Here's How Far My Cheap Nissan LEAF Goes On A Charge! Charging & 70-MPH Range Tests

hello and welcome to another out of spec reviews video I'm really pumped up to bring this video to you because this is where we're actually starting to quantify what the heck I've purchased this is the cheapest electric car for sale in the country at least it was because I bought it I paid 3 750 for this 2012 Nissan Leaf and it's got about 78 000 miles on it I've been daily driving it for a bit and what I want to find out is a how long does it take to charge and B how far does it go once it's fully charged so I'm gonna walk you through all the testing procedures normally we do different videos of our range test and the charging test but I thought hey this isn't really a car people are can actually cross shop it's very unique to this specific vehicle we have some racing Arrow modifications over here that will affect this car in particular so I thought let's just see what I bought and see if it was a good or a bad deal but for 3 750 I have to say I've made some videos about this as well as a daily driver it's been truly wonderful Rock Solid hasn't given me any issues at all and the battery still has 66 percent capacity from new so I've been able to do some actual driving with it I'm pretty impressed let's see what the numbers actually say though so let's talk about our testing procedures I've taken our Nissan Leaf over here to our DC fast charger that we use when we do all of our range tests and things and one interesting component about this car which some of our viewers may already know is this car does not have AC charging the onboard charger has failed which means we need to DC charge the car only with the chatimo port and that bypasses the onboard charger and just directly charges the battery with direct current we are going to replace the AC onboard charger that's a project for another video at another time but I've been driving this for the last two weeks I've made a whole video about how great it is so here's what I did I wanted to first record the zero to 100 DC fast charging log and I'm going to play you that log and walk you through how this thing charges momentarily but just to walk you through how I did that I warmed the battery up a little bit because it did need some heat in it and I have Leaf spy which is an app that tells me all the nerdy data about the car big fan of leaf spy and a huge shout out to the creators who made it it's really a wonderful service to Leaf owners I drove it up the highway I think that's 94 miles an hour allegedly at least indicated were you having a hard time keeping up in the e-tron Alyssa a hundred percent this this Beast is she thirsty yeah thirsty and slow I think I was smoking you in the leaf no yeah anyway at least let me believe I was because I was flat out allegedly allegedly yeah uh so then I went drove around here until I was coasting in at Full Throttle and then the car pretty much died it wouldn't even go into gear so I was literally as far out as the battery would go Leaf spy was indicating I think two percent state of charge or or you know basically they said there was 200 watt hours left in there so with 200 watt hours the car shuts off completely so that's our bottom when I'm about to do the range test I know not to go below 200 watt hours because that's when the car completely shuts off um I am really concerned about the BMS Logic on this this Leaf though because this is now the second time I've had it complete charging at 90 percent so basically what I'm about to play you is zero to ninety percent DC fast charging and then the car said oh I'm actually done so I'm gonna play you that momentarily and then you'll meet me back here and I'm going to explain how we're going to finish off the rest I want to say a huge thank you to Sparrow world for sponsoring today's video hey these guys are doing something pretty incredible they are supporting our forgotten Afghan allies through this wonderful charity which you can find on freedomraffle.org all you have to do is purchase a 150 ticket and you're immediately entered to win a Tesla Model S plaid guess what Sparrow World already has the Plaid so as soon as you win the raffle it shouldn't take long for you to get the car on top of that you have the best chances ever that I've seen of winning one of these cars in the Raffles that we've done here and that's because Sparrow world is only sold about 20 percent of their tickets coming up to their deadline so all you have to do is head to freedomrafl.org to support our forgotten Afghan allies by purchasing some tickets and of course you're entered to win that awesome Model S plaid best of luck and and thank you to Sparrow worldwide for sponsoring today's video so here we are just wanted to show you the full charging curve I really like chargepoints app because they lay out exactly how it charges and this is the type of charging curve I actually really like to see you can see it's going Max current until it reach its peak which is Let's Take a Look 50 kilowatts it was right in there that's awesome and then you can see it just kind of slowly comes down until it reaches 90 and dies the thing is these numbers are all pretty small so again we plugged in completely dead and got 32 kilowatts right on the start so that is just you know Max Amps pack voltage was nice and low