better than 90% efficiency when I charge at 240V at home. The evse I use shows volts and amps when plugged into the wall and with or without charging load. I commonly see 240-242V when the electrical load is low in my house/neighborhood. I have seen it sag to 238 on a hot day with the house AC running. While I can charge at 16a requested, I have the evse limited to 14a based on the curve in the PDF. In reality it seems the car maxes out .5a less than I limit with the EVSE (as in I see 15.5a x 240V when the EVSE offers the car 16a x 240v and I see 13.5a x 240V when the EVSE offers 14a x 240V).

I never log the power used from the wall. It's easier to use the OBDII/leafspy method to see power in the battery and assume the 90% efficiency for easy math. In reality losses may be higher and actual power from the wall to battery efficiency may be in the 86-90% range. With electricity as cheap as it is I don't worry much about the 0-4% possible error in my math.

3. I'm in the camp that believes that the month service charge shouldn't be included in cost per mile or total cost of ownership math but for those that want to know it I have no problem showing the math both ways. It'll be clear that it's a minor factor though.

I have 70 months of electric bills for this house in my spreadsheet and 61 months of electric bills for my previous residence in another tab. The tax rate hasn't changed during that time but the minimum bill (aka monthly service charge) has. I didn't track the actual minimum at first but my cost per kWh column in the spread sheet is total bill / units and that includes tax, service charges, and any other fee they can dream up.

Minimum Bill changes
$6.09 2009?
$8.00 7-2010
$10.00 6-2011
$11.00 11-2011
$12.00 11-2012
$13.00 11-2013
$14.00 8-2014

Residential Electric Rate
Cost per Kilowatt Hour (Cents) as of 5/1/15
Single Family Dwelling 8.879

The most I paid per kWh was

May 2014 $75.66 684 kWh $0.1106 per

The least I paid recently was

Jan 2015 $112.48 1154 kWh $0.0975 per

and for a 1 year and 3 year average I have

Trailing 12 AVG $92.90 905 kWh $0.1033 per
Trailing 36 AVG $93.47 918 kWh $0.1028 per

those averages do NOT include any car charging yet. Using the 12 month average frozen at this point will be a nice comparison come 11.x months from now when I have that 12th new bill in hand.

honestly it doesn't change my math materially vs a gas car no matter if I use 9 cents, 10 cents, or 11 cents per kWh. I often find myself using anything in the 9-11 cent range as close enough if someone else started at that. Sure it could swing the math by 20% but when the cost per mile is roughly 2 cents who cares if it should be 2.1 or 2.3 instead? Anyway I do the math its cheaper per mile than any car I've ever had.

I expect my kWh consumption to rise slightly but not much. Reasons it might not rise include

A. new energy star roofing reducing my AC usage
B. LED bulbs replacing CFLs reducing direct consumption and my AC usage
C. retiring a tube TV that saw nightly use for an LCD that will draw less (direct and AC again)

I want to put more insulation in the attic but I have mods to the car that I want to do before that and some plumbing/tile work that needs to be done.

Oh but what is my cost per mile? Well at best case of 5 miles per kWh, 90% efficiency charging, and 8.9 cents per kWh I'm right at 1.98 cents per mile. At worst case of 4 miles per kWh, 87% efficiency charging, and 11.1 cents per kWh I'm near 3.19 cents per mile.

cost per mile between 1.98 and 3.19 cents if I charge at home all the time. But I don't, I charge at work on L1 getting about 1/4 of my charge for free. I don't do much unexpected driving so my average will be lowered to 1.5 to 2.4 cents per mile after free charging.

I'll spend $30 bucks a year on cabin air filters and windshield wipers. I'll spend several hundred every few years on tires. Even after all that I think it'd be fair to say I can get my cost per mile under 2 cents ignoring the initial purchase price of $9000 + tax and tags.

I ignore those for now because I paid a similar price for my Prius a few years back and so I cancel that out for the comparison. My Prius still gets oil changes, air filter, cabin air filter, wipers, tires. The oil changes being the only one that stands out for the math comparison.

I get about 60 mpg on the Prius for easy math and pay about $2.50 for 100% gas, something like 4.2 cents per mile after oil changes.

Assuming no surprises on repairs for the Leaf I expect the cost per mile to always favor the Leaf with the comparison currently at

~2 cents per mile Leaf (around $0.10 per kWh)
~4 cents per mile Prius (around $2.50 per gallon)

with my costs in TN and assuming gas to kWh pricing stays in the ballpark of the current ratio of 25 to 1.

[dhanson865]

Originally Posted by dhanson865

2. The efficiency of my cars charger was tested thoroughly at 120V and 208V but not at 240V in this report http://avt.inel.gov/pdf/fsev/SteadyS...on2012Leaf.pdf

Neil I'm not sure if your 2015 has the 3.x KW charger or the 6.x KW charger.

The 2012 PDF applies to the 3.x KW only no matter the year. If you have the 6.x KW you'd want to check

http://avt.inel.gov/pdf/fsev/SteadyS...on2015Leaf.pdf for the additional data.

[NeilBlanchard]

We have the charger upgrade to 6.6kW that also has the CHAdeMO quick charger.

I don't know how to compare the charge (from the "wall") to anything other than the dash meter. The e-Golf has about a 15% difference between these, while the Leaf is a bit over 20% (even with the 1.7% distance correction).

[dhanson865]

So as a before reading my commute to work (about 15 or 16 miles one way) uses about 19% SOC.

That's with the Goodyear Eagle RS-A around 50 psi in summer driving.

Since SOC won't go above 93% on this car and it goes into turtle mode around 1.4% Lets say there is a usable range in SOC of about 90%.

90 / 19 = 4.7 trips to or from work on a full charge.

Strictly speaking SOC is a variable unit of energy and wouldn't be sufficient for rigorous testing but the battery degrades at a slow enough rate that the difference in energy contained in 20% one year vs the next won't be much different.

If we wanted to track it in more absolute terms we could do it in GIDs. See My Nissan Leaf Forum • View topic - What is a "Gid"? for what a GID is.

OK, just in case it matters for later, my current SOC to GIDs is something close to

92.5% SOC = 225 GIDs
80% SOC = 190 GIDs

turtle is assumed to be somewhere around 1.5% = 5 GIDs but I haven't confirmed. I've never driven this car to turtle yet.

actual last trip to work was from 80% SOC / 190 GIDs to 62.2% SOC / 143 GIDs

I haven't saved a screenshot of being charged to 100% since May 28th so my GIDs being 225 at max charge was when the SOH was 92%.

All in all measuring battery capacity on the fly as you drive is an inexact process. You only truly know the exact state of charge at the top and the bottom, any where inbetween and you and the instruments are guessing.

[dhanson865]

Trip home was from 76.5% SOC and 181 GIDs to 59.5% SOC and 138 GIDs

So 17% SOC used and 43 GIDs used this time vs 18% and 47 GIDs use the other time.

and that was with liberal use of AC in the 90+F heat.

Unfortunately the heat is taking toll on the SOH. When I bought the car SOH was at 83%. A couple of hot months later and today it is down to 81% SOH.

In other terms, the AHr on May 16th was 54.66

Today the AHr is 53.57

You can literally watch the degradation happen when it is above 90F outside.