week 14: LEAF-tech lowdown
Enviado: 25 ago 2011, 14:14
week 14: LEAF-tech lowdown
"Robert looks at the infotainment at his fingertips in the Nissan LEAF
By Robert Llewellyn on July 30, 2011 12:33 PM
One of the things I rapidly got used to in the Nissan LEAF was all the extra gubbins. The driver support and feedback, the stuff that happens that you rely on but you’re not really aware of when you’re driving.
There’s no point being modest, the tech in the LEAF is amazing; it pushes all the technology another step, they’ve gone out on a limb and it works.
Yes, there’s obviously Carwings, the iPhone app that let’s you control aspects of the car remotely. Turn the heater or air conditioning on and off, set the charging timer and check the state of charge. You don’t need to be anywhere near the car.
But what is built into every LEAF is what’s really impressive. There’s the obvious battery level indicator on the dash, a series of bars that slowly disappear as you drive. Next to this is a range estimator that constantly changes and is the most difficult thing to get used to.
Very often when I get in the car in the morning, it will read 104 miles, battery full. If, as I have done to test it, I drive the car aggressively for the first five miles, this indicator can drop to say, 70 miles but I will still only have used one bar on the battery indicator.
If I then drive carefully, that range will go back up. I’ve got it as low as 67 miles, then gone back up to 98 after gentle driving, it’s constantly adjusting to the driving style. I admit this aspect takes getting used to and I’ve heard from a LEAF driver in the USA who stuck a bit of black tape over the number so he wouldn’t be able to take any notice of it.
When the batteries are nearly empty the range indicator drops rather alarmingly until it says two miles. I got it to this level once and I was at least five miles from home, and there was a big hill to climb. I did it without drama and when I got home, it still said two miles.
The built in sat nav is exceptional. Most of us have experienced sat-navs by now and we know they can vary in their usefulness. The one I had in my VW Golf a few years back was legendarily rubbish. I was once so confused by it I drove into a multi story car park in Basingstoke twice, yes, twice, all the time screaming at the women assuring me it was the next left. I discovered later that the car park was new and built on the site of the old ring road.
But the LEAF sat nav does more than just tell you which way to go and how far to your destination. If you plug the car in to charge it, anywhere, it records the location so that you can navigate back to it again. Not only that, anonymous information on charging locations being used by owners is constantly uploaded to central Nissan HQ, where people in white coats walk around with clipboards working out if a new public charging location needs to be added to the system. The men in white coats bit is probably just in my imagination, actually, but it’s true that the sat nav updates based on this shared data. It’s all a bit technical.
There is a setting on the touch screen navigation system listing them and tells you how far to the nearest one. You can touch one and it then gives you directions, to the last metre.
Another feature I use all the time is the built in charge timer, again available on the touch screen console. Very easy to set up, you plug the car in and forget it, the timer comes on when you set it (midnight to 7am if you’ve got any sense, 5p per kWh) and it’s full when you get in the following day.
Then there’s the Bluetooth gubbins. Again, many cars have Bluetooth, which allows the stereo to connect to your phone so you can stream music and answer calls hands free, but it’s particularly simple to use on the LEAF. I got in the first time, checked my phone, saw the car on the list, put in the top-secret 1234 code and bing. Everything works, total hands free integration, no wires, no faff, it always remembers.
If you have a USB memory stick with 10,000 songs on it, plug that in the USB port and they appear on the screen. There’s even a radio! Yes, I have used it to listen to Craig Charles funk and soul show on BBC 6Music. I’m that hip.
A lot of these features are controllable with buttons on the steering wheel, there are voice commands but I have to admit I don’t use them much.
So all in all, what looks on the outside like your classic C segment hatchback is, it turns out, a rather high end swish car which makes the challenges of driving an electric vehicle just a little bit easier."
Em: http://www.thechargingpoint.com/opinion ... wdown.html
"Robert looks at the infotainment at his fingertips in the Nissan LEAF
By Robert Llewellyn on July 30, 2011 12:33 PM
One of the things I rapidly got used to in the Nissan LEAF was all the extra gubbins. The driver support and feedback, the stuff that happens that you rely on but you’re not really aware of when you’re driving.
There’s no point being modest, the tech in the LEAF is amazing; it pushes all the technology another step, they’ve gone out on a limb and it works.
Yes, there’s obviously Carwings, the iPhone app that let’s you control aspects of the car remotely. Turn the heater or air conditioning on and off, set the charging timer and check the state of charge. You don’t need to be anywhere near the car.
But what is built into every LEAF is what’s really impressive. There’s the obvious battery level indicator on the dash, a series of bars that slowly disappear as you drive. Next to this is a range estimator that constantly changes and is the most difficult thing to get used to.
Very often when I get in the car in the morning, it will read 104 miles, battery full. If, as I have done to test it, I drive the car aggressively for the first five miles, this indicator can drop to say, 70 miles but I will still only have used one bar on the battery indicator.
If I then drive carefully, that range will go back up. I’ve got it as low as 67 miles, then gone back up to 98 after gentle driving, it’s constantly adjusting to the driving style. I admit this aspect takes getting used to and I’ve heard from a LEAF driver in the USA who stuck a bit of black tape over the number so he wouldn’t be able to take any notice of it.
When the batteries are nearly empty the range indicator drops rather alarmingly until it says two miles. I got it to this level once and I was at least five miles from home, and there was a big hill to climb. I did it without drama and when I got home, it still said two miles.
The built in sat nav is exceptional. Most of us have experienced sat-navs by now and we know they can vary in their usefulness. The one I had in my VW Golf a few years back was legendarily rubbish. I was once so confused by it I drove into a multi story car park in Basingstoke twice, yes, twice, all the time screaming at the women assuring me it was the next left. I discovered later that the car park was new and built on the site of the old ring road.
But the LEAF sat nav does more than just tell you which way to go and how far to your destination. If you plug the car in to charge it, anywhere, it records the location so that you can navigate back to it again. Not only that, anonymous information on charging locations being used by owners is constantly uploaded to central Nissan HQ, where people in white coats walk around with clipboards working out if a new public charging location needs to be added to the system. The men in white coats bit is probably just in my imagination, actually, but it’s true that the sat nav updates based on this shared data. It’s all a bit technical.
There is a setting on the touch screen navigation system listing them and tells you how far to the nearest one. You can touch one and it then gives you directions, to the last metre.
Another feature I use all the time is the built in charge timer, again available on the touch screen console. Very easy to set up, you plug the car in and forget it, the timer comes on when you set it (midnight to 7am if you’ve got any sense, 5p per kWh) and it’s full when you get in the following day.
Then there’s the Bluetooth gubbins. Again, many cars have Bluetooth, which allows the stereo to connect to your phone so you can stream music and answer calls hands free, but it’s particularly simple to use on the LEAF. I got in the first time, checked my phone, saw the car on the list, put in the top-secret 1234 code and bing. Everything works, total hands free integration, no wires, no faff, it always remembers.
If you have a USB memory stick with 10,000 songs on it, plug that in the USB port and they appear on the screen. There’s even a radio! Yes, I have used it to listen to Craig Charles funk and soul show on BBC 6Music. I’m that hip.
A lot of these features are controllable with buttons on the steering wheel, there are voice commands but I have to admit I don’t use them much.
So all in all, what looks on the outside like your classic C segment hatchback is, it turns out, a rather high end swish car which makes the challenges of driving an electric vehicle just a little bit easier."
Em: http://www.thechargingpoint.com/opinion ... wdown.html