it walked its way up to 50 kilowatts and then it slowly just walked its way down through the percentage range again ending at 90 for this session I've actually noticed as well I think the Leaf's just programmed to end at 90 when you start really low because when I plug it back in at 90 every time it charges a bit more but even after the sessions that I did yesterday I tried it again and it does complete 90. so that's an unplug and replug situation might help save the battery some wear and tear come back over here really quick also wanted to show you it took 37 minutes I'm going to add up all the time here at the end but it took 37 minutes to go from zero to ninety percent as a percentage of charging that's really quick again we only put in 14.42 kilowatt hours and I would say this added term isn't correct that should be delivered because of course there's always losses when DC charging so my guess is we really put in 13 13 in a bit kilowatt hours throughout that session but 37 minutes to make it charge with a Peak at 50 percent really not bad 50 kilowatts this car charges like a monster from zero to fifty percent and then from 50 to 90 yeah take some time from 90 to 100 really takes some time and you'll see here in just a second we have to do plug and unplug plug and unplug just to top it all the way up but again this is the first time I've truly full charged the leap so let's go back to the station now that you kind of have an understanding of how it charges um but I would say for my use case this is totally fine I can leave it at a charger grab some food come back I'm at 90 and I'm good for another couple days of driving so now you've joined me after watching the charging test which we just completed I actually drove the car did a couple loops around the parking lot floored it a couple times filled up the tire pressures to the recommended 36 PSI because we're about to leave on the range test and what I'm going to do is re-initiate a charging session here so I'm going to open up the chadamo port I'm gonna get the uh thing starting to charge and we're gonna basically see what happens from 90 to 100 again this car does an AC charge so the range test has to be what the car can do and uh last time it stopped at 90 I was at an Electrify America station it only put in like a couple hundred Watt hours more before it was like oh I'm actually done I think the car might be a little confused but this is what the car will do so let's top it up the e-tron is all topped up to 80 state of charge Alyssa was just here helping me film so we decided hey let's throw it on the charger I've just activated this one in we go let's see what happens because there's no way on the early Leafs to actually set the maximum charging limit there's no setting in this car unlike I believe some of the newer Leafs I could be wrong but this thing should be programmed just to go to full and I have it set to immediate charging so here we are it says it's charging it's at 90 percent it's pulling pack voltage up a little bit 20 kilowatts at 90 it doesn't do that it'll it'll fall down here pretty quickly but what I'm going to basically do is just let this thing charge up full and then once it completes I'm going to head out for the 70 mile an hour Highway range test of the leaf now what I'm also interested in doing is seeing what this thing will do around the city on a full charge since that's more of my use case not taking it on the highway but I do at least want to quantify it on the highway you can see we're already down to 15 kilowatts and putting in yeah a couple hundred Watt hours there but showing 91 state of charge let's take a look at Leaf spy and see what that has to say going to open up the mighty Leafs interior I'll grab my Android phone and let's see what it says here so it is showing okay we're putting in 12 kilowatts we're at 87.1 percent state of charge I don't know where this 60.1 maybe that's based off of a full 100 capacity battery pack but what I don't understand is this says 87.3 and this says 92. I think Alyssa is leaving not sure where she's going bye Alyssa I think she's just making room at the charging station but basically it's showing 13.2 kilowatt hours left in the battery pack but it's still doing 10 kilowatts so let's let this thing complete if I pull up some other screens that's a little bit of temperature here's our cell brick voltages okay okay that's the screen I was looking for Here We Go um yeah stay to health 66.58 one thing I really like about Leaf spy is it shows me each of the bricks and we have a pretty balanced pack I would say 26 millivolt difference across the entire thing and I'm not seeing a consistent low spot of course we have some low spots here but we're talking about 0.01 volts across the whole thing and you'll see they're jumping around a little bit so overall I'm pretty pleased with this but I'm curious because we have people who understand the leaf battery pack more than me in our audience um what do you guys think is this is while charging and we're at pretty high state of charge obviously because we're in the four volts yeah four Volt range per cell which is pretty high but uh now it's saying 94 we're still doing 4.3 kilowatts so maybe this will go fully to 100 state of charge and it was just sending weird signals to the charger I don't know never seen that from another car