Here's What It's Like To Road Trip A Nissan Leaf

hello and welcome to off spec and welcome to my driveway today we're going to find out

what

a

road

trip

is like in the

nissan

leaf

now to be completely honest we're not going to take a big

trip

across the country I just have T

here

's a lot to driving today, we will probably have to do two charges or we will have a quick door with thermal accelerator. It's not too hot, but we're around 80 degrees, so we'll find out that t

here

goes a nice Chevrolet bolt. I'm pretty sure that's the guy I let run my Tesla charging adapter through our area here they came here we have a little house hotel right off I-95 they came thinking we had electric car chargers and They only put the Tesla ones on, so I lent him my tesla to j1772 adapter, not directly, the property management people came and took it out of the car while I was riding around in that Lexus LC 500 for the last few days, but we need to see how It's running some errands in the

leaf

I can't put all the miles on the Lexus, we need to share the love, so let's navigate this today and see how it works, let's fire this thing up and see how it sits there for about three or four days. without being driven it's at 87 let's back it out of the driveway because i have to put the lexus in the driveway and buckle everything up and of course i took the lexus to starbucks that thing is a beast that lc 500 if you're interested on that car review and on this one we have a new channel called out of spec reviews where we review all cars not just EVs so if you're only into EVs it's probably not the place for you but if you want it. all things especially this beautiful v8 streaming lc 500 convertible then that is the place for you.

I'll link it in the description so we have some items on the to-do list today. The first is that we need to check the status of the updates on our local electrify america station the day after I posted that video they started working on our particular station that sounds so good oh amazing so the sheet doesn't sound so good but it doesn't burn as much fuel as this one, I think. I've averaged like 11 miles per gallon being on the red line all the time, so let's put this in the driveway, uh, yeah, so we'll go to the electrify america station to check those updates and then we'll go to Raleigh to see some. friends in Raleigh and then we have to go to the track, so overall we're going to do probably about 200 miles, maybe a little more today on the sheet we'll talk about emo cargo again twice. and uh we'll see if it thermally accelerates, that will be something interesting, now you'll notice I keep saying thermal acceleration, why I also definitely need a haircut.

I realize, thanks now, the leaf is even the new leaf and also this is The new big 62 kilowatt hour Nissan Leaf, of course I will do a full review of the out of spec reviews and we have already done a test of range of 70 miles per hour in internal electric vehicles. Now we have many channels, I don't know. how am I going to explain it all but I will put like all our channels below basically this car has no liquid thermal control so if the battery gets hot it depends on the ambient air and flow to cool the battery and line components drive, there is no AC compressor that cools the glycol circulating around the cells that cools the pack now, usually if you just drive daily that's fine, it doesn't really matter, but where it does start to matter is when You are fast charging the car on a hot day and you see that most of the temperature rise in the battery packs is coming from the DC charging because it is drawing 50 kilowatts or almost 100 kilowatts in the case of this car sitting idle with no flow of air and that heats up.

Things improved very quickly, and that's why both times I've charged this car, it's already put out 23 kilowatts the first time because it just arrived from Atlanta, which is where Nissan keeps its press cars, and then the second time. time. I was doing 32 or 33 kilowatts and that was like the first charge of the day, so I haven't even been able to get up to top speeds because I've been fighting the heat, but it's cloudy today, it's about 80 degrees, it's mild, hopefully the Nissan Leaf can do this trip and I don't spend much time sitting in front of a charger because it has thermal acceleration or fast door, so let's take a

road

trip.

I have a lot to tell you about this car, it is actually a fantastic car and we are going for a Of course this is the sl and it has everything including the LED headlights which are very nice and a professional driver so it will be useful on this trip , so we are explaining here the reason why those guys had to use my adapter was because these are the only chargers that have been installed so far where I live, they are only Tesla destinations, of course you can use the adapter from Tesla to J1772, this is how I charge, this is how we normally charge our i3, uh, but let's get some public level 2 j1772s and maybe even a good point-of-charge DC charger here in the near future in Rocky Mountain Mills, an awesome place to stop along I-95, if you're ever traveling through it, is a really cool place.

We have five breweries, four restaurants and a coffee shop right there. It's really the coolest place and the only cool place in all of Rocky Mount, which is why we live here. We are starting our journey with the battery temperature to the left. Let's see how. which increases throughout the day, a little bit of rain can also help cool it down, but I will say that even in my typical riding on warm days when it's 90 95 degrees, there's my hand, sorry, it's been extremely high. almost limiting red, so let's get on the highway, we're going to drive it normally, we're not going to do anything to try to maintain the battery temperature, we're going to go full throttle on the highway, baby, and we'll see how this does to activate the

nissan

pro pilot all you have to do is click this little button down here and then click set and then oh it tells me I hit a line thank you very much nissan it actually breaks the outside wheel and pulls you. in and there we go it's now on pro pilot and it works great with lane centering adaptive cruise control and it's a pretty good system now if you want to get an out of spec t shirt like this or others just go below the video that have.

