Nissan claims average Leaf is driven 37 miles per day, more range not needed

[MTN Ranger]

Nissan Says Long-Range EV Unnecessary



An electric vehicle with a range of 200 to 300 miles between charges? Totally unnecessary for the vast majority of American motorists, says Mark Perry, director of product planning and strategy for Nissan North America. In a phone interview with AutoObserver last week, Perry said exhaustive data gleaned from the U.S. Department of Energy's EV Project and from the 7,500 Nissan Leaf EV (above) hatchbacks now on U.S. roads makes it abundantly clear that "there's no market need" for an EV that gets hundreds of miles between charges.
The data shows that the typical Leaf driver averages 37 miles a day in the car, and that the typical trip length (distance between power on and power off) is seven miles, Perry said. The findings are consistent with studies of conventional-vehicle driving patterns that found that 72 percent of American drivers travel less than 40 miles a day, and 95 percent drive less than 100 miles a day. Asked whether Leaf drivers were self-limiting because they know the car won’t deliver more than 100 miles of travel between charges, Perry said only that the company’s data and ongoing interviews with select owners don’t show that to be the case.
The 37-mile daily travel distance means Leaf owners on average use only half the juice in their battery packs each day. The federal Environmental Protection Agency’s fuel economy testing determined that the Leaf delivers 73 miles of driving range between charges. Nissan's own tests using the LA-4 cycle, a laboratory test that simulates city driving conditions, determined the vehicle's per-charge range to be 100 miles. Because so much electricity remains in the Leaf’s 24 kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack at the end of a typical day, the amount of time needed to fully recharge the pack is only two or three hours using a 240-volt charger, Perry said.
Perry noted early concerns that Leaf owners might prepare to leave for work in the morning only to find their vehicles still charging have proven unfounded. Furthermore, the data shows that some drivers go two or three days without plugging in, Perry said. "It's a behavior of getting comfortable with your driving pattern and the capability of the Leaf. Initially, people do a lot of topping off, but after a week to 10 days that topping-off behavior starts to wane as they get more comfortable, and then they quickly fall into a pattern of, 'If I don't need to charge, I won't charge.' "
Solid Data
Nissan is able to download the driving and charging behavior of Leaf owners as long as they give the Japanese automaker permission to do so, and all but a handful have, Perry said. Additionally, Leaf owners have provided Nissan with an enormous volume of anecdotes and other kinds of information about their vehicles via blogs and email, he said. Beyond that, Perry said, "we have a 1,500-size owner panel that we constantly ping for information and research questions and feedback. And then we have a deeper-dive panel of about 14 that we spend just observing. They allow us into their homes to watch how they use the vehicle -- that level of detail." In his words, the data is "very solid."
Perry's remarks came as Tesla Motors prepares to launch the Model S, an all-electric sports sedan that will carry a base price of $57,400. That sticker price is due in large part to the high cost of the car's 160-mile-range battery pack. The range of the Model S can grow to 230 miles for an additional $10,000 and to 300 miles for a $20,000 premium for additional battery packs. While the Leaf and the Model S are enormously different vehicles in regard to performance, luxury, capability, etc., if what Perry says is true the beefier optional battery packs Tesla will offer would be overkill for the majority of American motorists. Tesla declined our repeated requests for an interview regarding this article.
Fear of running out of electricity while driving an EV seems to stem from motorists not really appreciating the amount of driving they do, Perry said. "People equate time in cars to miles. Any of us who spend rush-hour traffic sitting in gridlock may feel like we've been on a 60-mile trip, but we may only have traveled six miles. Our rear end might feel like we've traveled 60 miles, but physically we've only traveled six," he said. Despite all of the miles American Leaf drivers have put on their vehicles since the cars went on sale 10 months ago, there have been less than a dozen reported instances of Leafs running out of juice, Perry said.
No Secondary Vehicle
One unanticipated finding the data has revealed is that in a household where one gas-powered vehicle and one electric vehicle exist, the gas-burner often becomes the secondary vehicle. In fact, Perry said, "If there's multiple cars in the household, the Leaf is the primary-use car…People only thought this [Leaf] would get occasional short-haul use. What people are finding is that with the 37 to 40 miles of driving they are doing in a typical day, the Leaf is more than capable of doing it with ease. We joke that we've been a source of marital discord, because the husband and wife are fighting over who gets to drive the Leaf. It's gone beyond anecdotal. I think we have statistical information now."
Also somewhat surprising to Nissan is the 90 percent of charging Leaf owners are doing at home, Perry said. The automaker had expected that 70-80 percent of the charging would be conducted at the owner's residence, and the remainder at work or using public chargers. The percentages will likely change as the number of public chargers grows, he said. As for the percentage of charging done using a 240-volt charger versus a standard 120-volt outlet, thus far it accounts for 80-85 percent of the charging, he added. That's not surprising, given the fact that substantially more time is required to charge an EV using a 120-volt outlet compared to a 240-volt outlet.

http://www.autoobserver.com/2011/10/...necessary.html

[saghost]

Sounds like a good reason to buy a Volt.

[surfingslovak]

Sounds like a good reason to buy a Volt.