but I'm hoping that we can see close to 15 kilowatt hours left in the battery pack um that would make sense based off of the 66 state of health we'll see what happens and we have literally just completed now we put in another 2.1 kilowatt hours in 25 minutes this thing's saying 97.4 and very close to 15 kilowatt hours that's what I was expecting so this number must be based off of full charge I'm going to plug it in one more time just to see what happens if we can squeeze another little bit in there I'm going to give it a minute to sort of balance out the pack plug it back in and then if not I think we just leave and do the range test Alyssa you'll be standing by just in case it happens to run out of charge right I'm gonna go head over to Family Dollar to see if they have any charges they're trying to get twenty dollars for like a little charger you mean a charging cable for an iPhone yeah now after that last time it just completed let's go in Here trailer full of hunting dogs pretty cool and that's a really cool setup that he's got there that's pretty sick let's just see what it says here if it'll even allow charging I gave it I don't know 60 seconds 120 seconds something like that the leaf just beeped and it is flashing up here which means okay it is asking for power and look at this we are putting power in what the heck okay I'm just gonna go to either this thing explodes or we can't get any more energy in there and I think that's our final run we didn't even get 100 watt hours in that time but 0.78 in three minutes that's really you know that's something that's measurable but I'd say where nearest makes no difference topped up at this point let's go see what this thing will do at 70 miles an hour I guess I'll walk you through some of the procedures of setting it up I already set the tire pressures as mentioned 36 PSI all around all right let's go over here let's just double will check everything on Leaf spy before we crank up the leaf yes my password for this phone's all nines here we go um 14.8 kilowatt hours left tire pressure is looking good Let's see we have 97.6 state of charge according to this I'd be surprised if we see more than 40 miles I'm thinking 30 something all of the data here let's take a look at our battery temps pretty warm but not too bad anywhere from 94 to 102 degrees Fahrenheit that's very reasonable I would say not anything crazy 28 millivolts separation that's looking good I mean the thing's looking great so let's talk about how we're going to get it set up first stop seat belt on secondly headlights off for as long as possible I expected to do this earlier today when it was a bit warmer because it is getting slightly chilly out car on headlights off it is 60 degrees Fahrenheit outside it's predicting 49 miles but wait I haven't even put it in efficiency mode yet we're going to hit OK on this we're going to go to the energy info we're going to go Auto uh to 68 degrees we're gonna go into reverse and we have to set a trip odometer reset B Trip hold and reset boom the speedometer I need to make sure it's calibrated there's a lot to do in the drive into Eco 50 miles in eco mode with climate control on and you can see climate control is not even using much power at all but we always run at 68 degrees Auto so off we go in the leaf on the range test oh my gosh never thought I'd be doing this got the window tint here I've not I've never been a leaf guy it's no secret but I just like the car because it it's a way to show what you can buy for 3 700 bucks uh it seems like a lot of car to me let's just Coast on out but this way what we're going to do is get the car up to an indicated 70 miles an hour at the end of the on-ramp I'm then going to confirm with our GPS speedometer I've even gone so far as to bring my laptop and charge my phones off the laptop uh therefore we are not pulling any extra power from the leaf I want this thing I want a big number out of this car we do have the racing Arrow modification on the back of course it's only going to improve the range of the big dent that's going to create some drag but let's not worry about that too much gentle accelerations here eco mode on 0.2 miles driven no regen at all you can see that using all service brakes nothing going back in but for the most part we are coasting let's hope we can make it on the highway almost no traffic perfect conditions for this really nice conditions here we go swing it on oh yes going wide racing line and just gentle power as we make our way up I really love the position of the speedometer in this car it's right in view really great might need a little bit more throttle just to get it up to 70 miles an hour so here we go 50. 