I started listing some products. I never wanted to do that, but it seems like people were asking and we're going to do it. We will also launch an online store at some point that sells useful materials. Anyway, let's head out. the electrify america station, but we should talk about the sheet for a second along the way, now the sheet will show you your nearest charging stations, which is very cool, I mean, it's good to know, however, it doesn't show you many of them, apparently. prioritizing ev go and charging point makes sense uh we don't have evgos at my house and we only have a couple of level two charging points so

what

we're really left with is using plugshare which is a fantastic app to find everything . of the chargers, but what you miss is that when you put a destination, the sheet doesn't really help you get there, it doesn't say, okay, you'll stop it, this fast charger and then that, one of the problems with electric vehicles They aren't Tesla right now neither of them really have a nice easy to use route planner.

This issue will likely be resolved in late 2020/early 2021. We'll start to see some implementation of really good route planning plus add-ons. in charging and other electric cars but right now it's a little bit missing anyway we're right down the street from the electrify america station let's see how much work they've done because the station was offline for a while and I see a trailer and traffic cones and new chargers ooh this looks good I want to have a head on collision with that guy what a way to go on a honda cross tour so we can see the old chargers bulging in there and the new ones wow!

They're beautiful okay so the chatimo that they kept here but moved it to the right side are these the new seal units that we have to explore so before we start exploring and looking at some of everything that's around here let's see loading the car and just see if it works now we're in a really high state of charge, but okay, you have to open the little flap here, you have to open this port, open the chatimo and then I'll plug this in and then I'll look around, so here we go, I just slid it into the app that we're launching and we're going to be able to load.

I hear some contactors clicking here, come on, we're and these are nicer screens, sure the nissan just beeped there. I am and we are charging very well 20 I don't expect too much speed here at 81 but the battery is cold. The funny thing is this is the fastest loading I've ever seen the sheet isn't bad so just let this load because why not and uh chance to load if anyone else was here I would never do that but let's take a look to these units so that we have a shadimo of 150 kilowatts cc and 50 kilowatts. These are the seal units as predicted, they are the high power charging stations, so these are the 350 kilowatt dual dc ones pinned on, they are beautiful, look at all those lights, they don't flash in person like they are in the video right now, then we have 150 and then we have another 350 and You can see the old stations and the old power cabinets here.

These are episec units and I've always had more trouble charging on fsec units so I'm glad they're gone and seem to be gone or disappearing from all the electrified US stations, all these site changes like this have been from ephesec and they're putting in these seals or abb units and let's take a look at the new power cabinets over here so all they really had to do was I don't think they had to install new conduit. They just changed the chargers. See, this is what does all the work to charge an electric car and then they put the other ones in so they look pretty cool.

I can hear some fans so you can see us. We're charging this one here, which is cool and here's the big transformer in the back, let's see they're 750 kva, so basically you know, with a little power factor but 750 kilowatts from the grid to run all of this and yeah. It looks pretty good and that's a big improvement so I will say the blade plugged into the charge slid in smoothly and activated on the first try and I think this is electrify america getting ready for all the cars that will use their network and systems uh for greater station reliability yeah you can see here the power cabinets electrify America cycle two lot number five final destination made in Korea you can see here the efficient cabinets even if they don't work I would take a couple of these we need to put them in on the track we need fast charging and yes, those new units look beautiful, I would say we have successfully explored, we are down to 34 kilowatts, let's stop, we have two kilowatt hours, not bad again, charging opportunity, oh the light is off now can I unplug it come on here we go man these plugs chademo can't wait for him to die chademo is here the leaf is the last battery electric car in the US that uses it and is being replaced by the nissan aria which We are very excited because it will have liquid thermal management and cc which means I don't think it will be necessary to put in more Chatimo plugs.

I'm sorry to all blade owners, but it just doesn't make sense to support a dying standard. browsing the sheet and I don't know if you can see, but the battery temperature has already gone up to the middle which is not bad, the outside temperature is going up, it should reach 80 degrees again today and the middle is Totally well, also, this car is really a great cruiser, the suspension is super compliant, it's relatively quiet here. I would say the interior for 45 grand, the cost of this car is not that great, but you get the tax credit, you probably get 10 grand. at a dealership, I think it probably makes sense after the incentives, but I would never pay a sticker for one of these things and luckily you don't have to just because of the federal tax credit and whatnot, but yeah, it's a driving experience very refined if I need a great commuter, the blade is a fantastic option for sure, but I think it's not a great road commuter just because of the Chatimo's limited charging speeds and no thermal management, maybe let's try it today because this it is what it is.

