Anyway, we decided to bail on running outside and instead piled the family in the car and headed to the gym at the Y. An excellent opportunity to test out the climate control on the LEAF.
First, the ability to turn on climate control remotely while the car's plugged in and in the garage without dying of carbon monoxide poisoning is most excellent. Not only was the interior air warm but the steering wheel and seats were nice and toasty as well.
About that heated steering wheel. That was the best feature on my old Maxima I never asked for. In fact if the dealer hadn't told me about it when I bought the car I would never had known it existed. But it was truly awesome. It would heat up almost instantly and there's nothing like your hands on a warm steering wheel to heat your entire body while the defroster is still pumping out frigid air and the seats are ever so slowly thawing. The one in the Nissan LEAF is just as good.
And about the heated seats. I've never had much use for them (Kerry will beg to differ). They've always taken forever to warm up and by the time they do the rest of the car is warm enough anyway. Not so in the LEAF. They heat up almost instantly. And they have them in the back seats for your passengers as well. Unfortunately our youngest is still sitting on a booster so he doesn't so much get the benefit of them.
The heated seats and steering wheel are keys to minimizing the use of the electricity hogging cabin heater. Turning on the climate control instantly took 9 to 10 miles off the displayed range. We definitely didn't have to have it on the entire trip to the Y and back. Admittedly we were probably only in the car for 25 minutes or so but so far so good.
In anticipation of this, as an experiment, I actually spent the last couple of commutes to the office and back in the Maxima seeing if I could live on the heated seats and steering wheel alone. One morning it even managed to drop down to 19 degrees. I bundled up and wore gloves and managed to survive, if maybe not super comfortably. However, I didn't have the advantage of preheating the car or a heated seat that warmed up instantly.
Another tip. The switch for the rear seats is on the left side of the front passenger seat. Easy for the driver to see and turn off when the kids inevitably leave it on. Guy at Milford Nissan also gave a great tip. If you are not running the climate control, or even if you are just running the heat and you find the windows fogging, just turn the A/C on. You can have both heat and A/C on at the same time and it clears the fog very quickly.
Definitely looking promising on the climate control front. At least as far as heating goes. We'll have to wait a few months to exercise the air conditioner.
Yesterday's Statistics
- Description: Back roads and around town
- Starting Range: 82 miles
- Miles Driven: 21.4 miles
- Ending Range: 62 miles
- High Temperature: 32
- Low Temperature: 15
- Wind: 13
- Average MPKWh: 3.7
- Average MPG: 24.5
- Energy Cost/KWh (Wind): $0.0899
- Delivery Cost/KWh: $0.092
- Unleaded Regular/Gallon MA: $3.403
- Savings/Mile: $0.089
- Total Savings: $1.92
- Lifetime Savings: $8.52
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