Our Nissan Leaf doesn't give me "range anxiety"

"Range anxiety" is a hyped-up malady potential electric car owners shouldn't worry much about. Yes, at first I worried about how far our Nissan Leaf would go on a charge. Now, I don't. 

After four months of owning the electric Leaf, I enjoy driving the car almost as much as our Mini Cooper S. (Not quite... nothing is more fun than a Mini Cooper in my utterly biased opinion.) 

It's quiet, smooth, responsive, and handles well. The turning radius seems as small as the Mini's. The interior is light, open, and well-designed. For a $26,000 car, after federal and state tax credits, it's got appealing features: navigation system, satellite radio, great-sounding audio system, cool driver displays.

We have two other cars. So we only use the Leaf for our around-town jaunts, which must be over 90% of our driving. I know that even though we live in a rural area about six miles from the Salem city limits, the Leaf is going to get me where I want to go and back again, no problem.

When I researched the Nissan Leaf before my wife and I decided to sell our Prius and get a fully electric car, I read some horror stories about how little range the Leaf had in cold weather -- since the heater, lights, and everything else (including the motor, of course) runs off of battery power. 

Use more of those other electricity drains and there's less left to propel the car.

True. But here's a real life example of why range anxiety isn't a problem for us even in mid-January, when Oregon got about as cold as it ever does here in the mid-Willamette Valley. Consider the facts of a drive back and forth to Salem I made on January 13, 2012:

Throughout the entire trip the Leaf's thermometer showed the outside temperature as ranging between 30 and 35 degrees F. The trip odometer showed that I went 20 miles, total. And that was with three stops: at the Mail Depot to drop off a package, at LifeSource Natural Foods to do some shopping, at the River Road Courthouse Athletic Club to exercise.

Our Leaf was fully charged when I left home. Meaning, all ten bars on the "fuel gauge" were showing electricity available. The estimated range indicator showed 106 miles after I turned on the car.

When the Nissan salesman who sold us the car was showing us how it worked, he said "Don't pay much attention to that" when he pointed out the digital Remaining Range indicator. I've learned to do just that.

Coming home from town, we drive over a mile mostly downhill. The Remaining Range tells you how many miles you probably can go given how you've been driving recently. So freeway driving at 65 mph drops the range rapidly. Driving in town at 30 mph boosts it back up. The lesson is to pay more attention to the "fuel gauge." (Even though it also isn't completely accurate.)

I drove the entire 20 miles with the automatic climate control set to 70 degrees, so the heater was blasting away the entire time. The LED headlights and radio also were on. When I got home, five of the ten bars on the fuel gauge were still left.

So, yes, in cold weather, with about half of a 20 mile drive being at 40 to 50 mph and the rest at city speeds, the Leaf's range isn't anywhere near the 100 miles or so cited in Nissan literature. However, I was able to accomplish everything I wanted to do on a freezing day, and still had half of the car's charge left.

Plus, the Leaf fuel gauge has three red bars after the ten aforementioned bars. We rarely let the car get into this area, so I don't know how many miles it's possible to go in the "red zone." Probably, quite a few.

The Remaining Range indicator showed "49" when I drove home into our carport. That's optimistic, since as mentioned above the last miles I drove mostly were downhill. But the recharge only took 2 1/2 hours, whereas Nissan says a fully depleted battery takes about seven hours to recharge on a home quick charger. 

So I suspect I'd used considerably less than half of the Leaf's battery power on my 20 mile, three-stop, trip into Salem. Again, in 30-35 degree F. temperature, at night, with the heater blasting the whole way.

The cost was 64 cents, given our electricity rate. That's 3.2 cents a mile. By contrast, our Toyota Prius hybrid got about 42 miles a gallon on mixed driving like my Leaf trip. At $3.40 a gallon, that translates into 8.1 cents a mile. The Leaf, even in the dead of winter, is two and a half times cheaper to drive than a Prius.

And the Leaf needs much less maintenance that a gasoline-powered car. No oil changes, tuneups, and such.

Range anxiety? No big deal for us.

Nor for this test driver of a Leaf, who reviewed the car for Automobile.com. Check out "2011 Nissan Leaf: Range Anxiety for No Reason" for another view of this subject.

Comments

[JPWhite]

Great to hear that the LEAF is meeting your needs and is a practical replacement for the Prius. Just curious, why didn't you replace one of your other vehicles and keep the Prius as your range extended vehicle?

FYI fully charged the LEAF has 12 bars on the fuel gauge. There are two 'hidden bars' below the two red bars as a reserve. So technically the LEAF has 14 bars. By not considering the two red bars as 'available' to you you are cheating yourself of range. You could have charged to just 80% that day and had plenty of juice left. A full charge is more taxing on the battery than a 80% charge and will shorten its life. I only charge to 100% when I know I'll need the extra fuel.

[Willie R.]

Glad to hear that you are enjoying your experience with an all-electric vehicle, Brian. For those with the financial qualifications and a lifestyle into which the inherent limitations of an electric vehicle can fit comfortably, it might actually be practical.

[Brian Hines]

JPWhite, thanks for the info. Sounds like we need to read our owner's manual more closely. (What we've done is read the parts that we feel we need to know about, and watched the Leaf DVD.)

I wasn't aware of the hidden bars. I had read that when the Leaf freaks out and says you're running out of juice, usually there is more charge left than indicated, as the Leaf warning system is conservative (as it should be, given the inconvenience of being stuck somewhere).

Initially we did charge to 80%. We changed for two reasons. One, we live six miles from the city limits, so just getting to the outskirts of town and back uses up 12 miles of range. My wife has more "range anxiety" than I do, and she mostly drives the Leaf, so we decided to juice it up to 100%.

Our salesman didn't have a problem with that, and no one really knows what the effect of 100% vs. 80% charging will be over time. He figured, and we agreed, that if we get more enjoyment out of the car that way, and it only reduces battery life by a small amount, it's worth charging to 100%.

Two, for some reason the Leaf won't charge immediately upon plug in up to 80%. It has to be on a timer. We've had some problems with our Blink charger, supposedly because of poor wi-fi service. We've had to go to a cellular connection with the Blink.

I much prefer getting out of the car upon arriving home, plugging in the cable, and seeing the charging lights illuminate. Again, a few times the Blink charger failed to complete a charge with a timer set for midnight, so we ended up in the morning with a depleted battery.

[Dan Gellner]

I would suspect the reason for not charging to 100% every time is because harm happens to the battery if the peak of the charge is not detected properly, and the battery over charges. By charging only to 80% you are leaving a good margin of error that you will never over charge the battery. Whereas, at 100%, your peak detection software has to be perfectly correct every time, no room for error.