I like to take a road trip with a Nissan Leaf, I think that will be the title of the video. I hope it's not clickbait because we're not really road tripping very far, but I try not to do clickbait. We're coming into Raleigh, passing through the North Hills. The Tesla supercharger is right here, the batteries are stable right in the middle, which is pretty impressive, very nice, especially since we've been driving at speedsrelatively high, you know, 80 to 85 miles per hour or so on these open North Carolina roads on a Sunday. Tomorrow, so, yeah, let's run, let's go pick up Ben, everyone knows, Ben, he makes videos with us all the time and let's see what we can do.

He'll drive the blade and we'll see what it's like. I don't think he's ever driven a leaf, besides, we'll see, so this is cool. You get all your EV stats here on this screen so you can get your total power output, your regen. I bet this card generates over 35 kilowatts of regeneration and looks too. this is the street we used to live on there, alright, we should stop by and see how our old house is anyway, Ben lives right down the street, let's go pick him up and walk around the leaf we have. I got here to Benz it's on its way let's take a look at what this car has it being the SL of course it has good headlights it has these wheels now this car has 15 or 16 miles less range than the base model s and There's Benjamin and Ben's model 3 so it looks pretty good with stealth performance Hi, how's it going? and yeah, and then you get this sl plus badge on the back and that's what gives this car the nice exterior look.

Well, Ben will be driving the Leaf for a bit, but I'm sitting in the passenger seat, which doesn't have height adjustment, but the driver's seat does, so it's considerably lower. You're taller than me, you're like three inches tall, yeah, I feel like I'm sitting too high and there's no way to lower it. This is not good, actually wait, look at the base seat, it's at least an inch, it's at least an inch, yeah, not many, not that good, a lot of cars are like that, it's not exclusive to the leaf, but They are still nonsense before driving it.

I want to know what we're getting into pricing-wise here, because what was Haley's sheet? it was like a really basic one it was like 30 30 grand 32 grand yeah they always come with like 45 grand yeah but you get the 7500 tax credit so let's say 30 let's call it three years and probably get 10 grand off at the dealership yeah im pretty sure they'll give you 10 grand. I saw there's a Nissan dealership near me and they have 10,000 sl 2019 plus stickers on all of them, like yeah, no, like they're still new or something on one. from them I want to say it's not a bad deal if you can get a discount of 15,000 or so uh oh yeah no no but there's a blue stripe on the bottom of the car oh four hundred dollars oh really 400 is good I didn't do it look wait let's look it's a blue 400 stripe it's on the front yeah this front lip is blue I didn't realize it was paint I haven't looked either I mean I don't see any other two tone colors I think yes.

I can save four hundred dollars on that one, honestly, yeah, it doesn't go as well with the red, maybe on a white one it doesn't work as well with the red, I don't think so, well, Nissan speckled this car with everything I have. I'm sure they usually do anything else that makes you stand out, kick plates that's probably worth it, I think so, 130 bucks, I think you're referring to this sheet here, yeah, I like it, yeah, I like it, okay , we're going to charge the blade just a little bit we're at 41 we need to recharge to get back to Rocky Mount so we'll get this going you have to call to activate the charger there the connectors are yes they are that's also absurdly thick for what 50 kilowatts yeah no need for it to be that thick but this seems to be working fine first no problem I think it's just calling because the credit card reader wasn't working so calling to activate the one here it works though good. one and two I read on plugshare don't have a reader that works but everything else works fine whatever it is and that's fine so let's get this going we're charging so I hear these can put out 100 kilowatts , Chad Mo, right or somewhere, yeah. but these are limited to 125 amps for the charger yeah so it's just gonna say is there anywhere in the US where you can charge this faster than a regular blade whatever the chart is yeah there was actually a station that was connected yesterday in Richmond that will serve. 100 kilowatts flat and I would like to go up there but I don't have time and look this is the fastest we have charged the blade so far 43 kilowatts have you made it very low or yes because it was hot with a thermal accelerator I would only get up to 33 kilowatts.

Ben just did some research we should have done ahead of time but basically Nissan UK tweeted that this has a fan for high heat loads when charging, however Nissan Nissan Global said no. so that doesn't have a fan maybe some have fans maybe not sure maybe only in the UK maybe only right hand drive jumps I'm a fan but basically it's charging fine on this first charge of the day so I am very satisfied with this. I have an idea for fast walking, yeah, you know, those snail-like fans that they used to blow up, oh, they're bouncy houses, they're kind of rectangle, they use them on race cars, yeah, make them run. that from your 12 volt, stick it under the car and you'll blow air through the battery and cool it down, which could be worth 10 kilowatts there.