60. we need to hit 70 at the end of the on-ramp come on Leaf I'm not floored but it feels like I am 70. I've never used cruise control in this car I don't even know how right here cruise on set yes set at 70. all right let me make sure that that's the exact number and I'll be right back with battery temps are looking good 72 miles an hour indicated is um 70 miles an hour constant quite loud in here from road noise mostly tired no wind noise very very interesting it tracks dead straight on the highway we're on some of the loudest pavement but wow does this thing just feel like a cruiser I mean I've had it on the highway again up to its maximum speed and it feels so well built I just couldn't imagine a better more solidly put together package for the money and uh this is great so the hard part will be figuring out out the turnaround points since the leaf isn't really great at showing state of charge I do have the leaf spy app so I'm probably going to pull around turn around with 60 65 state of charge just because the exits are really far apart here and yeah don't don't want to have to push this thing too far although that would be pretty funny it is a beautiful night here in Northern Colorado couldn't ask for better conditions it's a little bit chilly 50 six degrees out now but almost no wind really a still evening cruising along battery temperature looking good maybe one touch to the warm but that's okay with me overall range is looking pretty good we do have a pretty big uphill to start so still over three miles per kilowatt hour predicted that is very efficient I would say we are at 82 percent state of charge according to the leaf spy again when it shows 0.2 kilowatt hours remaining that's when it shuts off completely so we're going to try and get it to 0.2.3 remaining at the end of this and you can see our climate control certainly using the heater a little bit I'm not using the heated steering wheel or the heated seats again the whole point here isn't to simulate how I'm going to use the car it's just to put it in the same test as we run multiple EVS so we can get a pretty good idea as to where it falls in line I imagine it will be the lowest range we've ever tested we are now approaching our turnaround spot I don't think there's any way we'd make it I'm just kicking it off 70 miles an hour it's doing a little bit of regen up to the stoplight here we are at 59.9 percent state of charge according to the car the car says turn off climate control for one more mile of range but we actually are regening here pretty good better than I've seen before I feel like just draining it down may have enabled the regen here I am hitting the brakes it's blending more regen in so that worked out pretty well look at that what we're going to do is kind of cruise through this intersection here doesn't look like anyone's coming and we're going to jump back on going the other way the most insane views on the planet over here I mean this is great and I really love these short range range tests because I don't have to spend all day I like you know started this thing at like 3 P.M this is great so now gentle accelerations back onto the highway um we still have more than 50 percent of course but the problem is just the way the exits are spaced we would run out if we went up another one and I think if we go down past ours we might run out as well so I'll just be taking Frontage roads after this initial Loop to drain the thing completely out but I think that'll be a good plan gotta get it up to 70 miles an hour we're creeping our way there sixty five seven eight nine seventy one two and locked in man this thing cruises great so comfortable beautiful views the wind noise is so shockingly low the build quality is great the suspension is so smooth I mean it just amazes me that we're still evaluating cars that can't reach what this car can do even all these years later or are maybe just matching range of course kind of sucks in this but I'm just so happy with this purchase 77 999 indicated here on the dash when will we hit 78 000 miles we'll have to have a little celebration for it when we cross the number hey 78 000. beautiful view celebrates all right we'll stop honking it's gonna kill the range I have just had to kick the headlights on surprisingly this car does have I believe xenons or maybe even LEDs but they're certainly a blue hue this is a maxed out option Nissan Leaf and according to the previous owner he did not change the light bulbs out so I believe it is stock the problem with running 70 miles an hour as we go the same speed as trucks and it's a bit of a shame but um we still have a distance to go because of course we were going down the hill this last little bit and I'm thinking I'm gonna run it past our exit and then take the Frontage Road back up that way we can extend the amount of time at 70 miles an hour cruising as much as possible so I think that's going to be our plan let's see if we can scooch over here now that we've passed the truck absolutely weekend and um I don't know this thing's showing 41 state of charge I'm thinking we go for it we just Hammer past our exit worst case well we'll be just side of the road and here we are passing our original exit I don't know I'm kind of nervous about this I'm not totally convinced it's 12 miles round trip it's only predicting 11 miles and we've been going down the hill a little bit because it's six miles to the next exit the car says we have five kilowatt hours left that we can use and we're at 36 state of charge so my best reaction here is we're gonna go down to the next exit hop on the Frontage Road and hopefully we don't uh yeah hopefully we don't run out and I'm gonna keep it at 70 for as long as possible but I got to let traffic go by so we're drafting a little bit the Nissan Leaf getting a little cheating right here but maybe now he's out of drafting Zone but uh damn this is a little bit scary let's see what happens we have just passed the Budweiser uh distribution or factory I should say kicking it off of 72 miles