[Caevlist] 30kWh Leaf and pushing the limit

[Alan Batie]

Tonight, I went to Portland for a birthday dinner with friends.  I 
charged to 80% in Wilsonville, drove to downtown Portland, then after 
dinner, down to Power Nissan in Salem to charge for the remainder.  The 
idea was to give as much time as possible to cool down after the charge 
at Wilsonville, and to only need to charge to 60% or so to get home to 
limit the temp rise.

I knew as I passed Woodburn, it was going to be close, as the range 
guesser didn't have as much of a surplus as I would have liked (I forget 
the numbers, but it was under 50% - something like 27 miles range and 20 
miles to go.  I figured worst case, I would stop at Freddies instead, 
which is a few miles closer than the Nissan station.

I did make it fine, but as I neared the exit, I was down to 6% and one 
bar when the range guesser threw in the towel and went to ---.  In my 
2011 Leaf, it didn't do that until sometime after losing all the bars. 
At 5%, the % meter went to --- also (though there's a slight downhill 
from the freeway exit and a stop light that let me regen it back up to 
6%, though that didn't last through accelerating from the stop light).

I was only a little surprised by this, because the Low Battery indicator 
pops up when I still show 14 miles and 2 bars (used to be around 5 miles 
and 1 bar), so it's clear that whatever reserve there used to be in the 
Leaf isn't there any more, or else they've effectively made it bigger by 
popping up warnings sooner.  I still haven't turtled a Leaf, so no data 
on that...

And then I played a game of Freecell when the charge was at 50% and when 
I finished, it had charged to 75% and 9 bars of temp.  Ooops!  But that 
left me with enough buffer that I don't need to charge tonight (20 miles 
range is enough for one day in Corvallis), so the battery can completely 
cool before I charge again.

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: smime.p7s
Type: application/pkcs7-signature
Size: 4227 bytes
Desc: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
Url : /pipermail/attachments/20160624/e8cd6dee/attachment.bin