10. Almost Outa Juice...

     Yesterday I deliberately tried to run down my LEAF's battery to the point where I'd see/hear its low-battery warnings.  I succeeded, but I really had to try to do it.  


     I had several stops to make at widely-separated locations around the city.  I deliberately chose the most inefficient routing I could think of with mostly freeway driving at 70mph (lots of wind resistance and very little regenerative braking).


     It was 103 degrees in Austin yesterday, but the LEAF air conditioning had no difficulty blowing frosty-cold air to quickly get the cabin comfortable again even after parking in the sun for an hour or two on several occasions.  The LEAF's energy display told me that I could add 4 miles to my range if I'd turn off the AC... fat chance I'd be doing that!


     When I finally got down to 12 miles of remaining range I checked the nav system and found that I was 8.7 miles from home.  I headed back to the house making two more stops along the way.  When I got below 10 miles of range I began receiving visual displays reminding me to recharge, and then the polite lady who lives in the LEAF nav system started issuing impossible-to-ignore verbal warnings to recharge.


     When I pulled into my garage I had only four miles of range remaining.  Was I nervous?  Not a bit because with the nav system I was able to predict throughout the last 12 miles that I'd get home easily with that 4-mile buffer, especially since I knew that the last 2 miles to my home would be low-energy-consuming slower neighborhood driving.


     At that point I had one more errand to run; so I took my Lexus.  No big deal, and the Lexus was very happy to be driven after three weeks in the garage.


     The LEAF performs exactly as advertised.  You don't have to be a rocket scientist to feel perfectly comfortable with the 100-mile range.  However, the LEAF is probably not the right car for people who just "can't be bothered" to pay attention to the car's easy-to-understand instrumentation (and also those who are just flat ignorant).




PS: People have asked me if I've noticed any performance drop when the battery charge is low, and the answer is "no".  The Li-Ion batteries seem to provide pretty much full power right to the end (much like laptop batteries); and I've not detected any noticeable drop-off in the LEAF's normal, brisk acceleration even at low charge levels.