an hour here oh man I don't know if we'll make it back the car says seven miles it's showing 3.9 kilowatt hours left I think we we can do it and I'm thinking well so we just got our low battery indicator right here I'm thinking we take the highway back I don't know about you guys but um it's actually probably safer just to take the Frontage Road it runs right alongside and there's no stop sign so I can maintain uh 70 miles an hour as well but if I run out then I'm not in the middle of traffic so let's just Coast on through here and uh yeah we'll take the Frontage Road back I've never actually done the front titch route here before but getting dark pretty quickly and yeah I believe it's the next one is the frontage road yep where that truck is and then it just goes right alongside so let's try it out let's do it turning onto the frontage road and getting our speed up to 70 miles an hour there's the Budweiser plant and this is a much less traveled road than the highway so I think we'll be much safer out here than we would be if we broke down on the highway but again six miles remaining and it's six miles back to the charger we do have to do that climb up and over the highway once we get over there but we'll try it out so let's he's into the throttle get it up to 70 and cruise on over you can see here we're pretty much going right next to traffic makes no difference either way actually less of a shoulder here on the Frontage Road than on the highway but at least there's little driveways and pull-offs but we don't want to pull off into that little ditch the car is predicting four miles of range I believe it's five miles down to the charger so not sure what's going to happen we're at 21.7 SOC I think we'll be okay but yeah we're really stretching this 70 mile an hour range right here I'm liking it cruise control having to add more power but we might get into Power limiting I know Turtle mode should kick on here pretty soon and at that point we may not be able to maintain miles an hour we'll see if you eats here I actually believe there's a way we can Loop up and get to the other Frontage Road on the other side of the highway which is where we typically run the cars out of battery and in that case we don't have to go all the way up and over the highway so let's actually should have used a little bit more regen there we're gonna racing line this thing carry as much speed as we can through here thankfully didn't use too much friction brakes and that was mostly regen we're gonna go up and over the highway here and that will be much safer now we're running it out on the road that I'm familiar with and we have still a little bit energy in the pack to do the climb to get over because the turtle mode in this thing really does limit the power as I just found out was the first time I hit it just earlier today for the charging test so just gentle acceleration up here and yeah we've done 70 miles an hour all the way to this point 41.1 miles so far that's a way better result than I expected holy smokes really not bad here and it's not like it's a 70 plus degree day it's getting pretty chilly outside it's 52 degrees right now so here we go the frontage road leading over to the come and go we basically just crossed the highway and this is you guys are familiar with this section now we have run EVS out of charge many times on this road over here so I think we'll cruise at 55 maybe 60 miles an hour or something like that because that's pretty much all she'll do that's full power right there 30 kilowatts and I don't want to just keep it pinned so I think 55 miles an hour for the rest of the test will be pretty reasonable and pretty fair considering what we do with other EVS when we get down to about three miles of charge we typically run under 70 miles an hour to drain out the packs we have just gotten dash dash to empty it's come up with very low battery but this is one thing I don't like about the leaf there's no user communicated state of charge so thankfully I have Leaf spy running I can see them at 12 I have another you know one and a half kilowatt hours to burn or so but we're just cruising along here at 55 miles an hour like I told you guys and I don't know all seems to be pretty good I haven't seen Turtle mode yet so I think we're actually gonna probably make a U-turn around here and then um yeah just Coast it in regen the pack a little bit we're just gonna Coast it U-turn go back a little bit until we're down to about one kilowatt hour remaining and then we'll Coast it into the charging station hopefully we don't run out but we got to get everything out of it you actually join me right back to where we just flipped around I did the whole loop back and the thing is still going so let's do it again we're gonna make a full U-turn and uh get it back up to uh 70 miles an hour we haven't even hit Turtle mode yet so we're still good to go car says there's a one kilowatt hours in there so we have about 800 watt hours to play with before it breaks it's showing uh 5.2 percent state of charge so let's accelerate gently back up to speed now now I'm going to be pretty gentle on it but still Throttle Down and we can flip around at any of the points up this way I think when we get down to probably 0.5 kilowatt hours left in the pack that's when we'll flip around and head back but it's still showing four percent state