2013 Leaf improvements - how is this possible?

[ronr64]

http://green.autoblog.com/2012/03/20...iles-of-range/

Am I reading this wrong? How could changing the heater increase cold weather range by 25 miles? The heater I would assume is still electric. Which means its electric efficiency should be or at least approach 100% so... Maybe it comes with electric long johns and no actual heater!

The only way I could see this is if it was adding a heater that uses fuel instead of electricity which I seriously doubt they would do if not for PR reasons alone.

[Henry_FL]

Heat pumps offer COP's of up to 4, where resistive heating is a COP of 1 ( coefficient of performance ).

Its very common in home heat pumps, instead of just turning electricity into heat, you use the electric to extract the heat from the air and can get as high as 400% depending on the ambient temperatures

[dwl]

Maybe they're talking about the defroster. When the defroster is on, it forces the AC compressor on. Which results in some pretty horrible range reports. As a result, Leaf owners simply do not use the defroster.

I could see tweaking that being spun into an extra 25 miles of winter range. When, really, it's no extra range for owners in the know. It just lets them use a feature they have been avoiding.

[DonC]

Keep in mind the quote comes from Mark Perry aka Mr. BS. Ba ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! He probably just multiplied the real number by a factor of 10.

More seriously, he may have said that that heated seats could make this much of a difference (they could) and he got misquoted. He's right that the new heater won't affect the EPA range since temperature isn't a factor when the EPA tests EVs.

The current heater is fairly useless, so even a big improvement wouldn't matter that much. The bigger help wold be the heated seats. The leather seat option is also a nice addition.

[Brian Loves Cars]

The most interesting thing - sorry to be off topic - about the Leaf is that...

-both leaf and volt use lithium batteries
-the leafs is 50% bigger
-the volt uses liquid cooling, the leaf uses fan/air cooling to keep the batteries at a stable temp
-the volt cycles through about 60% of its charge, the leaf about 80%

So sicne we have a superior cooling system, ... if GM/Nissan determines that the Leaf's batteries are holding up fine going deeper cycle, could we not gain a 33% increase in EV range just via a simple software change, to allow the batteries to go deeper cycle?

Think GM would ever do that? Shoot I'd be able to go 60-70 miles routinely wo even hypermiling in that case, that would be awesome! Maybe somebody will develop an aftermarket hack?

[Loboc]

Instead of sticking leather in Leaf, they should make an Infiniti version with a better looking body.

[DonC]

So sicne we have a superior cooling system, ... if GM/Nissan determines that the Leaf's batteries are holding up fine going deeper cycle, could we not gain a 33% increase in EV range just via a simple software change, to allow the batteries to go deeper cycle?

FYI the Leaf is about the same size as the Volt, though it has more interior space both because of the engine in the Volt and because the thermal management system takes up some space.

I'm not sure it would matter quite as much as you're suggesting even if GM opted to use more of the battery. Nissan has said that it expects about a 20% degradation in battery capacity over 8 years just to to time aging. In the Leaf that translates to a 20% decrease in the range. The Volt just uses more of the battery as the battery capacity degrades, leaving you with the same range later.

[frankydude]

Heat pumps offer COP's of up to 4, where resistive heating is a COP of 1 ( coefficient of performance ).

Its very common in home heat pumps, instead of just turning electricity into heat, you use the electric to extract the heat from the air and can get as high as 400% depending on the ambient temperatures

I fully agree with Henry_FL: We could have a better heater with the actual HVAC system for A/C being redesign so it becomes an
heat pump. This would add the cost of a reversing valve, and of the software to implement a defrost cycle.
It would greatly increase the EV range in colder weather. A resistive heater as a backup would still be needed.

Francois

[bonaire]

Brian means battery size.
And, you're right. You can get more EV miles by using more percent of the capacity of the cell set. The limit today is to reduce "impact" as the capacity does reduce over time through usage - so that EV miles at year 5 is similar to year 1 even if 16kWh capacity may drop to 14.8 or whatever it does. However, is total voltage used to determine AER range? The voltage profile of Li-batteries dips over time so that the total voltage curves "droop" as they age. I wonder if top-level and bottom-level charge points will still indicate 10.4kWh after 5-years or it changes to be like 11kWh or similar. Since you really cannot "see" a full charge other than inspecting Lithium battery cell voltages - it's going to be interesting as time goes by. We do read that people with 1-year+ and older Volts are doing fine with their range after 20K miles.

[Frankman]

I can't believe that the 2013 Leaf is not going to have a 6 kW charge rate like the 2013 Ford Focus. This would make it more economical to charge at a location that charges by the hour, and more economical to charge at home so a complete charge can be accomplished during the Super Off Peak time period which is typically is a 5 hour window.