Reverse Engineering the Nissan Leaf's Range Display

Almost nine miles until turtle mode!

09 23

Red Nissan Leaf with California plate "Benetech"

jimfruchterman's blog
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Geeks are textbook early adopters. We can't resist a new gadget, or pushing the envelope to find out what's really possible!

I'm no exception to this rule. Recently, our family took delivery of a new Nissan Leaf, a completely electric vehicle. I now breeze by gas stations with $4 per gallon prices and think how I'll never pull into one of these places and spend dozens of dollars to fill up.

Of course, the downside to all-electric is that when your battery runs out, you don't have a little gas engine to get you home. This causes range anxiety, which is the fear of being stranded on the side of the road because of exceeding the range of the battery charge.

The Leaf range display is somewhat twitchy. It's trying to predict how many miles you have left in your range (as a one-way measurement), depending on battery charge, your driving habits, speed, temperature, use of climate control and so on. As a geek, I knew that the engineers designing the Leaf would design in a safety factor in this display. So, I had a lingering question: how far can you drive a Leaf beyond when it says it's out of juice?

Recently, I decided to test this. My wife and I had been invited to a nice party in Berkeley thrown by a great couple. Score! This was my chance to test out my theories. However, my wife, Virginia, was not enthusiastic. She was feeling that range anxiety and wasn't interested in some of the possible failure modes of this experiment.

Luckily, one of Benetech's board members, Jim Kleckner, and his wife Jennifer was also invited to the same party. Like me, Jim also went to Caltech, and his geek credentials are even stronger than mine. Jim was eager to join me in this geek quest to reverse engineer the display question by experiment. So, a deal was struck. Virginia and Jennifer would go in the Kleckner's Prius (which is a gas-electric hybrid with plenty of range) and the two Jim's would take the Leaf.

The party was great, and we stayed up in Berkeley for the night. The next morning after breakfast, Jim and I set forth to test the Leaf's range. When we started, the range display showed Palo Alto as out of reach. So, we turned off the air conditioner, and drove more carefully to try to stretch the range. Jim found another cool display option for the Leaf's power system, and we were geeking out trying different things to twitch the separate range display.

About halfway to Palo Alto, Jim did a quick calculation with his smartphone using Google Maps: he figured we would run out of juice about at the middle of the Dumbarton Bridge, the southernmost bridge over the San Francisco Bay. "Great!" I exclaimed, "we can coast home from there!"

Soon, the car started all sorts of warnings that we were running out of energy. No chance missing that we were reaching the twilight zone of our range! Low and behold, just after passing the apex of the bridge, the display flashed and our range went dark. The route mapping said we had four more miles to go: would we make it, or would we need to call our doubting spouses and admit defeat?! How much safety margin had the Leaf engineers built in?

We took the least distance route home, trying to minimize our risks. Soon, we passed by my house, where Virginia and Jennifer were still sitting in the Prius, waiting for us to show (they had gone faster because of their lack of range anxiety). We drove around the neighborhood, passing joggers and cyclists (also a group that doesn't suffer much from range anxiety), as we kept track of the miles we'd gone with no range showing on the display. Five, six and seven miles all passed as we circled the area, freely burning electrons. Finally, at the 8.8 miles, the famed "Turtle mode" icon showed up on the dashboard. While in turtle mode, the Leaf barely accelerates, trying to encourage you to seek a friendly power outlet (the car has a special 120V linking cord in the trunk, in case you need a charge from a normal outlet rather than the 240V outlets that are typically used).

I had pushed my luck while circling, and we were half a mile from my house. Would we make it? Would we end up pushing the car at the end? But, the gentle speed of turtle mode conserved the last kiloJoules of electrical energy and we glided to a stop in front of the charging station at my house. We'd made it!

Melodrama aside, many people have asked me how practical an electric car with a range of roughly 100 miles is. And for me, it's turned out great. It's rare for me to drive further away than San Jose, San Francisco or Berkeley. So, I can pretty much count on being able to make a round-trip to these destinations when I'm not taking the train into San Francisco. I've had terrible luck with public charging stations in the area: I think I'm 0 for 5 on attempts to use the existing chargers (wrong connectors, broken, or some kind of payment system other than the one that I got with my Leaf and its home charging station). But, just relying on my home charger, I can pretty much do all the driving I need to do in a day with the overnight charge. I believe electric cars are going to be a great tool for most people, especially for families with at least one other car.

by jimfruchterman

Comments

turtle experiment

Permalink Submitted by ksnogas2112 on Mon, 09/24/2012 - 11:06

Jim,
Awesome post. Glad it worked out ok for you guys. My wife convinced me to change restaurant destinations once because she didn't want to risk the range so we opted for one near a charging station.

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hentai has never done before, how about these things? Let me check to see what it is on

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Permalink Submitted by rickk on Mon, 04/29/2013 - 06:26

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What was the total distance in your adventure

Permalink Submitted by CHLPatent on Thu, 09/27/2012 - 07:58

What were the mileage numbers in your experiment, total distance to Turtle, that is? Were you driving in ECO mode? Approximate average speed and kwh/mile? You know, the 'geeky' stuff...thanks!

Leaf Range Chart

Permalink Submitted by Bob (not verified) on Fri, 10/05/2012 - 08:50

Perhaps you have already found this range chart, but just in case. . .
http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=101293#p101293

The author, Tony Williams, has had way too much fun putting this information together, and has "met the turtle" more times than a sane person should. Having said that, there is nothing like doing it yourself in your own car to give confidence in what can be done. Congratulations on successfully making it home!

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Permalink Submitted by Abigail Williams on Thu, 01/31/2013 - 06:01

Good to know that you had enjoyed the party as well as had a great day. And I completely agree with you electric cars are going to be a great tool for most people, especially for families with at least one other car.

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Permalink Submitted by Simmons Butler on Sun, 12/23/2012 - 22:18

The concept of electric cars is welcomed by all.In order to save non renewable resources like petrol,diesel this move has been taken.It is great news Nissan welcomed the concept of electric car "Benetech".With it has began a new era of technology.But it has also some disadvantage that when the battery gets exhausted while driving it gets really hetic inorder to recharge the battery.

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