of charge and we still have you know good enough acceleration to get up to 45 miles an hour so to me that's the sign to keep going this is awesome battery level low no charge charge over here battery temp is looking good outside temp a little chilly maybe that's good for having a passively cooled system here for being charged and discharged and it's about to be charged again so that's probably not too bad for the leaf overall cruising at 55 through here still Motorway speeds for a lot of people you definitely have a little bit of BMS confusion here because you'll see our SOC is down to 0.6 percent but the leaf hasn't even hit Turtle mode yet so I do not know what is going on here definitely a different Behavior than when I drained it for the charging test for the charging test it was completely out but I'm gonna go back to the Circle K and just make sure not the Circle K excuse me the come and go what am I doing watching too many Bjorn videos I guess there's Alyssa in the e-tron she just went by so you can see she's on the brakes make it flipping around okay so she came to check on us but um weirdly very different behavior from all the signals here you know the car is not in Turtle mode it's showing 0.5 kilowatt hours left zero percent state of charge but look at this if I give it the beans it's still outputting pretty good power 40 kilowatts right there so let's just go to the Circle K or excuse why do I keep saying that the come and go and see what happens I'm just keeping as always pretty pretty high rate of speed through here in case we need to coast in but I'm thinking oh it's actually completely out now there's Turtle mode I'm floored and it's dead dead dead dead Okay wild my foot is to the floor so I think the leaf was confused as well now is the question can I make it to the charger because we are out of power completely it is not outputting anything at all so good move we turned around there I think we can do it I'm just gonna rip into the Come and Go Station like this here we go sending it it has literally no power I'm floored we're just coasting what the heck Leaf you're supposed to tell me in Turtle mode what's going on and we made it back oh man that was freaking awesome two times in a row I pulled in that wide open throttle point one percent now it looks like I had to recalibrate but basically completely out it shut off at 0.2 kilowatt hours remaining now point three yep it won't go into gear so we really are completely out It beeped and that's it it will just go into neutral so this thing's completely bricked completely dead out of charge Here Comes Alyssa I think she's probably thrilled she doesn't have to push it let's turn the car off hell yeah it made it how's it going good we're all waiting to try to go to dinner oh yeah who's that Michaela at our house Michaela and David are both at our house um I pulled in Florida it's completely dead just like the last time guess how many miles it did you're usually good at this 40 what do you think Alyssa uh uh 58. nope you're off by eight miles it did 50.2 wow all right I'm gonna get it charging up now oh and the police are pulling someone else over not me and the leaf holy crap that was freaking awesome man I love it but it's it's dead as a doornail right now is that the term I don't know let's get it charging and there we are plugged in and charging 42 kilowatts it'll walk its way up I'm actually going to compare this charging curve versus the first one but uh man the little leaf it was a little confused down there no Turtle mode at the end oh two cops pulling over someone over there but um a little confused no Turtle mode pretty good power and then it just was like nope done so something in the past pack must have hit bottom voltage to stop that but uh man impressed with the results so there you have it the full charging and range analysis of the Nissan Leaf I'd be really curious to see our around town range I bet we could get 75 to 80 miles out of it if we hyper-mile it around town if you're curious to see that video let us know we're gonna pump the tires up to 50 psi and see what the most amount of range we can get out of our Leaf is I think that would be a really fun follow-up to this one here but now we have the bass lines all set and there's more we can do in the future I'm looking forward to potentially upgrading the battery pack enabling some vehicle to load or vehicle to grid through the chatimo port and maybe even I don't know going crazy with it we'll have to see what the future holds but there you go the Nissan Leaf 50 miles of range on the highway that's impressive 2012 78 000 miles and that's pretty good I bet the state of health is actually higher than what the leaf spy app Is Telling Me Maybe it just needed to recalibrate and learn what's going on maybe not just a theory but there you go the end of the video thanks so much for watching another out of spec reviews video Alyssa is waving goodbye behind the uh the big tints on the e-tron and we'll see you on another one soon epic day bye-bye

Channel: Out of Spec Reviews

Views: 49,983

Keywords: Car, Review, Acceleration, Braking, POV, Handling, Test, VS, Comparison, Interior, Exterior, Supercar, Hypercar, Sedan, SUV, CUV, TFL, Redline Reviews, Motor1, sports car

Id: mXhb-IOjCxI

Length: 32min 30sec (1950 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 17 2022