I think you have a full pit crew every time you load. I've done stranger things, so we started with the battery at half and now we're almost at red, we're probably 80 percent of the way to red, uh, so it definitely got hot, but this charging session was Excellent, let's disconnect now at 80 percent. Because it is shrinking, there is no reason to stay here any longer and we will continue driving. The next charger is where it will get interesting. Will we be able to get full power or will this thing be thermally accelerated? It's actually pretty good compared to the base.

A leaf like this has a lot of good equipment, I think you buy them at a dealer, pretty cheap, very good range, performance is fine, comfortable, quiet, it's actually a very good car and has a lot of range, charging is the only kind of weak point, I feel like if you need to drive a lot but you're not necessarily taking a trip like you're a real estate agent, a dog walking babysitter, you run errands all over town or you're a business owner and you need to deliver things constantly . This is pretty perfect and the fit and finish is good, the soft materials it should have, the driving experience inside is something I think most car buyers would be very happy with and I don't think the problem The autonomy during trips and the thermal acceleration of the battery would be important.

I feel like if you lived in the UK this could be a great car because you can't go super far in one go. Overall, I have mixed feelings. Still it's really nice to come and see Ben and spend some time in raleigh now it's time to go home it's 80 degrees outside the battery temperature cooled down a little after the charging session now we're going to drive back to i-95 back to Rocky Mount and then we'll drain it and do another load so this is really what you know even though we're not going on a trip it simulates a trip in the fact that we're loading multiple times with a quite large distance between each charge. and so far I would say the car has been impeccable up to this point.

Let's see how many miles our trip is in a second. It has many menus. Here we are only about 100 miles into our trip and everything is working out great. We charge uh our average consumption is a pretty poor 2.8 miles per kilowatt hour, but keep in mind that we're driving it hard up and down the highways at normal speeds of 80 to 85 miles per hour. This is a real world use case, so everything looks good. and now you join us again at Rocky Mount where we go to recharge. I was thinking about going to the track where we could still do it, but this might be enough to prove my point or at least to complete the test, not a point that I.

I'm trying to show that we're at state of charge 29, the battery is just a tick below red again driving normally pretty fast up and down the highways in North Carolina, we've done a total of let's take a look here, uh, Come on, where is it? OMG this system has so many menus, it's not bad, there is a lot of good information in this car, I just don't know where to find it. Oh, that's 140.8 miles. We did a Chatimo charge in Raleigh and got it up to 80. We're down to 29, so we know for a fact that this car will put out 46 kilowatts at this state of charge and then drop off to around 75, which is what we saw in the last session load.

Let's see if that behavior stays the same with the battery temperature where it's now getting close to the red again with the air management system in this car, there's no way for it to cool the pack, it's just turning up the temperature, we're plugged in, It is connecting to the vehicle starting again, listen to that first. That was pretty amazing so today we had a flawless ride, three charging sessions at electrify america with no problems on the chatimo and yes I love the look of these new stations, it's Sunday so I don't expect any work to be done .

To bring them out here and clarify, but I think these units look better and it's surprising that this happens so quickly, so let's take a look to see what the charger delivers because of course it will be different than what the car receives. There's always a little bit of heat loss, but we're at 29 kilowatts right now and we'll see if this goes up, we'll give it a little bit, but I guess that's what the car will take because the temperature is so low. so let's confirm this within the system here, so the way to see the charging power is you have to turn it on twice, put it on accessory power, turn off the air conditioning, charge the club is connected, thank you, you got it, the temperature of the battery is hot so we have to go up to this menu 29 kilowatts just to confirm, I have charged for about 10 minutes, now nine minutes, damn, you have music on your motorcycle, it is very loud and we are doing 29 30 kilowatts, for course, but what the Leaf probably does and the real Nissan Leaf experts.

I can comment below but what it probably does is based on the temperature of the battery, it sets a fixed amperage that it wants to charge on the damn ice cars, lifted trucks so loud around here, welcome to North Carolina. What it does is it probably sets a fixed amperage on the battery pack and then as the pack voltage increases it will increase so it will probably peak at 32 kilowatts, my estimate would be around 70-80 percent , but it's still significantly less and would only get slower and slower the more we drive and warm up. the pack and charge it quickly because right now this is what is heating it up and of course the hotter the pack is the faster the degradation will be so the fantastic Leaf car just doesn't love traveling on the road as We knew it and that's the end of the video now see you in the next one