Very true. In fact that's what one of the commenters on autoobserver.com said that as well. Most Leaf owners won't drive more than 40 miles a day, but they would to like go on a longer trip on occasion, without hassle and a lot of planning. Many take their second car on weekends, which is not necessarily captured in the Carwings data Nissan used. Sounds like a perfect use case for the Volt.

What bothers me the most about Mark Perry and Nissan is the perceived lack of integrity. They continue to market the Leaf as a 100-miles vehicle for fear of diminishing their sales opportunity, although EPA testing clearly indicates 73 miles real-world range and many owners complain that they have trouble getting decent range without resorting to hypermiling or enduring low battery warnings. When Tesla, one of the true innovators in the field, announces a 300-miles EV leveraging what appears to be a battery with twice the energy density than what's in the Leaf, Nissan will use Carwings data from unsuspecting customers, distort their wants and needs and try to invalidate a competing market entrant.

DC quick charging was supposed to bring the solution to this quandary, but rollout has been very slow. California, the largest market for the Leaf by far, has only two quick chargers. One at Mitsubishi HQ and one in Vacaville. The Vacaville unit has been semi-permanently closed due to lack of UL certification. The Mitsubishi unit exists primarily to feed a fleet of test vehicles, and is only accessible during regular business hours. Nissan has been very hands-off when it comes to infrastructure.

This article has been discussed at some length on the MNL forum as well.

[DonC]

Nothing terribly new. Yes the Leaf's 73 mile range is more than enough for most drivers most days. Yes most charging is done at home. And yes if you have a choice of ICE or EV miles you'll use the vastly cheaper EV miles. Probably anyone who has a Leaf or a Volt could have told something this.

Agree with surfingslovak that Mark Perry is less than forthright with the bogus 100 mile claim. Even worse is that Nissan recommends that the Leaf only be charged to 80%, which reduces even the 100 mile claimed range to 80 miles and reduces the EPA range to 57 miles.

[Drathen]

It seems to me that the Leaf would not be advantageous to have in a large metropolitian area, especially in California. A normal 40 mile commute could turn into a disaster if there is an accident and a Leaf owner runs into an extensive back up of stop & go traffic. I had to commute from south Long Beach to downtown LA for about a year and even though its a little less than 30 miles, there's no way I would've been comfortable making the roundtrip commute in a Leaf. The normal traffic congestion is bad enough, but gets so much worse when there is an accident, construction, Laker game, concert, etc that constant stop & go would deplete the battery before traveling very far.

[Rusty]

The normal traffic congestion is bad enough, but gets so much worse when there is an accident, construction, Laker game, concert, etc that constant stop & go would deplete the battery before traveling very far.

I dunno about that. I get much better mileage in my Volt in stop&go on the freeway than I do at 70 or 75 MPH. What really kills mileage is stop&go+A/C, or worse... stop&go+heat. Then an EV has some *real* range heartache!

[surfingslovak]

What really kills mileage is stop&go+A/C, or worse... stop&go+heat. Then an EV has some *real* range heartache!

True dat. I found that the heater in the Leaf can initially pull 3 or 4 kW of power and about 1 kW after the cabin has reached its target temperature. I was initially concerned about A/C, largely due to the erratic guess-o-meter in the Leaf, but it realistically only pulls about 0.5 to 0.75 kW and it would take couple of hors or more to have a tangible impact on battery charge. I'm in Northern California though, and the climate is proverbially temperate.

And to Drathen's point, yes the Leaf is great for California, but the limited range combined with the dearth of DC quick chargers can turn a simple run to the airport into a small adventure.

[gwmort]

paraphrase - theres no market for an EV that goes over 100 miles, because no one drives our EV that far (nevermind they physically can't)

[2BeLivingGreen]

Just goes to show that GM did their work in saying that 37-40 miles is the range that most people use on a daily basis, and thus the VOLT range. 37-40 miles does most of my daily driving but I really appreciate to go further and take trips using the ICE. So this data confirms why so many VOLT drivers use only electric miles in the majority of cases in their use.

[Ziv]

Nissan headline could have been: Leaf drivers only feel comfortable driving half of the cars real world AER!
If Nissan offered a range of pack sizes like Tesla is going to, this article would actually be worth reading, but since the Leaf buyers are a self-selecting lot that chose to compromise on range...
And I agree with 2Be's comment above to a limited extent, but as the Voltstats data is coming in now, it shows that around 20.4% of the Volt fleet miles are in CS mode. If they had been able to dip a little deeper than the 10.9 kWh GM allows you to use without compromising the warranty life, they could have gotten the Volt from 37-40 to 40-43 miles of real world AER, which would be a critical difference. I wouldn't be surprised to see a significant improvement in the fleet MPGe if the CD range was increased just 10% from an EPA rated 37 to 40 miles. If you got 10% more AER, how much better would your MPGe be? How much higher a percentage of your driving would be in CD mode? It would vary, but it would have to be significant.
Using 12 kWh instead of 10.9 would still allow for a large buffer on both ends, in case you live on a mountain and want to use regen to start your commute and it just may still allow the vast majority of the packs to outlive their warranty.
http://www.voltstats.net/