Addressing Range Anxiety in your 2011 – 2017 Nissan Leaf

Here are some tips on how to deal with range anxiety in an older Nissan Leaf, based entirely on personal experience during 12 years of driving these (and other) EVs. As your charge approaches zero, with somewhere around 15 miles of range left, your range indicator (aka guess-o-meter) will start flashing. A bit later, the number of miles will disappear and be replaced with dashes - this is Nissan's way to tell you that they REALLY want you to stop and charge. If you toggle to the %charged indicator (on 2013 and newer Leafs), you probably still have around 5-7% left, but that indicator will eventually go to dashes as well. At that point, your battery charge indicator bars are the only thing left for you to assess the remaining level of charge. When the last one of those disappears, you are likely within fewer than 5 miles of very gentle driving before you will get stranded. As always, your mileage may vary.

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In those last couple miles, when your Leaf stops showing you your percent of charge remaining on your battery, your goal should be to get to a safe place if you're not going to make it to a charger. Get off the highway, off of a busy road, and then you have a couple options. You can get a tow home or to a nearby charging stations. If you have your charge cord with you, you could plug into any outlet you can find. Whether that be behind a grocery store or at a friendly neighbor's house. Or is you have a service like AAA, in some areas they have trucks with generators that can come give you enough of a charge to drive yourself to a charging station.

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Of course, ideally a well-planned trip with your Leaf will not need to resort to these measures. But if you do get low on range, now you can know what to expect and have a plan if you run out.

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Happy EVing, Platt Auto Team